Baffle Diffraction and Edge Treatment | What Happens 

Thank you for this informations and test

I’m glad I revisited this video. I forgot how much I learned from this guy a couple years ago. If you are out there, bro, thanks!

Im so glad the bose im updating atm have floating tweeters on metal brackets Dont need another layer of headaches 😂

The best situation is: chamfered baffle and wave guide tweeter like Seas DXT 😁

This is great thanks for explaining this so clearly

The infinite baffle was correct response of tweeter. The extra meat on the bottom around 200hz on the infinite baffle is the baffle resonating a bit at the frequency.....The fill in at 4khz-5khz by the rounded baffle is due to the tweeter being very near the top and only having 3 surfaces instead of 4. Due to lack of surface, you will notice you get a boost in that same area when placing the tweeter on top because of lack of surface, that is how you got the nice fill in at 4-5khz.....that said, the infinitate baffle will give you the most accurate response of what the tweeter is actually doing.....A+ video.

Great information! Thanks

Excellent job! Thank you!

Great video . Thank You

Just met you, and I'm a fan.....this is what matters, reality.

10:46 That wiggly part on red made by your ALMOST square baffle. if the width and height were very different the space between those waves would be more. Thanks for the video by the way. EDIT: And you don't need a sheet of polywood for every test. you just need one sheet and a changeable square in the middle.

Bon boulot très intéressant. Merci .

This was a great video... learned quite a bit. Thanks!!

I’m dying to build speakers. I built woodworking table, included table and miter saw, dremel router base, and want to try my hand at a speaker set.

Have a infinite baffle with a square cut out to make inserts for different sized drivers. So youll only be wasting a small amount of wood each time. You just insert the driver into the infinite baffle

Great job!

Great stuff! This is gold. Let me also add to your results, that in addition to a flatter frequency response, reducing diffraction also has a positive impact on imaging. Ideally, we would want perfectly reproduced sound emitted from a single source, right? That's how we make our ears really believe in what it's picking up, not being able to tell where the speakers are, etc. With diffraction, however, like you said: the soundwave is re-emitted at the baffle edge. This is, in practice, introducing a second sound source. Your ears and brain will be able to tell that "Hey! This isn't natural!", and in turn, the immersion will be less convincing. Take a look at what Bowers & Wilkins does to their 800-series, for instance. Listening to those things is baffling (pun intended). Even with my eyes open, looking straight at the speakers, my ears are not able to tell where they are. It's all just ... soundstage. Something to strive for.

I bought a huge 2" radius, 1/2" shank corner rounding bit. Its a monster, but the big curve edge is sure nice. It must be used in a heavy router table, and with small bites over several passes, no hand holding the router. Have also found over the years that adding a radius roll back around sharp edge terminated horn waveguides is useful as well. Bottom line, sharp edges on speakers suck.. they wreck imaging cues. As far back as the '70s there were some great AES papers on mitigating edge diffraction effects with spherical, egg, and rounded edge baffle/cabinet shapes.

Thank you! Very informative, waiting for another tutorial videos

No one explains it better I too was of the other understanding thanks for clearing that up

This is my baffle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Thank you.

Very interesting! I would never have imagined the difference would be so obvious.

That is why I build my round sphere speakers. And they sound marvelous. Have video of it in my channel

I just discovered your channel. Great stuff! You’re doing what I was doing in the 1980’s as we spent countless hours and thousands of $$ on loudspeaker design. A TEF was not in our budget as it was big deal in 1986, but we had limited access to one from a sound engineer in the Bay Area of SF. Our primary focus was on phase coherency. Effects such as diffraction as described here and driver alignment using as little crossover electronics as possible was the goal. We went through a lot of driver combinations to find the right formula. We eventually developed a sweet sounding loudspeaker that yielded a few, now since expired US patents. But, venture capital dried up and ......... Since then, the market caught up to us and I haven’t done much with design since. Looks you have a great shop with the right tools.

Can diffraction be reduced by A. sticking a sponge material around the speaker on the baffle at say 2" away, using the self stick door draft excluder type that about 1/4" square. B. Routing a dado channel in the baffle around the speaker at say 2" away and gluing in a strip of sound deadener. C. Using a dado channel as at B instead of sound absorbing material, put in a circle of hard wood or plastic that is rounded over with a slight protrusion and polished or natural, like a speed hump for soundwaves. But the height above the baffle may need tuning depending on frequency, irrespective of height it might be worth a try.

Great video! Horns often suffer from edge diffraction as well. That’s why I’m a fan of the jean michel cleach horn profile.

Great Video! And nice hat. I grew up in Illinois watching the Big Hurt, aka Frank Thomas. By far my favorite team growing up.

Very good video with great explanations on an advanced topic! Looking forward to the baffle step video!

