Cabinet Speaker door question

[Kelly C. Hanna]

I have to build four doors for the Oak ET CTR project and would like to know if anyone here has built cabinet doors with speaker cloth in them and how you did it?

The owners want a mission style door trim in the middle (several vertical strips of wood) to match their chairs. I am not sure how to join them to the stiles and rails and how to keep the speaker cloth intact at the same time.

[Brian Riley]

Hey Kelly...

I did a similar project as you are doing however the center of the door (where the raised panel would normaly go) was the speaker cloth....no vertical pieces. They way I did mine was I turned the slot, that would normally hold the raised panel, into a rabbet. I then made a frame that would drop into the rabbet from the backside and wrapped that with the speaker cloth. The frame with cloth fit into the the rabbet very snug and held in place with very small counter sunk clips. That way the inner frame could be removed to replace the cloth if needed.
In regards to the vertical pieces....would you be able to M&T them into the rails but still keep them flush with the rabbet surface on the backside?

Hope this makes sense and that I understood what you were asking.

Brian

[Kelly C. Hanna]

I never thought about the rabbet idea, thanks!! I'm not sure about the M&T, but I will give it some thought for sure...thanks again.

[Brian Riley]

Kelly...

Another thought - assuming you were to use the rabbet method, what about if you were to mill the verticals to fit snugly between the top and bottom rails. Then once you install the frame with the cloth from the back you could then place the vertical into position from the front, get them aligned and pin them to the cloth frame. That way the rear frame with cloth and the vertical pieces would be installed and removed at the same time. However you would have to make the "inner" frame a little wider than the rabbet so you would have something to pin the verticals to.

Just thinking.....

Brian

[Jamie Buxton]

I'm getting a little ahead of you, but about speaker cloth...
If you look for speaker cloth at electronics-oriented places (for instance Radio Shack), you'll find only three colors -- black, white, and tan. If your homeowners would like something else in their entertainment center, there's lots of cloth which can be used instead. Cloth stores have colors and textures and patterns which can make your furniture truly individual. Those options also may make the home decorator happier than black, white, or tan. I look for knit fabrics. They stretch a little, which helps them draw taut over a frame.

[Ken Garlock]

Hi Kelly. Many years ago we bought an entertainment center from a good quality furniture store. The lower cabinets have interchangeable inserts. You have the choice of raised panel oak or a speaker grill. The panels set in a rabbet and are held in place by plastic clips that you often see in curio cabinets holding the glass in place. Remember, this cabinet with grill setup is there only as a holder or hiding space for a real speaker cabinet, it is not a substitute.

Be careful regarding the material you use for the speaker grill. Cloth from the local yard goods store is a NO NO. You need to search for grill cloth that is made for covering speakers. Any high-end audio store should be able to help you.(On a scale of 1 to 10, Radio Shack is about a minus 8 audio store.) Using the wrong material will have a negative impact in the quality of the audio that makes it through the grill into the room.

As always, my opinions are worth what you paid. Second, after the speaker wire discussion, I refuse to get into another audio system debate.

[Jamie Buxton]

Ken ---
Just how is speaker cloth from an audio store different from cloth from a cloth store? There's an awful lot of snake oil in the audio business.

What the snake oil folks tout is "audio transparency". By that, they mean that sound comes through the cloth without frequency-dependent attenuation. This is done by making the cloth lightweight and thin. In engineering terms, the cloth is a layer whose thickness is short compared to audio wavelengths, and whose acoustic impedance is not very different from air. Consider their expensive speaker cloth. It is fairly thin, so that sound does come through it. It is made from lightweight threads -- polyester usually. Okay, you can go to a cloth store and buy lightweight fabric (usually called dress fabric to distinguish it from heavier upholstery fabric). It is light weight and thin. That is, it is acoustically the same stuff sold by audio stores -- but with lots more design options.

Jamie

[Steven Wilson]

What the snake oil folks tout is "audio transparency". By that, they mean that sound comes through the cloth without frequency-dependent attenuation. This is done by making the cloth lightweight and thin.

