Slot absorber - straight slots or splayed?

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laptoppop
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Location: Southern California

Slot absorber - straight slots or splayed?

Post by laptoppop »

I really like the splayed slots used in the slot absorbers for Left Bank. Seems like they would give a real nice smooth wider band frequency coverage.

Do they work as well as they look? Except for trying to fix a particular problem frequency, is there any reason not to use splayed slots all the time?

Thanks,
-lee-
John Sayers
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Post by John Sayers »

Yup - they work - BUT they are very time consuming and labour intensive to make - each slat has to be individually cut and aligned. It took days/weeks to make them.

But they do look cool :):)

cheers
john
laptoppop
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Post by laptoppop »

I've been toying with a design that may be eaier to make, but still give splayed slots.

Imagine a design where every other board is angled. 1/2 the boards go straight across, 1/2 the boards have a slight angle -- allowing a "zero" to about a 1/2 inch opening across the length of the panel absorber.

On the bottom of the angled board, the slot would be smallest on the left. On the top of the angled board, the slot would be smallest on the right.

If you want to, you can get fancy, and cut the ends of the angled boards at the small angle required -- but I suspect that it would work just fine to cut them straight across, and then cover the ends with a piece of moulding to cover the minor variations in cuts.

Seems to me that this would make it easy to cut slots in big batches, but still give the frequency variation advantage of splayed slots. Does this sound right, or am I missing something?

Thanks,
-lee-
John Sayers
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Post by John Sayers »

I don't think you are missing something - it sounds fine.

cheers
john
laptoppop
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Location: Southern California

Post by laptoppop »

Great! I'm working on finalizing the design now - and I thought of another question:

Would it be better to have the splayed slot go from nothing to 1/2", or should I make it go from 1/4" to 1/2"?

I ask because your panel aborber plans talk about varying the slots from 1/4" to 1/2" -- but if I go from touching (zero) to 1/2", 1/4" would be about halfway the 2' wide panel. The formulas seem to say a smaller width slot will make them effective at lower frequencies, but if the slot is too small, I could imaging air constriction making the absorber less effective.

Thanks!
-lee-
John Sayers
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Post by John Sayers »

for ours we went from zero. I gave the guys a measurement that turned the slats one degree at a time.

cheers
john
laptoppop
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Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2003 4:29 am
Location: Southern California

Post by laptoppop »

Outstanding - that's what I was hoping for.

-lee-
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