Frequently Asked Questions
With so much information available relating to audio equipment, making your choice can be hard! On this page, we have put together a small FAQ section to try and help in the decision making process. If you don't see the answer you were looking for here, please feel free to get in touch with us at: coppiceaudio@gmail.com
Which speakers?
This is a big question and really depends upon a variety of different factors. The two main factors are your personal sound profile preference and the room in which the system will be installed. The location of the audio system will probably have the biggest impact on how a system sounds. Coppice Audio offer a wide range of standard designs which fit most rooms but bespoke designs can be created, if needed.
It is important to know what sound you are looking for when deciding on speakers or a full audio set-up. There are
two main types of speaker enclosures; ported and sealed.
A port is an opening in the enclosure which tunes the speaker to a lower frequency and generally gives more bass. Ported enclosures are a good option if you like a lot of room filling bass, though they may not be as precise as a sealed enclosure. If you are looking for tight precise bass, then a sealed enclosure is usually a better option.
It is also possible to supplement sealed enclosures with sub woofers to enhance the sound.
How do I position my speakers?
This is not something we can necessarily prescribe and will normally involve some experimentation. Any room will impact the sound from your speakers. For example, if you have a lot of soft furnishings, they will absorb sound waves, softening the sound, often making them a lot easier to set-up. It is often a lot harder to set up a room which contains a lot of hard reflective surfaces. In rooms such as these, it becomes more difficult to achieve accurate sound reproduction and may require wall and floor treatments for an audiophile experience.
The traditional set-up for a pair of speakers has both speakers along the same wall facing the listener. The speakers are usually pulled away from the wall and inset from the corners with the listener in the middle. This forms a triangle between the speakers and the listener to create a good sound stage. With a good, well defined sound stage, you should be able to place instruments in the room without being able to hear where the speakers are. We would recommend using high quality recordings (we use ambient often as this style of music usually takes full advantage of the sound stage) to aid in placement decisions. We will be adding downloads of test tracks in the future to help you set-up your system.
Why are Coppice Audio speakers different from other manufacturers?
We specialise in high-quality woodworking. Our team are experienced carpenters and joiners and have worked with wood for years, from designing and creating furniture to restorations of listed buildings.
The vast majority of speakers are manufactured from MDF or plywood. At Coppice Audio we don't just see a speaker as a piece of audio equipment but also as a piece of furniture or artwork which are often in very prominent positions in a room. If given the choice would you buy MDF furniture?
Coppice Audio is a small team led company, specialising in handmade products and offering quality at an affordable price. You would have to pay several times more from the very few manufacturers that work with real wood.
What about the impact on sound from MDF or real wood?
Firstly, we do offer both a real wood range and a MDF/Plywood range. Our MDF/Plywood range can be tailored to your design specification, and sprayed to fit into the style of any room. We want every speaker we sell to look good and sound good.
However, there are arguments for MDF and plywood that claim they are more stable and work better acoustically. When real woods are properly used however, stability is not an issue. With regards to acoustic performance, testing is ongoing. We are working with a talented designer, who is acoustically testing enclosures made from different real woods as well as MDF and Plywoods to evaluate the pros and cons of each material acoustically. This research will help us to further engineer our products.
From our initial testing of Oak vs MDF we feel the real woods do have some advantages.
Coppice Audio uses a combination of CNC technology for accuracy alongside quality craftsmen to assemble and hand finish every product. With everything being handmade, it is very easy for us to customise your system to match your imagination and interior design choices. If you have special colour you would like, we can do this too.
Even though our focus is on using real high-quality woods, we are working on a more budget friendly range manufactured from MDF/Plywood which can be painted any colour you want.
Coppice Audio partnered with Hexibase in some preliminary research into the how different materials impact the sound of speakers. Coppice Audio created some basic speaker boxes from different woods, whilst Hexibase produced 3D printer speaker boxes. The video is shared below.