Hey guys...we need a little rallying here... - Page 197

Ok. I wasn't sure if the SEOS had more than a 1" option. But the Faital is just an example. Would there be any advantage of being able to cross the horn over lower and use a different 15"?

The idea of using two smaller midrange drivers is in theory better, although it would take measurements to prove it is better. The idea is that there are far fewer 12-15" woofers that play well up to ~1000-1500hz where they will need to be clean and capable to mate properly to either a SEOS-12 or 15. Every choice in designing a speaker is a crossover. IMO it is generally the best option.

There are cases where you might find a lower distortion driver to cover a portion of this range. You would need to use 2 of them side by side and they would need a combined width of about 12-15". This will allow for a smooth directivity match which is important. Of course, two smaller midrange drivers won't handle the lower frequencies as well as most of these larger pro woofers. Speaker design is all about compromise.

Of course you could configure it as a 3-way with a SEOS-12/dual 6" mids/12" pro woofer. This might offer better overall performance. I say might because it would need to tested to be sure. It would at least double the cost of the speaker though. The audible differences would be small, very small.
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Here is the thing. There is always something better. There is always some crazy possibility. There are also many many compromises in any design.

You want to one-up that? Take a SEOS-15, put it between two arrays of 16 6" high-end SEAS woofers. Put 2 TD12X woofers on the top bottom. It would look like this:

(12-12)
(6666)
(6666)
(SEOS)
(6666)
(12-12)

Shade the top and bottom rows and the outer mids to control directivity as much as possible. This would be ridiculously low distortion, have huge headroom and have exceptional directivity control. Oh and it would cost an absurd amount, be difficult to design and it would be enormous.

I will say that the Daniel speaker is a great super low budget option. $18 worth of woofers and ~$100 for the CD and SEOS. It wouldn't be the ultimate in performance but still damn nice, an amazing value and fit in fairly small spaces or angled on walls as surrounds. IMO, it is probably the best design for surrounds because it will have the widest vertical directivity and the shallowest depth.

What are those designs? I am after a small (like under 20" high) design for 80% music and theater/gaming the rest of the time. I don't mind getting a subwoofer though.

Speaking of understanding the designs... I had a couple things re: the Web site. 1/ Unless the speakers are suddenly flat, it would be great to have depth a one of the dimensions listed on the Web site. It does matter :-) 2/ You could put pictures of models built by the community on each speaker page. You may want to review pictures before posting them but I think that it would be awesome, and would save you rom having to take pictures of anything but the kits/packs.

It would fit on the new SEOS-24. Pricing looks to be $200 though. That's for the fiberglass with gloss color of choice.

I needed to also make a correction on the poured cement resin models. The white matte finish is not sprayed on, they make the material that color. So it's the same color all the way through. The price for the poured models seem to be about 50% less than the fiberglass. Basically about $55 - $60 for the SEOS-10 through the SEOS-15.

Shipping the pallets by air was extremely expensive. So there will only be one more shipped by air to get it here sooner. After that, I think the rest will be done by sea, which would take an extra 2-3 weeks. But hopefully that would save $500 or so.

In the next couple days, I'm putting in an order that should fill up a pallet up pretty full. So if anyone wants a different sized SEOS, or any other horns, I'll need to know about it shortly.

It's very difficult to estimate the exact price on the smaller horns like the SEOS until after the first pallet gets shipped. Autotech and I work together to figure a price that covers shipping a pallet from Poland to the US and still break even. Due to cancelled orders, I've pretty much lost on each pallet but the very first one. That one worked out pretty good with about $100 left over to pay for packaging material. I think packaging material was over $100 back then, but I racked it all up as the price to get the SEOS done.

Basically, I'm just saying that $55 - $60 should cover it, but it really depends on what else is on the same pallet with the smaller models. The price could go down a little, maybe up a little. Because of all the current kits, I won't have the extra funds to front a $10k pallet order like I did in the past (until the kits start to move), so I would have to ask the person that orders to at least put up 50%. I've pretty much put all 'group buy funds' into the speaker kits and subwoofer flat packs. And of course CD's and the SEOS-12.

My last landscaping job of the season was finished up today. I'm not doing any more this year, even if asked. So from here on out, it's speaker and sub kits. The site should be back up around Monday with some of the main kits completed. There are still some that didn't quite get done in time, but they will be mentioned so you know what to expect in the near future.

