# Baffle step considerations...



## aceinc (Oct 24, 2006)

I am about to embark on my next speaker project, 4 floor standing full range (55hz-20khz) HT speakers. I will be using the same driver complement I used in my center channel, namely 4 each 5" drivers, 3" drivers and 5/8" tweeters.

My thought on how to build this is with 3 individual cabinets stacked on one another. Each cabinet offset (front to back) enough to time align the drivers, and just wide enough to house their respective drivers. My mental picture is the woofer enclosure would be about 6-1/4" wide by 26" high, the mid enclosure would be about 5" wide by about 16" high, and the tweeter section about 2-1/4" wide by 6" high.

As you can see by the graph I posted in the center channel post linked above, things look relatively smooth above about 400hz with absolutely no compensation. 

Should I increase the width of any of my baffles? 

I tried to use EDGE Baffle Designer but it showed fairly substantial boosts no matter how small I made the baffle.

I seem to have gotten lucky with the non-design of my center channel (my concept was to reduce midrange smear by packing the mids and tweeters as close together as I could, and placing the other drivers wherever looked good). But I am trying to be more precise in this design. One of my goals is to maintain the lowest xover parts count possible.

Paul


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## BoomieMCT (Dec 11, 2006)

aceinc said:


> I tried to use EDGE Baffle Designer but it showed fairly substantial boosts no matter how small I made the baffle.



The smaller the baffle the more you will have baffle step diffraction. Honestly, depending on the placement of your speakers, you'll have to deal with BSD no matter how wide you make your speakers. The extra width just moves down the frequency that BSD happens at. 

I found this article to be useful in trying to understand this.


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## planet10 (May 27, 2007)

BoomieMCT said:


> The smaller the baffle the more you will have baffle step diffraction.


More accurately... the narrower the baffle the higher in frequency the baffle step takes effect.

Here is the start of a more comprehensive set of bafflestep articles (includes a link to John's mentioned above)

http://www.t-linespeakers.org/tech/bafflestep/intro-bds.html

dave


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