Thanks Serge,was a guy advertising recently but cant remember where, he has a CNC joinery business and can make baltic birch ply cabs to AN plans with zebrano veneer for £350! looks like a bargain to me. He might have advertised on fleabay too, must get a look
Whilst there are some who don't believe the cabinet construction is important, IMHO it is a crucial aspect of the sound of a speaker. The radiating area of the cabinet is -much- bigger than the radiating areas of the drivers. The cabinet adds to the driver output. It is driven by vibration from the drive units and pressure fluctuations inside. It is all but impossible to measure how much of the sound being radiated by the speaker comes from the drive units and how much from the cabinets. Some think it either unimportant or even desirable to have some cabinet radiation, there is even a speaker using a "soundboard" like a piano. Whilst this may sound lovely I find it difficult to believe it is terribly accurate on, say, a flute.
It is possible nowadays to fairly easily calculate using finite element methods the various outputs from cabinet and drive units.
All the best sounding speakers of my recent experience have been designed to minimise cabinet radiation. My Goldmund Epilogs, Magicos, KEF LS50s and Q Acoustics concept 20s are all like this and IMHO punch above their weight.
I have heard some prototypes where a very sophisticated cabinet was compared with a basic cabinet of the same volume using well engineered but modestly priced OEM drivers and good quality hifi drivers 50x more expensive. IMO and that of all the other listeners the modest drivers in the inert cabinet sounded better than the fancy drivers in basic cabinet.
What I have spent a long time recommending is to be careful dicking with cabinets. Reveneering with veneer of the same thickness and same glue as originals will -probably- be OK, new cabinets with no control over the materials and construction could result in a very different sounding speaker.