The enclosure dimensions are listed on the site. But each kit page and photos will be redone over the next week, most this weekend if I can get all the orders packed up that weren't supposed to order in the past few weeks.

Getting everything listed with photos, details, and instructions on the website is a time consuming process. The designers will hopefully write something up for their speakers as well.

I stink at writing up product info so that it sounds "good". Are there people that specialize in product descriptions???

you left the order button active :P

I'm not worried about it, I just know some people probably wonder why it was taking so long.

Erich, I'll take the blue...

Just tell us if they Kick Butt!

Eric,
Have you decided on which driver you were going to have Dennis design with? TD12M???
If it makes anyone feel any better, my group buy order has been fulfilled. I have been following (lurking) the thread for a while and sincerely thank you for your contributions.

Well, I am sure you going to get the response that Bill Waslo has a design for the TD12M.

With all due respect to Mr. Waslo. Whom I am sure is an excellent designer, and a highly regarded contributor to the DIY community and the SEOS project.

HOWEVER, thus far Mr. Waslo had only come up with a XO for the TD12M.

I, personally, would love to have seen Mr. Waslo built the speaker, listened, measured, and tweaked it.

I, myself, have a pair of TD12M and still hoping to see other alternative designs. At this point, I feel way more confidence in building one of Mr. Waslo other designs such as the 'Designer' series or the' Emminence Pro' series, since he had invested quite a bit of times in those designs - built, listened, measured, tweaked, etc. to make them better.

There's a reason why there's a bunch of TD12M owners, but only 2 builders so far and people are still asking for alternate designs for the TD12M

IMHO.

I changed my group buy woofers to TD-12Ms and will be designing a crossover for them as well.

Can't wait to see more TD12M builds, looking forward to it Face2. Speaking of, would you mind talking about your SEOS-12/TD10M build? I'd be interrested in hearing more details about it, cd, crossover point, etc. I'm considering using the SEOS-AT1 as its xo point is close to the SEOS-12, but not as physically wide.

Am I the ONLY one interested in the td12x build?

I've only listened to it in mono so far in a new center channel. My initial impression is that it's much more coherent than the other two centers I have on hand(Tannoy and DIY). The matching towers should be done in a week or so, once I listen to them in 2 channel and tweak(if needed), I'll post a schematic, etc... The CD I'm using is a DNA-360.

Excellent, looking forward to it. I purchased my TD10M's from a fellow avs member who was on the GB, so I'm excited to try them out.

I have a pair of TD12M Apollos looking to be put into action. I am waiting on the SEOS12s. So I am intrigued by that one too.

Interesting point, hmm.

Bill, after designing many XO's where what you've done with the TD12M is presumably the first step, could you hazard a guess as to whether there would be substantive tweaks had you measured them?

Bill and Erich still have my TD12M, but I don't believe they have a phase plug. They're welcome to keep it as long as needed, but if they're to do any more testing they'll need a phase plug. I hope John sees this and possibly sends them one, if they would like to play with the woofer longer.

Erich,

Sorry; I will admit that I was also one of those that ordered when I shouldn't have. I was unsure if the waiting time had expired, and when the website allowed me to - I just assumed the "time-out" period was over .
Please PM me and let me know if there are enough 360s to go around; allowing me to pay additional $$'s to upgrade from the 3 - 350s I ordered?

Thanks Again for all you are doing here!! I will be sure to be one of the first in-line to be ordering some of the SEOS12/ delta-light flat-packs

Mr. Pgwalsh, I picked up the woofer from Bwaslo a couple weeks ago to get the proper enclosure made and make sure the fit was perfect. That will be completed this week.


Cuzed2, I have some here, but more on the way. The price on the new ones will be higher because they are being shipped on a pallet. The first ones came in a shipping container with all the other 'stuff', so I didn't have to add in much for getting the parts here because of all the other items in the container.

I can't recall what speaker you were going to build, but I thought it was the Malcolm. The 350 will work fine with that speaker (or any of the speakers for that matter). The difference between the 350 and 360 isn't really noticeable at all. The cheaper 350's aren't quite as consistent with some dropping off on the lower end quicker than the other. That's why I mentioned the 1200hz crossover point instead of 950 or 1000hz on the 360. But that doesn't matter much if you aren't crossing that low. And I still don't think it would be a big difference anyway. Plus I check every single compression driver myself and make sure the frequency response is correct.

