BassThatHz, I am interested in knowing how you came to choose the horn tweeter and 15" mid range drivers for your DIY speakers. It seems you feel your DIY speakers are on par with your B&W 800 series speaker in the SQ department. How did you decide on your drivers? Thank for sharing your experience with me.
I didn't.
I went for cheapest, because I was building 7 speakers and going with the SEOS 15 vs 12 and the more expensive mids would have more-than doubled the build cost, and me entering this horn adventure 100% blindly in addition to my prior bad experiences with horns (bars, concerts, city theaters) I didn't want that extra cost risk if it didn't pan out well.
The SEOS if anything, is actually dull and lifeless sounding. My UMIK confirms this, and detects a 3-15db rolloff between 10khz and 18khz. This can be and must be fixed with EQ (IMO.)
I assume that's just the nature of horns.
The B&W on the other hand is rock flat to 25khz, the limit of my cal file; with no EQ.
The problem with B&W is that: they get loud but not super-basshead loud or action-movie loud, they aren't efficient (they need 400watts per side to sound good and get loud / be dynamic), and IMO because of the small bass cones and high-LPF they tend to have excessive THD in the 200-500hz band and excessive bloat both of which must be fixed with EQ.
I honestly think that a 450hz 6db/oct slope (or whatever it is) is too much bass for a FST mid to handle, which causes extra mids THD, I had to fix this with extra hardware.
Also the 803 mid-box is handy capped, I modded mine 3 years ago to sound more like an 802 does; and it was successful. I've never told a sole that, until today.
If you do all those things and fix all those things then the B&W's can sound much much better than someone who just plopped the stock speakers on the floor and hit play.
The reason why all my B&W YT-vids sound so good, is because of me doing all those things (like quad monoblocks and DCX's, and room treatments).
The stock version as-is doesn't sound nearly as good. People not knowing that, are probably wondering why theirs doesn't sound that way.
The other problem, which isn't really a fault of the B&W but of all Hi-Fi, is that non-directivity controlled tweeters are highly room dependent. Hence why I gave my B&W a wig and built a side-wall diffuser for them.
For movies you need a speaker that gets loud, really really loud. Which means not-using any Hi-Fi or BestBuy speakers.
If you don't, then the dynamics will suffer and the dialog clarity will suffer, and you could lose bass from the "small" HPF setting (making it an even worse movie experience).
If you have a big room and multiple rows, it just makes it that much worse.
The B&W's are sometimes more transparent and do some small subtle vocal inflections that the SEOS's just masks over.
But on average, and specially for movies, the SEOS's wins by miles.
The B&W's were holding their own, up until I went from 6 to 10 subs, via the 4 LMS + an additional 10kW of bass. At that point they felt out-matched at high SPL.
The SEOS's get loud enough to literally cook your ears off at a distance of 20ft.
and if your SEOS's don't get loud, then you need to give them MORE POWER (stop using a receiver!), I give mine a full FP10k all-to-themselves, which is over 5000watts into the L+R for just mids and highs!!! I don't even know how much louder the SEOS's get, I'm afraid to find out...
I have a feeling I might be pushing them to theirs limits though... on rare occasion. and that is plenty loud, beyond party-loud and approaching a mini rock-concert.
I have B&W 600 series HTM61 as my LCRs and they are great for music but lack luster on movies. I was looking at the Klipsch RP-160s as a possible upgrade for more volume and dynamics in my theater. Then I stumbled on your DIY thread and I have been very impressed. I have some pretty heavy hitting subs, but I am looking for more volume and frankly "life" from my mids and highs, but I do not want to compromise sound quality or detail. My ears are very sensitive to high frequencies so smooth tweeters and upper midrange is a must as well.
The B&W 600's have bloated bass and shrill highs. They are "OK" for their price range when I auditioned them, but with that said, if everything from the 804's on down were good, then I wouldn't have had to buy Nautilus 803's now would I! I don't like wasting my money, but I don't want bad SQ either.
A used pair of CDM 9NT's are much better sounding for music than the CM and 600's, B&W stopped making 9NT's them because they sounded TOO GOOD for their price range and was loosing sales on the CM series and 804's. They sounded too close to the 804's... Believe it.
Oh yes B&W (sales department) you can't get away with it I notice these things...
My ears are also hyper sensitive to distortion and bad SQ, I was able to pass this test; which isn't exactly the easiest thing to do.
10's of thousands of people have failed it. (Just try it.)
It's not just me being anal... I can ACTUALLY hear these distortions. (ok... maybe a little bit anal and OCD too. hehe
)
https://www.goldenears.philips.com/en/introduction.html
I honestly think that the SEOS's could benefit from the 50khz super tweeter from 7kHz on up that I mentioned, basically a co-axial tweeter (well, sort of...)
Have a BA-750 do from 350-7khz and a ST from 7-50khz, and have the mid do from 100 to 350hz, and then the UM's. Basically a 4-way system.
It could also be more damaging to the SQ than a benefit because of CF, I wouldn't know until I tried it. (It's on my future to-do list.)
Not sure if it is worth all that extra effort to gain the last 1% of transparency, but at only ~$150, I'd be willing to at least give it a try...
Could make for an interesting winter-project.