People forget that a baffle is also reflecting sound back that is reflecting from walls and objects in the room

Thanks for taking the time to do the tests and making this video. There's great information here for all to use! I'm wondering what your opinion would be on my tweeter mounting setup.

I find good results with a smooth spread of diffraction by placing the tweeter all the way to the top edge of the baffle an keeping that unchamfered. Then only doing a smaller chamfer on the sides of the baffle. Nice work, very edgeucational. :)

What about golf ball dimples in the front plate?!? haha

METRIC!!, fuck yeahh!!

I didnt know anyone on youtube cared about sharing this type of information. although it may just be that i'm not too good at searching on youtube. I really appreciate your videos they teach me alot

Hello, What seems to work well and comes from the BBC speaker ls35/5a is just putting some absorbant around the tweeter, like 4 lines of thick wool stuff

Very interesting. One question: Does the depth of the chamfered part of the baffle matter? What if you only made a 45 degrees angle on a piece of 0.71 inch of wood instead of gluing 2 of those together?

Afaik if you want to measure multiple drivers in an infinite baffle you can cut out a square in your baffle and nest a small square baffle in your infinite baffle

I have a lot of time for your video's.

gold!!!

infinite baffle, just make 3inch a hole in a wall and make a small removable baffle from 3 inch to do infinite baffle testing proper and just use 3 inch plywood/mdf for each test. Great test, learned a lot! Thnx!

Very interesting video,found you by accident,watched two of your tweeter videos,and also I have half a sheet of the same veneer you made the bookshelves with,which I was considering making myself,only with Fostex fe126en drivers.

thx for the tests and making this video ...as i see it the only way around this issue is to use kerf bending on the sides of the front baffle. seems to me this will solve the problem .and then placing the tweeiter not in the middle of the baffle .the only thing is...the baffle even with glue and filling metirial will still be not so rigid.whats your opinion on the subject? thx man.

hi thanks a lot for the very valuable video have you ever tried felt pieces around the drivers? felts would prevent sound from reaching the speakers edges Some main manufacturers have used them i guess with success

What about wool felt? Does that diffuse edge diffraction?

Your infinite baffle is.... Infinite!

even if you did a small mistake in offseting the tweeter he was steel not in the middle .. we saw no differnce so im wondering does it even do the job?thx

big baffle is the correct response.

I love your channel. Now to my comment. I try to smoothen the edges of the baffle but also the inside edges behind the driver can be soften or chamfered. Atleast with woofers I think inside treatment should be compulsory. Another thing I have done on recent projects is that the baffle is covered with cork or felt to soften diffraction close to tweeters. Maybe baffle treatment or absorption can be covered in some upcoming video. Thank you.

I realize this is 5yrs later... but couldn't you take a 4x8 sheet of plywood and cut out a 6"x6" square and then for each driver (tweeter), just make 6"x6" squares that you can insert into the baffle? (I'd say you'd need to make sure that the surface was relatively smooth around the edge for a tight fit? ) Not sure how this would look on your graphs, but would assume that you wouldn't be able to see it.

Diffractions biggest effect is on imaging, according to most speaker designers.

How it would have been with a kind of combo of two drivers without baffle, which would have interested me the most, like as you would not only put the tweeter at the top of the mid/bass driver + enclosure but also put the mid/bass driver in a like cylindrically shaped housing, so both of the driver (tweeter + mid/bass driver) would work in a kind of "without baffle system", and actually the edges of the lower enclosure wouldn't be bothering for the tweeters anymore, because they don't exist this way anymore, what do you think about that idea?

Great video that illustrates diffraction effects really well! Thanks for taking the time to make and measure the different baffles, and to make the video! Just a nitpick about terminology, and a few suggestions. ;-) Infinite baffles really are infinite - there's no way for sound to get from one side to the other. Indoors, mounting the speaker flush in a flat wall or ceiling gives you quite a good infinite baffle. But, driver manufacturers use an "IEC baffle" rather than an infinite baffle. (It's specified in IEC 60268-5, section 11. 268 also specifies test methods and conditions.) The IEC baffle is annoying because it's just a bit wider than a single sheet of ply (of the most common size). The IEC baffle specifies position offsetting, similarly to what you intended to do with your offset baffle, and for the same reason, mitigating diffraction reinforcement. (At its size, more so for mid-woofers than tweeters.) Of course neither the IEC baffle nor your infinite baffle are a realistic size for speaker boxes. For one-shot tests/mock-ups, drywall is cheaper than plywood or MDF and will work fine at low power levels for tweeters - or even for woofers if you brace it. Mount the speaker in a piece of MDF and then flush-mount that in the drywall sheet. :-) For off-axis measurement it's better to move the mic rather than the speaker, otherwise the changing distances between the speaker and nearby surfaces (the bench, the window) will affect the measurement, because of reflected-sound induced resonances in the structure of the tweeter. Moving the "listener" also matches real life better. :-) Room "liveness"/"brightness" is important when evaluating tweeters. If you want to know about the tweeter itself, a "dead" room is useful. If you want to know about the tweeter in your living room, test there. I'm glad the RU-vid algorithm suggested your channel to me. Subscribed!

