31.5 HzThe cabinet makers
Three drivers, one voice.
We build loudspeakers by hand, in Adelaide.
In solid sheoak and other Australian hardwoods. Inside every cabinet a crossover shares the music between three drivers, and our whole job is to make you forget there are three. Press play and listen for the joins.
A short, calm piece written in code. It starts only when you press play, and Stop is always on screen.
63 HzThree voices
Why a speaker has three voices.
No single driver does everything well. So we use three, and teach them to share.
A big cone moves the air a bass line needs, but as the notes climb it turns slow, and its sound narrows to a beam. A small dome is quick and airy at the top, and would shake itself apart trying to play a double bass. The midrange sits between them and carries most of what you actually listen to: the voice of an instrument, the body of a piano, the grain of a cello.
The crossover hands out the parts. It’s a set of filters. The woofer gets everything below the first split, the midrange everything between the splits, and the tweeter everything above the second. At each split one driver fades out as the next fades in, at the same steep rate, so the two halves add back into one smooth whole. Get the splits wrong and you hear a join: a hollowness, a hardness, a voice that seems to come from two places at once.
We set the splits by measurement first, then move them by ear until the music sounds like one voice again. The console on this page plays a short piece we wrote in code, through the same three filters. Mute the tweeter and the brushes go dull. Solo the midrange and hear how much of the music lives there. Press play.
Headphones help: laptop speakers can’t play the woofer’s lowest notes.
125 HzThe Standmount
Model · Passive
The Standmount, in drooping sheoak.
Small enough for a stand at shelf height, with bass that knows its place.
For a study, a bedroom or a small lounge. Set it on a stand or a sturdy shelf, a little way from the wall, and it fills the room without crowding it. It’s a passive speaker: the crossover is a board of coils and capacitors inside the cabinet, and your own amplifier drives it.
The cabinet is solid drooping sheoak, a South Australian tree, quarter-cut so its silver rays run across the sides. It’s braced inside and rounded on every vertical edge. The baffle is cream, and the oatmeal grille cloth sits on a timber frame that holds on with magnets.
Tuned to hand over at 500 Hz and 3.2 kHz.
Woofer
The bass line, and the weight under the chords.
A small cone, so we hand over early, before the notes climb into voices.
Midrange
Voices, piano, the body of a guitar. Most of the music lives here, so this is the split we listen to longest.
Tweeter
Brushes, bells and the air around them.
250 HzThe Floorstander
Model · Passive
The Floorstander, in river red gum.
For a bigger room, with a woofer that can take the low notes all the way down.
A taller cabinet, for a living room with some space around it. The tweeter sits near your ears when you’re seated, and the woofer has its own braced chamber, so its pressure never reaches the midrange.
A bigger cone carries a bass line further before it turns slow, so the first split sits lower than in the Standmount, and the midrange takes over from there. The cabinets are river red gum: deep red-brown and heavy, with an interlocked grain that seems to shift as you walk past.
Tuned to hand over at 250 Hz and 2.5 kHz.
Woofer
More to do here: the bass line, the lowest notes of the piano, the floor under every chord.
Midrange
Takes over lower and carries more of each chord, so voices sound whole.
Tweeter
The same quick dome, set where your ears are when you sit.
500 HzThe Active
Model · Active
The Active, in Tasmanian blackwood.
Amplifiers inside, one for each driver. Plug in a source and play.
“Active” means the crossover does its work before the amplifiers, as electronics rather than coils, so the splits land where we set them and stay there. Three amplifiers are built in, one for each driver, and each one only ever sees the notes its driver should play.
On the back, three knurled brass knobs trim each driver to your room. We set them when we install the pair, and then you can leave them alone. The cabinet is Tasmanian blackwood: golden to chocolate brown, with a soft shimmer when the light moves across it.
Tuned to hand over at 350 Hz and 4.0 kHz.
Woofer
Its own amplifier, so it only ever sees the notes it should play.
Midrange
The widest middle of the three models, because active filters let us place both splits where we want them.
Tweeter
Handed over highest, so the dome plays only the brushes, the bells and the air.
1 kHzHear it
Now you drive the crossover.
This is the same kind of filter we build into every pair, running in your browser. Press play, then solo each driver to hear what it does on its own. Mute one and hear the gap it leaves. Move the splits and hear the music change hands.
