Elemental Designs Says There’s Life after MDF

MDF has been the most popular material for building speaker cabinets for several decades - and for good reason. It's effective, easy to work with, and most importantly, cheap. Cabinets made from stacked birch plywood, solid aluminum, carbon fiber composites, or Wilson's "X material" offer better performance than MDF, but at exponentially increased cost. Unfortunately, MDF has an environmentally unfriendly downside. The fibers that make up the boards are bonded together with formaldehyde resins, and tests have shown that MDF products emit formaldehyde fumes and other volatile organic compounds which can pose health and environmental risks.

Elemental Designs wants to lead the charge toward greener building materials, and has switched from MDF to a new material free of formaldehyde and other carcinogens they call Environmentally Friendly Substrate (EFS). Elemental Designs claims that EFS - produced from wood logs, wood chips, and sawmill waste, is actually a more dense material than MDF, which means less cabinet resonance and ultimately better sounding speakers and subwoofers that are better for the environment.