Bewhare guys, some speaker grills frame in the baffle with up to an inch

Thanks. Really educational. What about surface treatment (e.g., felt, etc) around tweeters. I sometimes see this in speakers. Why?

Any idea how to reduce the 3K "bundling" I always run into? See 11:50'ish mark with chamfered baffle. Andrew Jones answer was very large baffle or cross with a mid 3K+ (I have not tried either).

How about trying this with thick felt on the front baffle similar to Dunlvay, and see if it corrects it altogether.

I would love to see two other profiles tested - rounded corners and a bowed speaker front! Bonus round: what happens when you stick a grille on the front of it...

Can you do a compression driver with a 90x60 short and long wave guide. Thanks for the info

Good video and informative. I do wonder how you pronounce the word ‘different’ given your pronunciation of ‘diffraction’ lol

Why don’t you glue some sound absorbing material on the baffle,so as to absorb those unwanted sounds?

If you have a 6.5 woofer how wide would you make your baffle. The reason I ask is I have a 1" thick by 7" wide piece of walnut I want to use for a baffle and I am trying to figure out what size woofers I should use

can you not use a double thick baffle with the first baffle having the speaker offset or flush mounted with a cosmetic baffle on top with the chamfer?

Why exactly don't you use a capacitor while measuring the tweeter? I always thought that the low frequencies can damage the driver. Or do you simply set the starting frequency of the sweep higher?

Many thanks for your great videos. I really enjoy watching them. Do you think you could do a video explaining your test and measurement equipment? Which particular hardware and software you use and why you prefer it? Perhaps a few tips and tricks you have learned to get good results too...?

Have you tried covering the baffel with materials that absorb sound? Could this possibly help store bought speakers that people may not want to take a saw or router to the front.

Excellent video. Use foam on the "infinite" baffle. Also, I'd really be interested in a video on Parts Express new RST28A and F. For the price it might be a giant killer

Excellent video! Can you recommend a reference text on this subject for further study?

Great, but... Rounded estés?

This dude in a blue polo looks like the quintessential dad... And he does woodworking! I am curious what a genelec style cabinet would do diffraction wise. Rounded should work even better than with the angular chamfer.

hey u guy. please help me how to get that application. i need test my speaker pls pls pls...

Nice vid., have been wondering about the felt you stick on the front of tweeter or the blocks on each side of the dome has a positive effect.

Hi is it useful to use ferrofluid on a high output subwoofer?

VituixCAD has a pretty good diffraction/baffle step calculator, not sure how close it is to measured data tho

Thanks for the video, always informative! I’m getting ready to actually do a semi-custom build using some parts from DIYSG. I was planning on also using this as an opportunity to work on my woodworking skills as well. I’ve read that a spherical speaker would be best since there wouldn’t be any edges, but that would be much too difficult for me. So, I was thinking of doing a build that would look almost like a Google Nest Doorbell. This would be using a concentric speaker, so the compression driver and woofer would be together. If I was continuing with the Google Nest Doorbell example, I’m planning on putting the speaker where the camera is located and potentially a port where the button is located. Based on the video, the issue would be that the center of the driver would be equidistant for the top half of it. But I was curious if rounding the edges enough or putting a 45 degree chamfer would negate this?

Late to the party, but what are your thoughts on foam? I found that it helps a lot with detraction and measures a lot better just adding some 1/2 inch foam to the face of the speaker around the tweeter - some manufacturers have been doing that for years and even MK do it. Have you compared it to rounding over which seems a much nicer way of doing it.

What’s the best router bit to get that nice smooth edge on speaker boxes

Hey i have a question, would putting foam on edges help catch the sound wave before it could diffract? It would be obtrusive but for the people with speaker covers it could be an option.

Man, this is my forth video back to back on this stuff. Fantastic info. Thanks. Any advice on how to get started with this hobby? Any books to refer to? Equipment I would need? Well first, I definitely have to practice my woodworking skills! But what I finer way than building my own speakers? Peace

How does this affect tweeters that have it's own "horn" even if it's a really small one like the Hi-Vi TN25 ?

