Loudspeaker enclosures should be curved near drivers and avoid central mounting.

Evidence

The main consequence of these results is that wherever possible the enclosure should be curved near the drive-units and that the drive-units should not be mounted in the center of the enclosure. In practice, they will have to be mounted centrally in the hori­ zontal direction, but they do not need to be so in the vertical direction. Under these circumstances, the most appropriate shape is circular. However, for the reasons outlined previously, an ellipsoidal shape is often more appropriate. — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2217

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Explains the design principle behind why curved enclosures and off-center drivers reduce diffraction and coincidence effects.

Related

• Loudspeaker enclosures should curve near drive units to reduce diffraction (similarity 0.97)
• Loudspeaker enclosures should curve near drivers and offset them vertically (similarity 0.91)
• Centrally mounted drivers between two edges cause coincidence effects that degrade sound. (similarity 0.86)
• Cabinet shape and driver placement materially govern diffraction distortion (similarity 0.84)
• Curved surfaces concentrate sound locally while draining power elsewhere in the room (similarity 0.83)
• Loudspeaker enclosure shape and size alter frequency response via diffraction (similarity 0.82)
• Loudspeaker cabinet volume sets the lower frequency limit (similarity 0.82)
• Truncated ellipsoidal speaker enclosures match spherical performance with more design freedom (similarity 0.82)
• Curved small enclosures produce the smoothest acoustic response, ideally spherical (similarity 0.80)
• Loudspeakers need enclosures to stop back-wave cancellation of sound (similarity 0.80)
• Spherical enclosures give the smoothest loudspeaker frequency response (similarity 0.79)
• Sound waves diffracting at speaker cabinet edges distort the frequency response (similarity 0.79)