Quote:
Originally Posted by
Erich H 
ChopShop, your ears might not like high volume as much as you think. I've always listened to speakers with smaller woofers and tweeters. Cranking them up to fairly high volumes actually sounds louder to me because I believe the speakers start to distort a bit and our brain might somehow translate that into being really loud.
But these waveguide/compression driver speakers are so clean that you don't realize just how loud you have them. It's good that they're so clean, but bad that you want to keep turning them up until your brain tells you it's too loud. By the time that speaker starts to distort to give you that false sound of loudness like smaller speakers, my guess is that your ears are going to be taking a heck of a beating.
Everyone that has commented on these SEOS speakers has said the same thing.......they find themselves turning up the volume higher and higher because of their clarity. Get them to a decent volume, and then try to talk to the person next to you. You'll quickly realize just how loud they are when you have to yell at them.
Just because they sound clear doesn't mean they won't make your ears bleed. I forget how many decibels MTG-90 said 2 of those speakers would hit, but it's more than your ears can handle for an decent time frame, even if they still sound crystal clear.
Once you get them all going, with subwoofers and surrounds, I doubt you'll have a problem startling someone during movies like you mentioned. Don't make me put a high decibel warning level on the site!
Hahahahaha...Warning, dumb users who crank these to over 115db will experience hear loss. All kidding aside, it is important that we don't damage our hearin gwith our hobby. I could tell as the night went on last night, that they were loud, my ears had a bit of a funny sensation and almost felt a bit pulgged...not good for the hearing I'm sure.
As you said Erich, once I get these in the room and calibrated with surrounds, subs, etc. I am sure they will be capable of scaring some folks
I am actually confident enough in that, that I may shelf the mega build I had slated with the help of some others until I place these in the room and get them properly set up. I'm sure I will still do that build, but I will be more patient about it knowing that I have these in the meantime. The only thing that I felt I wanted, and in fairness, it could be because of setup, was a "bigger" sound. I feel that the Sentinels offer a very realistic size to the sound of a given scene adn thats what we all should be after. I think that my desire is a bit silly because the Sentinels have the ability to render a scene just the way it was intended. My want for bigger sound is a want for something more than intended, I think. The reason I say the current setup could be limiting the Sentinels in this respect is that I had only two of them set up. I am sure than running a phantom center was limiting the size of the front stage.
In short, I think what you guys are offering by designing and making these kits available to us all is incredible. For $400 one can build a really nice speaker, that otherwise would cost multiples of that to replicate in the commercial world. I will also say this...I had a local high end shop that was trying to sell me the CT8.4 cinemas by B&W about a month ago. I know that audio memory isn't the best, but I can confidently say this...no part of me is thinking back to that experience and wishing I had bought those, and they were over $3k a peice, with discount.
