L&R SEOS Tempest Build - Jeff Bagby Design - Page 2

Thanks guys. Java, your first build was a big help and I referred back to it often. Appreciate you answering my quesions.
Yep, I made a box 14.5 W x 26 H x 13.5 D. Then the outer baffle from Erich makes it 14.25 D.

I got to listen to the Tempest's in carp's room today with forum members carp and Archaea. The three of us have all heard quite a few speakers in that room in the last year and today we got to hear the Tempests, the eD Cinema 12's, and carp's JTR Noesis. I'll post impressions and thoughts and such a little later in the day and try to get those guys to post something up as well at some point.

So, as mentioned, we got to listen to the Tempest in carp's room today. A lot of my feelings echo his own. I thought they were more similar than different to the eD Cinema 12's, just better in basically every area. The highs smoother, less harsh on almost everything we listen to. I thought vocals (which I already thought the Tempest excelled at) were a step above as well. Midbass seemed better to me by quite a bit on the Tempest and full-range they measured and sounded pretty darn good in carp's room. One caveat to the above, we didn't experiment with toe-in at all as you only have limited time in these kinds of things (and at least carp and I wanted to be done in time to watch football). I think we had them toed in about 30 degrees or so and the imaging wasn't quite right, but pretty close. If that was their final resting place we'd have definitely played with it more, in my room I can slide almost the complete length of the couch and everything stays nice and centered, but it took some experimenting.

I think that I can pretty safely say I accomplished my goal in terms of performance vs. price. When you consider that the kit for these is currently 315 shipped and that a sheet of 4x8 will make two speakers (assuming you can do your own box-work), it's a HECK of a lot of value you're getting for around 700 bucks/pair (including paint and terminals and foam and such). I've also heard JTR T8's in the same room, and although audio memory is what it is and it'd be very interesting to be able to compare them side by side, I imagine it'd be awfully close between the two (my opinion).

The Noesis, however, is another story. That's about the fifth time I've heard them, in two different rooms, and they always sound just absolutely amazing. I knew without about 5 seconds of putting the first song on today that we were listening to an entire different beast. The CD in the Noesis is the smoothest-sounding high efficiency HF driver I've ever heard. In the recent Iowa blind test it didn't even seem like it gave up much to the RAAL ribbon in the Salk's..just incredible. Now, granted, the CD in the Noesis costs more than BOTH of my speakers including kit costs and all peripherals, so we're obviously talking about a *drastically* different financial level. My goal for the future will be finding out how to bridge that gap somehow between the DNA-360 and the 700+ dollar BMS CD in the Noesis.

Also I determined that carp's room is much better than mine, it seems like there's something that goes on everytime I go over there to remind me what an excellent space he has to listen to music/watch movies. We also didn't watch any movies today, but I will say that even with a phantom center (which I was nervous about, never having heard one I really liked before) that the Tempest's are just phenomenal for movies. Dialogue is amazingly clear and dynamics are fantastic. Very impressed with these guys all around, especially when price is taken into consideration. Great job again, Jeff and Erich.

The listed dimensions on that flat pack are the correct ones.

Don't worry tons about the crossover, unless you don't have access to a soldering iron, then things get a bit tricky.

For one, as Erich said, he's looking into a prebuilt option. But even barring that, the crossover is one of the easier part to get outside help with (hard to have a dude on the internet cur a hole for you). It doesn't take long to lay the components out how you think they should go, snap a picture, and then post it for people to look at. If it's one of the builds (like the Tempests) where Erich and the designer would prefer the crossover schematic not be posted there are people you could message privately to confirm your layout.

Just to be clear I didn't split mine, the one pic is the boards for both speakers. Splitting them is perfectly fine though, like you said, it definitely gives you more options. Tradeoffs either way but I don't really think there's any big negatives to either choice.

Something I've noticed since using the Tempests is that I'm hearing/noticing a lot more stuff going on in the surround speakers. Perhaps it's placebo of some kind, maybe I just happen to be watching stuff lately with more surround content than before, maybe it's because my mains are more clear, maybe my cheapo receiver was having trouble powering 5 channels of low efficiency vs now where it's 2 very high efficiency and then the 2 surrounds. I highly doubt it's the last one, in fact I have no idea what it might be, but it's pretty neat.