Well Jamie, it's not all snake oil. There is a fair amount of that on the consumer audio side, a lot less on the recording studio side. Any fabric , even speaker screen material, does change the response (or at least the dispersion) of the speaker cabinet to some degree. Better manufactures will allow for these changes in the design of the drivers, crossover, and cabinet and will even publish the response curves with and without speaker grills on. Then it just becomes a mater of finding a covering with similar properties to the original . Of course you need a bit of test equipment to measure all this. Besides, the original poster is going to stick his speaker cabinets into another cabinet which will really goof up low end response (speaker cabinet to EC cabinet coupling) so it doesn't really mater what material gets slaped in front of the speakers .

[Ken Garlock]

Hi Jamie, you make valid points. My take on it is that 1) I have never heard of anyone using yard-goods for speaker grills, and 2) for the cost difference(no I don't have numbers) on a one-time buy, go with the recommended stuff. 3) I have an old pair of Pioneer speakers with a removable grill. The base material is a fine netting with a little flocking on it. You can read all but the fine print of a newspaper through the grill. Does it make a difference, I can't say because I have no other material to compare it too.

Regarding the sound wavelength versus grill cloth pitch, when talking about RF energy, a metal surface with openings less that 1/10th wavelength is commonly regarded as a shield. However, RF is a transverse wave, and sound is a longitudinal wave formed by the compression and rarefaction of the media, air in most cases. The question then becomes does the grill cloth interfere with the movement of the longitudinal wave? BTSOM.

[Michael Perata]

Kelly

Many years ago I mounted some speaker boxes in my FR cabinets. I used Sheet Cane inplace of the speaker cloth.

I had a friend who fancied himself to be a audiophile and he was amazed at the sound quality I got from my speaker cabinet combination.

Here's a link to similar material http://www.andwovencane.com.au/mater....htm#sheetcane

Nice thing about the caning is it can be stained to match the cabinet material.

[Jamie Buxton]

My primary interest in using yard goods for speaker cloth is the much larger variety in design options. I like making furniture which is distinctive.

I also like pleasing customers. I've often been caught between the two halves of a couple, one of whom wants a big high-tech rig in the living room, and the other of which would like it to go away, or at least blend in with other furniture. More options in grill cloth sometimes eases that discussion.

And for those of you who don't believe that dress fabric is okay, try the obvious experiment. Play your favorite music. Close your eyes, and have somebody hold a piece of light fabric up in front of a speaker. Play fair, and make sure that you can't hear cues like the person's clothes rustling. I'll bet dollars to donuts that you can't tell when the fabric is in front of the speaker, and when it is not.

[Todd Burch]

Kelly, how about this...

Make your door with 3 components. The first would be the door frame. I would make it with a deep and wide rabbet (1/2" deep, assuming a 3/4" door, and say 1/2" to 3/4" wide).

Then, make a mission stile grid (top/bottom rails with a bunch of stiles) out of 1/4" oak, using 1/2 laps. Sand it both sides and glue this into your door frame. Leave it as this stage through the finishing stage. Make it oversized, then trim to fit.

Finally, make a third oak frame, 1/2" thick (1/4" is in rabbet and 1/4" is proud on the back of the door). This is a rabbetted frame as well, and the picture below describes its fashion. Allow gap where the speaker cloth gets stapled to the cloth-frame, so that the outer ledge/rabbet will sit flush with the back of the door. You can roundover the cloth frame, or just knock the corners off with, say, 150 grit sandpaper. I would install this with brads only in case the cloth ever needs to get replaced. The overlapping edge also will hide any gap that might occur with setting the grid into the door frame.

Just my thoughts. Todd

[scott spencer]

Besides the fact that grille cloth stretches well, it does offer much better acoustic transparency than most cloth. However, it's usually reflections from the inside edge of the frame that pose more threat to sound quality than many thin cloth materials. Be sure to put a large bevel on the inside of the frame. If the people are fussy about sound or have a sensitive system, they'll easily hear the difference....but most people could really care less.

[David Hayes]

Kelly,
I built similar doors a couple of years ago and milled a rabbet to hold the speaker cloth. The mission style vertical pieces were half-lapped onto the rails.
Dave

[Kelly C. Hanna]

Todd, You are the man! I was hoping you had done something like this before and would have an answer. Thanks a million to everyone who has answered and big thanks to Todd for the solution!