Deang Posted August 10, 2001 Share Posted August 10, 2001 i just replaced the cabinets of my klipsch RB5 monitors. after i got into the box i was surprised to find very little damping (speaker enclosure material). there was just two pieces of foam, rolled up and stuffed behind the drivers - there was quite a bit of exposed MDF. Well...while i was putting things back together i decided to 'remedy' the situation. i unrolled the foam and used it to actually line the inside of the cabinet...then i used the packing material (foam like, but not really foam - thin stuff), rolled it up, and stuffed it in behind the drivers - pretty much the way they had it - but it's much more dense. At any rate...it certainly sounds different...but i don't really understand what i did. it almost seems as if i have lost a little midbass. ------------------ DeanGW Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Garrison Posted August 10, 2001 Share Posted August 10, 2001 If you're comfortable opening them back up again, and you feel like experimenting, I'd open up ONE cabinet, put it back the way it was (two pieces of rolled up foam), them put both speakers side by side, set your preamp or receiver to mono, the use the balance control to put that mono signal through first one speaker, then the other. Should be easy to identify what you did. To overly simplicate the situation, putting additional damping inside the cabinet makes it "look" like a larger inclosure to the woofer. This will, typically, extend the response a bit lower in frequency, alter the resonant behaviour (typically lowering the "Q", I believe), reduce the sensitivity (less output with same amount of power), and in general alter the sound of the system in (at least to me) unpredictable ways. There's a (generally false) assumption that putting damping material (I'm talking about loose fibreglass bats, cotton batting, foam, etc. - damping material applied to the walls of the cabinet to make them more inert is a different story) inside the cabinet is always a good thing. No. Damping can be used to tune the performance of a system, but it is just one of many different variables that must be considered when designing the system. Some of the most expensive, and generally highly thought of, speaker systems have NO damping whatsoever in them. Open up a top of the line Thiel, for example (say the CS 7.2 or CS 6 - both multi $$$ speakers) and you will find nothing but an empty wooden box with extensive bracing - no foam, batting, wallpaper or carpet in sight. Ray ------------------ Music is art Audio is engineering Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WMcD Posted August 10, 2001 Share Posted August 10, 2001 I think this is just an episode of hot rodding. The factory design might look pretty crude. Yet it is difficult to test the improvement. I gotta conclude the designers had something in mind and finding an effective upgrade is not that easy. Gil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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