Question about the importance of speaker cabinet design

[Roy_L]

I think it's quite consensual that the Wharfedale Linton Heritage are well measuring speakers.
However, all this measurement (and sound) goodness is achieved by placing drivers in a simple rectangular box, much like the ones of the 1970's. No fancy curvatures, no special materials, no sophisticated placement of the drivers, not even a waveguide for the tweeter. If that is the case, how truly important are all these modern design features? Do they improve anything, or are they used to achieve certain improvements at the expense of something else which is characteristic to simple rectangular boxes? Or is it simply that different designs can achieve similar results?

 

[Mnyb]

There are some shaping inside of the speaker grill who must be on for bests results otherwise you get classical cabinet edge diffraction .

And the speaker is a three-way this can make the task of mating the dispersion patterns of the drivers easier , the midrange is not very large .
There is an art in designing the driver itself sans waveguide .

They have thought of the driver positioning tweeter and midrange are quite close , the bass is less critical .

The waveguide seems to me most usefull when mating a very wide tweeter with a large midbass cone .

Classical speakers always had problems with xover frequencies in the middle of the midrange for a two way all kinds of fidling went on for example having a very high xover like 3-4kHz etc etc . Nowadays WG can help the designer to put his xover wherever he needs to .


I think the design has the potential for even better performance if they ditched the retro look and rounded the cabinet edges etc , its very good for what it is and does many things really well . But its not perfect .

 

[voodooless]

There are some shaping inside of the speaker grill who must be on for bests results otherwise you get classical cabinet edge diffraction .

Yeah, this is actually quite curious. It's a lot smoother with the grill, so there is definitely something going on here. Sadly I can't find any images from the backside of the girl.

No fancy curvatures, no special materials, no sophisticated placement of the drivers, not even a waveguide for the tweeter. If that is the case, how truly important are all these modern design features?

I think it's just a matter of hiding these things. The tweeter is behind a mesh, and recessed, and there is a small waveguide-like structure. And as @Mnyb mentioned, given that the mid is smaller, you don't need a large one. The fact that it's recessed also helps with time alignment. Still, there is some directivity mismatch to be found, something a larger waveguide could have probably fixed. There is also a mismatch between bass and mid, actually lowering directivity around its crossover region.

 

[DSJR]

Wharfedale and sister? company Quad do have other designs with a more modern aesthetic, the Linton and Denton series basically cashing in on the 'retro' market visuals while doing the very best they can with said visuals - quite successfully I believe. I believe it's a nice niche for them with these and they would fit into many 'trad' home styles without looking at all out of place.

 

[Roy_L]

Still, just using a grill (even a special one) and sightly recessing the tweeter seems way simpler (and cheaper) compared to what some other manufacturers are going through.

 

[voodooless]

Still, just using a grill (even a special one) and sightly recessing the tweeter seems way simpler (and cheaper) compared to what some other manufacturers are going through.

Well, it's just a different set of compromises, and the devil is in the details. Given this, you can get an excellent result with something like the Wharfdale given the classic look, but a more modern design will still extract some extra performance if done correctly.

 

[Penelinfi]

Yeah, this is actually quite curious. It's a lot smoother with the grill, so there is definitely something going on here. Sadly I can't find any images from the backside of the * girl. *

 

[voodooless]

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Good one I should have known that Erin would check it out