Speaker Grills

[Buckle-meister]

Dear all,

I remember asking a salesman (dont think too badly of me!) years ago whether or not the cloth on the front of the speaker cabinets had any effect on the sound. I was told that it definitely did not.

My latest upgrade in speakers revealed that the grills are no longer just cloth over a frame, but rather, cloth over a far more rigid perforated plate.

My questions are:

1. Given that I have since read that the majority of speakers sound better with their grills off, was the salesmans statement untrue?

2. Even with the grils on my speakers (Mission Elegante's), the sound is simply stunning, yet why is this so? ie, why doesn't the sound sound much worse? After all, isnt the perforated grill acting analogously to a cheese grater?

 

[Tom Andry]

Not referring to your particular brand of speakers, let’s look at this logically.

You are a speaker manufacturer.

You've invested (hopefully) hundreds/thousands of man hours developing, testing, refining, re-testing, tweaking, re-testing etc. your speakers so that they are as good as you can make them at a particular price point.

You've carefully picked out/designed the best drivers, cabinet shape, crossovers, materials, etc.

Now, you need to put grills on the front…………..let’s just slap any old thing on there.

Hmmm……Doesn’t make much sense does it? I don’t see how speaker grills can be anything but:

1) Acoustically transparent
2) Acoustically beneficial

To suggest that a speaker manufacturer would add anything to their speakers that would HARM the sound flies in the face of reason. Especially something as basic as grills.

Now…….reason is not always the order of the day so it may be that some speaker manufacturers do in fact slap any old grill on their speakers but I believe that this would be the exception. Not having any experience with your brand of speakers (though they look cool) I can’t speak to the sonic quality of the grills but I can say, with all certainty, that on my Axioms, the grills make no difference.

 

[Buckle-meister]

Hmm, I see what you mean. It does sound unlikely doesn't it?

Still, I am curious about the cheese-grated-sound association (Ive a rather inquisitive mind).

Regards

Robbie

 

[claudermilk]

The structure of the grille depends on the speaker. My Paradigms definitely don't have a cheese-grater backing; their support is a fairly open plastic grid with a big open space right in front of the tweeter. And they have absolutely no impact on the sound.

Now to muddy things, I have a Yamaha TS10 at work & those speaker grilles are basically a completely open frame with cloth stretched across it, yet the speakers sound noticeably crisper with them off.

 

[Cygnus]

Sometimes it does make a difference, sometimes not. That grille is mainly there just to keep dust and other objects away from the drivers.

 

[saurabh]

and might add some refinement to the output sound also

 

[Rob Babcock]

I think grills are necessary because without them the WAF would be low and they couldn't sell any speakers. But consider this- how could listening thru cloth possible improve the sound? Put some cloth over your ears and see if it sounds better! Worse than the cloth, the frames can add difraction. A few companies claim their speakers are "voiced" to sound best with the grills on, but I'm damned skeptical. The difference should be minimal, unless the grill design is really egregious, but I'd expect the sound to be best with them off.

BTW, I generally leave mine on anyway. My HT is very dark but my speakers use very light metal drivers and are simply too distracting by the light of the FPTV. Sounds fine to me, though.