What is your favorite material for loudspeakers?

Magfan...I tried concrete once. Chimney blocks are a good size for a bookshelf speaker...all you need is front baffle and rear panel. Only problem is that concrete rings. Not dead at all.

Suggestion...try styrofoam, well braced and/or curved. It is dead.

Not to belabor the point, but I was looking at an photo from the CES show a couple of years ago and found a photo of Vanderstein 5's. This was a special pair that Richard built using carbon fiber. Apparently the sounded great but I am sure production was very expensive. I think the Marten speakers are made from carbon fiber as well. My guess is that working with that material takes alot of research and would be tough to do in a garage. So we have three major companies that use/have used carbon fiber successfully. My guess is when you design with carbon fiber you probably would need an entirely different crossover and drivers. Not as easy as one would think.

I miss spelled the name of the violin company. There website is http://luisandclark.com/ . I doubt they sound as good as a Strat but when a 5K violin can sound as good as a 100K violin that tells me something.

Soundsrealaudio, this is very encouraging. . . if you consider that it took about 500 years for fiddles to progress from early Moorish example to reach the greatness of the Cremonese masters. . . while contemporary luthiers have already achieved respectable results having experimented just for a few years with carbon fiber composits. G.

The BEST cabinet is AIR, +1! I did replace the side rails on my Maggies with solid walnut, finished with Tung Oil though.

Rodman

Tung Oil is good stuff. Hand rubbed to put a little love into those speakers. The music gods are smiling on you.

You are correct. The best cabinet would be no cabinet. That is clearly why planar speakers over the years have had an edge over box speakers. Of course there are problems with that as well. di-pole sound brings the back waves into the picture and encourages you to bring those speakers out from the rear wall more than you might prefer, then there is the issue of controlling the woofer. I think I was just reading a review of a speaker that does that with electronics. That makes my eyes glaze over...and my head to explode...

We will see where all this technology takes us.