has any company ever made "hi-fi" plastic cased speakers?

[dshreter]

So is it LoFi?

HighestFi

 

[voodooless]

True, though just the mold of that size is extremely expensive.

Absolutely. One could cheat a bit with an aluminum mold. Those are a lot cheaper, but also aren’t made for tens of thousands of units. I’m not sure though if they can actually be used for larger molds like for speakers.

But even if a mold is € 200k. Let’s say you make 10k speakers, that’s just €20 per speaker. Add €15 for materials, then you have an enclosure for €35. I can’t make a wooden enclosure for that money, never mind the manual labor to put it together.

 

[LTig]

For PA, sound leakage from around the cabinet is a less big deal, the enclosures tend to have simpler internal structures, and they tend to sell more units per model, so it works.

I think the major reason to use plastic for PA speakers is the much lower weight. It makes transport and installation/deinstallation cheaper.

 

[Birdy]

I use PVC for 30+ years for my speakers, 30 cm tube (6 mm.) for the bass and 13 cm for the dome midrange, great material for clean low end ,only the low mids need to be damped with internal damping.

 

[pauldavidthomas]

JBL 8320, JBL 8340 ect. All plastic based. Cheap second hand and sounds great for compression driver based speakers.

 

[kemmler3D]

I think the major reason to use plastic for PA speakers is the much lower weight. It makes transport and installation/deinstallation cheaper.

Good point. Having moved and set up enough plywood PAs in my college years, I think this is a major design consideration!

 

[kemmler3D]

even if a mold is € 200k.

To give some sense of scale, the mold for a ~25L speaker we made was >$250K and that was over 5 years ago, and we got a very good deal on the mold. Also, the plastic isn't free, but it's definitely cheap. As you go bigger the cost will rise faster.

For low-end PA, molds are often shared between manufacturers, so you'll see several brands of speaker, often with different drivers and electronics, all in the same housing. This is due to the relatively high investment a PA-sized enclosure mold requires.

Also, consider that in a moderately sized woodshop you could probably make 10K enclosures per year, at maybe $20 labor cost* each (let's leave aside finishing for now), so the math isn't a no-brainer on this.

*Well, if they work fast and the labor is perhaps in a lower-wage country. I don't know if you can really build a whole cabinet in less than an hour even with a good setup...?

 

[Killingbeans]

HI-MACS seems to be gaining popularity. I see it as a "luxury" platic that can be vacuum formed or processed with normal woodworking techniques.

 

[Sokel]

Probably marketing / aesthetics. People see carbon fiber and they think "high performance" regardless of whether it makes sense.

No,no,it's not visible.The ones I have seen at least.
Maybe (if I remember well) the only visible fiber carbon part was the waveguide of the tweeter but I'm not sure about it.
The body itself was pitch black gloss.

 

[kemmler3D]

the only visible fiber carbon part was the waveguide of the tweeter

That makes some sense. It's the kind of material you can use to create a curved but highly rigid surface, which I think makes sense for a WG.

 

[Flaesh]

JBL HLA; at least some hi-fi in the background.

 

[pseudoid]

erm... an ESL?

 

[bwng29]

The KEF Blade 2 cabin is technically made of plastic

 

[pauldavidthomas]

JBL 8320, JBL 8340 ect. All plastic based. Cheap second hand and sounds great for compression driver based speakers.

Oops forgot to say, these speakers are all used in commercial movie theatres.

 

[cavedriver]

I wonder why they add a carbon fiber shell when it has a (stiff) aluminum frame. It's like if Genelec wrapped their speakers in carbon fiber.

Probably to get the benefit of dissimilar materials and a quasi-constrained layer damping effect. Otherwise the aluminum could still "ring through" certain frequencies, no?

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

The KEF Blade 2 cabin is technically made of plastic

and i still dont get why that speaker cost so much...

 

[cavedriver]

Surely there are a lot of plastic composite materials that can be procured in sheets and worked with like MDF or other classic methods for speaker building. Tracking down a couple now myself. For example Valchromat is a version of MDF that is through-dyed so it's already colored all the way through, that also claims to be denser and stronger than normal MDF (although their numbers basically match good quality MDF from what I could find). The same company also makes Viroc, a blend of wood powder, stone powder, and polymer resins to make a kind of board that could be used in a multilayer approach. Also, plastic sheet good could be layered with constrained damping layer to diminish their vibration transmission while still keeping costs down. I know of at least one speaker company using these techniques although they aren't cheap (yet).

Others include the Treva mentioned in the Audio Express article linked above (a good read, especially part 2), and Richlite (still investigating that one). Finally, this guy does some good testing on constrained layer damping and how bad simple MDF is by comparison:

 

[Descartes]

and i still dont get why that speaker cost so much...

Because they can! I was considering a pair but I can’t justify the price for what they are especially since they jacked up the price so much!!