The Open Baffle

The open baffle speaker cabinet is the most basic design. It is simply a speaker mounted to a board, or baffle. This design was popular in the early 1900's when theaters began experimenting with amplified sound systems. These early systems usually consisted of a 12 or 15 inch woofer mounted to large piece of plywood, accompanied by a large horn tweeter.

Although not seen much today in the commercial speaker market, there is a large audiophile and Do-It-Yourself community that praise the open baffle speaker design as the purest, most accurate sound attainable with cone speakers. Open baffle speakers are inherently dipole (that is they project a front wave of sound into the room, and also a back wave from the rear of the speaker, which is out of phase with the front wave). In the right listening room, the dipole affect gives an added sense of spaciousness. There are many great resources online for open baffle speaker designs if you feel like experimenting.