No doubt this has been interesting seeing which models are ordered quicker. The ordering ratio between those 2 models is literally 40 to 1, with most people wanting the more expensive model.

I also had someone send me an email last week asking why the prices are so low and are they as good as other more expensive speakers. And wanted to know how they could "upgrade". I don't think people realize the price is so low because that's how it's purposely set up, certainly not because Eminence, B&C, or JBL are sending us a different type of woofer for 80% less. To appease some, I should have an option for each kit..... "$150 upgrade: Erich H will personally make sure this speaker is more expensive than the one you were just about to order."

You'd be surprised at how many times I've had to explain the lower prices. Maybe I should mark them all up $150, but then give a $150 Paypal refund after the person leaves a review on the site!

I've done a number of designs now with SEOS 12, so I pretty much know what to expect sound-wise from a given response shape in the upper frequencies. My crossovers don't do a lot to the woofer below crossover because BSC is kind of a crapshoot unless the placement near other surfaces is pretty well known. And the low bass depends on box and tuning. So I'm pretty confident in the sound of the TD12 designs being good within the large range of likely placements. I generally tune for flat up to around 2kHz and then sloping down maybe 4dB by around 15k, a little more slope if the sneakers bass won't go below 60Hz. That seems to work best for SEOS 12, but that might be a matter of taste - there's usually an Lpad or resistor that can be tweaked if the user finds it too hot or soft sounding.

But I'm no golden ear I'm more into doing it mostly as an engineering task than like an artiste'.

Bill, I think zilch would approve of the way you do things...

Well no rush to get it back. I don't have phase plugs and I'll be waiting for you boxes. Keep it as long as you need it.

Unfortunately, the issue with combining a point-source (horn) with a line array is that it falls off at 3db vs 6db for the array. So you can eq them for one listening distance and that's about it.

My post described 2 rows of 4 6" drivers above and below the horn, not a 96" long array of 6" drivers. I'm talking about an "array" that will be about 24" wide by 12" tall. The outer woofers would also be "shaded" to attenuate their HF early than the middle woofers and effectively shape the wavefront and control directivity. That hardly qualifies for a line array and won't exhibit any line array characteristics unless you are talking about the passband of maybe 3000hz-5000hz and for distances from 6-12" away.

You are talking about textbook theory that doesn't apply to a small array like this and frankly doesn't even hold with real world line arrays. This is because it only holds for theoretically perfect point sources and perfect infinite length line sources. Neither of these exist in reality. It also doesn't account for interferences between drivers and phase issues which altogether makes this theory moot in most real applications (there are ways to lessen the inverse square law's effect, but not with simple finite arrays). I'm not going to waste my time laying out a dissertation on the subject. Google is your friend.

Erich,
My first project is a version of the Malcolm, A "Big Mal" using 4 NS-6 drivers, sealed. Big Thanks to BWaslo, RDrewMc, and others!
I believe for this one; Bill's crossover point is around 1600 Hz so yes; the 350 driver will definitely be fine here. I have my box almost finished and once I have the SEOS 12 waveguide will get going on the baffle. My goal is to be producing results during or after the Holiday break.

My next project will be a sealed SEOS12s with the delta-light 2512s for my L/R. I have been studying the builds from Java, Craig484, and Zhillsguy (Thanks Guys!)
I am not sure of the crossover frequency for this one. However; I see that Zhillsguy is very happy using the the DNA350s.
Short story - I believe you have talked me into sticking with my original order for the 350 drivers.

As for a followup review and sharing results: Although I am a newbie with REW, I will be sharing to the best of my ability

In most designs I don't think you'll find a difference using the 360 over the 350. A good place to save some $$ for other builds.

You know, a nice way to raise some additional revenue and likely mollify some of those people, offer a wildly overpriced "audiophile upgrade," with "specially treated" wires and crossover parts. Assuming you have the room to stick a crossover and few strips of wire in your freezer over night, you wouldn't be lying. If someone asks, you can answer honestly that the measured performance is the same, and you don't think there's a difference. But if someone just wants to pay more, let 'em.

Love the special treated wires. Don't forget the ceramic wire elevators!