Hey there! I've discovered your channel a while ago and I really like it! It's super informative and detailed. I do have one question though. When I watch a video of either you, or 123toid designing a passive crossover in Xsim for example, you seem to go for a super flat response. But why don't you take baffle step into account when designing a passive crossover? 123toid claims it to be super important in fullrange systems (and I agree) but it looks like it doesn't apply to 2-way systems as I don't see you guys taking it into account in your videos. I can't imagine baffle step not affecting a 2-way speaker because the physics behind baffle step remain the same right? Won't your sensitivity be much lower below, say 500Hz, if you are not taking baffle step into account when designing a crossover? Please enlighten me because it really confuses me.... Thanks again for sharing your knowledge and test results with us

mettez les tw sur le dessus si vous ne voulez pas d effet de diffraction (aurai audio ) my job

Great video, as you always incorporate measurements. I will be doing a chamfered baffle on my next build. Then a build after that I am pushing myself to use a sphere enclosure to continue the thought of no diffraction. I don’t imagine you would be doing a video and measuring the results from a sphere enclosure would you? 😜

What degree is the chamfer or does it not make a difference?

hi does ithave to do more with the tweeter.....cut in 2000hz ? or the midrange as well?i have a 3way speaker bc i can offset the tweeter but the mid??? its a problem thx man

Will covering the baffles with felt help with diffraction?

Thanks for the video! I'm curious, if I wanted to construct a baffle with a curved front could I still use baffle dimensions from plans that were intended for a square edge baffle? Or, at a certain point does shaping the front (as opposed to just rounding the edges) require an entirely new design approach? I suppose another way of phrasing this would be, at what point does edge treatment become baffle re-design?

Hi Luckily I just found your RU-vid Channel. I have just started to look into Open Baffle speakers and am very interested. In particular the use of a 15" full range Open Baffle Speaker set up. An recommendations for a 15" Full Range speaker i.e. Lii Audio Fast 15 (awesome speaker) and the dimensions for a Open Baffle or how to calculate the size/shape of one. There are at least two companies that are making Open Baffle speakers using this Driver, their baffle is not round but looks oval with the ends sawn flat off. Any recomendations for how to calculate the size/shape that would work well? Thanks for putting all of this great information out here online so us noobs can learn - THANK YOU!

So what's the best chamfer? 45°? Or something that rolls off more gradually? Is a rounded edge better again? Awesome video!

Can you please try to apply CORK on it?

Do the frames for speaker grills have an effect as well?

I see that the 1099 you designed originally was offered at diysg with rounded edges but now only comes with square edges. Were any adjustments done to compensate for the difference (if that's even possible)? I'd imagine with square edges it wouldn't measure as well due to the added diffraction?

Excellent, informative video! One question/comment: what's your thought on chamfers or roundovers when using waveguides? I think there's a distinction to draw, because a waveguide throws less energy onto the baffle. But there seem to be opposing viewpoints: Earl Geddes seems to want a speaker cabinet with a narrow throw waveguide to look like a bar of soap that's been left under a faucet for a few hours. Wayne Parham has written that he can't hear a difference, but I've never seen measurements. JBL uses small chamfers on the M2. Infinity had a speaker with a prominent ledge over its tweeter waveguide! Thoughts?

How about mid-range or bass units, are those affected by the diffraction? And what if we use a baffle muffs like the westlake audio suggests , the sound wave travel along the baffle plane but absorbed on the edge between the speak baffle and the baffle muffs around the speak. Thanks!

Thanks for the Great videos! Is there a specific angle you cut the baffle?

Thank you for this video. A question came up as I watched it and looked at the speaker in my living room playing your audio. They have a screen on them. The speaker covers are framed with about a quarter inch of plastic all the way around the box. What does this do to your test results? Would it help to put a strip of foam around the inside of the cover, like the old century JBL tweeters used to have. My concern is your best result can from a shampered edge but my speaker covers are sorta the opposite

Hi, very important issue the Diffraction. How closely your measurements follow simulations done by diffraction calculators, let say in SE, Vituix ? My biggest PITA are big wobbles around x-overs and 2-6kHz where hearing is very sensitive and small differences make big changes in sound. The chamfered baffle seems to cure that pesky dip - sexy flat, should sound good. What angles did you use. Also the tweeter is quite high on the baffle and might cut the diffraction effects more than one with the regular 104mm face plate. Of course BSC video is welcomed. I think, next time, I will devide the baffle, with tweeter having its own chamber, so I can try different locations for the tweeter, and to check real vs simulations freq resp.

Are these diffractions noticeable when listening to music?!?..honest question?!

Thank you for the information that you shared. How to get the distance which you mentioned that should kept from the centre of tweeter and sides of the baffle ? Is it speed of sound divided by crossover frequency or 20kHz ? Thanks in advance.

Out of interest, what are you using to measure the drivers with, software/hardwate combo? Would be really interested in some type of review of these components. Great video and so many thanks.