Topic: Speaker Baffles

[Scooter123]

I'm an avid woodworker and am building a set of speakers for a friend.  We haven't figured out whether they should be full range drivers or two ways with a cross-over yet.  My question is about baffles.  There seems to be two schools of thought on this with one side opting for internal wooden baffles, usually made out of 1/2" mdf and another school of thought opting for plastic and foam baffles which cover the rear of the driver/speaker to cancel out phasing. 

I will honestly admit my ignorance on this subject and wondering what the folks here who are smarter than me on the subject have to say about baffles and their design in the case of a single driver or dual driver speaker. 

[Chilly Brioschi]

There's also sealed box enclosure, no baffles
Less efficient, especially if box is small
https://eminence.com/blogs/blog/sealed-vs-ported-enclosures

Dynakit split the difference and used acoustic insulation to dampen their ports, allowing for bigger opening(resonance) and restricted air passage
 
Good luck !

[Chilly Brioschi]

Did you get cabs together?

[Gutbucket]

Coming late to the party to give Clem a ride home..

The internal baffles in a loudspeaker can server a couple purposes.  The most common is stiffening the box to attenuate major panel resonances and force the remaining resonances to higher frequencies, preferably outside of the most sensitive hearing range.  The BBC school of speaker design goes the opposite way, using relatively thin cabinet walls not extensively braced but instead heavily damped with bitumen or something similar, driving resonances lower instead of higher. In either case, the front face baffle to which the drivers are fastened is preferably thick and solid.

Another purpose can be to create separate internal spaces for different drivers in a multi-driver speaker, isolating them so that the back pressure from one driver doesn't intermodulate the movement of another.  That's not necessary if one of the two drivers features a sealed back chamber, which is common with tweeters and sometimes midranges.  And is obviously not necessary with a single driver speaker.