When I called the design somewhat “primitive” and “rudimentary”, this was not directed primarily at the shape of the box (FWIW, my view on box shape is that by the time you’ve built any kind of rudimentary box that is sufficiently bevelled at the edges of the baffle and is adequately stiff and damped, the law of diminishing returns has already kicked in).
Rather, the elements of this design I find unbefitting of a demonstration design for a woofer of this class are primarily:
- Use of a low-order XO frequency, resulting in a wide band of vertical off-axis cancellation.
- Placement of the XO at a frequency of wavelength significantly longer than the drivers’ centre-to-centre distance (which - especially in conjunction with the previous point - will lead to a particularly poor vertical dispersion characteristic).
- Failure to address resonances in (in particular) the output of the tweeter and the port.
Now I’m not saying this is a bad speaker at all. It ticks most of the basic boxes, and it has low distortion, great bass extension for its size, and is capable of high output.
But I still feel that it’s a SOTA woofer being showcased in a significantly-less-than SOTA design.
Anyway I’ll bow out now
I don’t want to give the impression I’m bashing this speaker, or even that I don’t think it’s a decent design. I’m just a little disappointed/underwhelmed.