Q: Why M&D® use Compound Marble enclosure rather than wooden enclosure?

A:  This is probably the most commonly asked question. “Wooden instrument sounds better”, is a long-term misunderstanding originated since 17^th Century which was the prosperous era of violin fabrication.

         First of all, a speaker enclosure has only one primary function, i.e. to try to completely isolate the front/back acoustics by the cone of a speaker driver, with no interferences, no additional unwanted vibrations/noises and no unnecessary resonance (bass reflex tube tuned on purpose is the only exception). The sophisticated structure and shape of the speaker enclosure, is mainly for cutting down the influences of internal acoustic pressure and wave-front diffraction distortion to the speaker drivers.

         Please keep in mind; a speaker enclosure is not a music instrument! Music instrument requires rich resonance to frequencies. A speaker enclosure has exactly opposite function to the instrument. People have been trying different possible materials for making drivers’ diaphragm such as paper, plastic, silk, metals, and ceramic. All these materials can sound beautiful and there is no reason to consider the wood is only good material to make speaker enclosure too.

          Widely used wooden enclosures (actually with MDF or particle board inside in most of the cases) have two major advantages: 1) It is easier to fabricate to any shape with good appearance and reasonable cost; 2) People decorating their living quarters with wooden furniture like to match the natural look.  In fact, any material with higher density, lower resonant characteristics such as ceramic, brick, and cement can be used for good enclosure material.  If you were to consider from better sound point-of-view, there are many other better materials than wood, since wood has lower density with a tendency to vibrate.

         Our SX woofer is such amazing driver, capable to “squeeze” 5 times stronger acoustical output over the conventional woofers.  However, the extraordinary internal pressure caused by SX woofer becomes a big problem to conventional wooden enclosure. After many trials, the best overall performance for structure sturdiness, fabrication, appearance finish, and most importantly, sound reproduction, is the employment of the much more expensive CAM solid surfacing material to building the enclosure for our sound systems. 

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