- Brass fill
- the woofer
- Pale fill
- the midrange
- Outline
- the tweeter
- Teal
- what you’re hearing now, all three added together
- Brass rules
- where one driver hands over to the next
- The brown pointer on the dial
- where you are on this page
The piece, written out.
Three speakers, one ruler. Each line is one of our models, drawn on the same scale as the rest of this page. Pick one and the console retunes to it. Under them is every note of the piece, set at its pitch, with time running down. Each note is shaded by the driver that plays it, and a note near a brass line is shared between two. Drag the high split down to the bells and watch them change hands.
Notice where the Floorstander’s first line sits. A bigger woofer carries the bass line further before the notes climb out of its reach, so we hand over lower.
Now get it wrong on purpose.
Press Flip the midrange and its driver is wired back to front, a mistake that’s easy to make at the bench. Where the midrange overlaps its neighbours, it now cancels them instead of adding to them. Listen for the hollow at each hand-over, and watch the teal line fall into a notch at each split. Flip it back and the seam disappears.
Your room is the last driver.
Walls, floor and ceiling add bass of their own, more in a small room than a large one. And at one low note, set by the room’s length, the sound bouncing back cancels the sound arriving, so in the middle of the room that note goes quiet. The room switch gives the pair more or less room in the picture below, and the curve on the console shows roughly how the low end changes. It’s a lesson, not a measurement of your room; that’s why we ask about yours before we tune a pair.
2 kHzThe timber
Solid timber, braced to keep still.
Sheoak has a figure you don’t forget: fine silver rays across the grain, as if someone laid lace under the finish. We cut every panel so the rays land where the eye does, across the sides and around the rounded edges.
But a cabinet has one job, and it isn’t to be looked at. It’s to keep still. A panel that rings adds its own note to every note, and you hear the box, not the music. So the walls are thick and solid, braced inside, and joined so the whole cabinet moves as one heavy piece.
Knock on the side of one of ours and listen for a dull tock, not a boom. That’s the sound we want from the timber: as close to none as we can get.
Drooping sheoak
Pinkish brown with a silver ray fleck. Grows across South Australia.
River red gum
Deep red-brown, interlocked and heavy.
Tasmanian blackwood
Golden to chocolate brown, with a soft shimmer.
Jarrah
Dark red-brown, dense and still.
4 kHzHow we tune
By ear, then by measurement, then by ear again.
Out here there’s no room at all.
Every room adds something to a speaker. It lifts the bass, and it swallows one low note, depending on how far apart its walls are. That’s lovely when you’re listening and useless when you’re measuring, because you can’t tell the speaker from the room.
So we take each pair outside: the speaker on a tall stand, a microphone a few steps away, and a paddock in the hills behind Adelaide. What the microphone hears is the speaker and nothing else. Measurements tell us where a problem is; ears tell us whether it matters.
- We measure each driver on its own, outdoors, well away from walls.
- We set the splits where the drivers hand over most smoothly, and check the three add up to one flat line.
- We listen for days to music we know well, and move the splits by small amounts.
- We measure again, to check our ears told the truth.
Every pair is tuned in its own cabinets, so the settings in the console are where we start, not where we stop.
8 kHzOrder a pair
Order a pair.
We make the box. Your room finishes the job.
We build to order, one pair at a time. Tell us about your room and what you listen to, and we’ll write back with a model, a timber and a plan.
What happens next
- We read about your room and write back.
- We agree on the model and the timber.
- We build the cabinets and tune the pair.
- We set them up in your room.
16 kHzWords at their pitch
Words at their pitch.
- Room mode
- The low note a room swallows, set by how far apart its walls are.
- Woofer
- The big cone, for the bass line and the weight under everything.
- Crossover
- The filters that share the music out between the drivers.
- Midrange
- The middle driver, where most of the music lives.
- Fourth-order
- One driver fades out at the same steep rate as the next fades in.
- Tweeter
- The small dome, for brushes, bells and edges.
- Air
- The space around the notes. You notice it most when it’s gone.
The music on this page is written in code: a few oscillators and a little filtered noise, played through the same kind of filters we build into the cabinets. There are no recordings and no voices. It plays only when you press play, quietly, and stops on its own.
- Cabinets
- sheoak, river red gum, blackwood and jarrah
- Music
- written in code, played by your browser
- Crossover
- three ways, fourth order, drawn live
- Made in
- Adelaide, South Australia
Sheoak Acoustic Works
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