Which material sounds better for speakers construction? Wood, Ply or MDF?

@georgehifi   your post about the surfboard hits the nail on the head. It's easy to think that stiffer/stronger/more solid must be better, yet all the strength in the world is no good if the cabinet becomes a soundboard at a critical frequency, especially in the midrange.

It's possible for loudspeaker cabinet materials to become almost transparent to the sounds coming from within the cabinet at certain frequencies again.

I think experiments have demonstrated that MDF untreated is more likely to act in this fashion.

And then there's the issue of a cabinet being too rigid and causing back pressure through the driver materials themselves.

Hugely complicated business is cabinet construction. Open Baffle gets around most of them but has its own issues.

What I do is I sits my arse down and listens....if it I get a “Holy Crap” feeling, this sounds so freaking real and alive like live music, I’m satisfied.  Deadening anything too much sucks the life out of the music.  You can hypothesize all day long, but results are what matters.  I’ve owned the over damped, $20k plus speakers and found them soulless!

A resonant box adds distortion that is not coming from the real recording.  People like all sorts of colorations but don't imagine it's more realistic.

The worst were the Wilson’s.  Magico’s were overly deadened to my ears.  Anyway, just saying I hear a dramatically improved sound with a well done wood speaker.  Harbeth uses this approach as well I believe.

The founders of Harbeth and Spendor did a lot of pioneering research into cabinet materials. Both companies now use cabinets made of MDF - and both are widely regarded as producing some of the most lifelike mids in the biz. 

The problem with solid woods and ply woods is their inconsistency, their susceptibility to warping and greater difficulty in machining. Even voidless birch ply will have slight variations between batches that can make it difficult to create a consistent sound. Musical instruments suffer this same problem. I've played brand new guitars of the same make, model that sounded very different from each other, even after professional setup. 

 

Daveb, sorry, I really misread your post, but those who know me, know that happens at times.  It's the MS to be honest, so sorry if my post came off wrong.  I agree, if you get a good feeling, that's what it's all about.  I could easily live with Harbeth as they are just musical.  Not the last word for detail or extension, but very nice speakers for anything.

I agree on natural wood and ply.  It really is a big deal too.  Especially when the cabinets aren't close to identical.  Worse than not matching your caps and resistors in the crossover. lol