I'm looking at a lot of the design and just looking for some direction on where to go. I'm looking more and more pretty set that a seos design is what I want to do for my home theater system. But I'm looking at what designs you subjectively think offer the best SQ of the bunch. They all look like great designs and more similar than dissimilar. I suppose, having zero pro audio experience, one of my concerns is the midrange out of 10 and 12 inch pro audio woofers vs smaller well documented drivers like seas excel and the like. How would the comparison of these drivers be made to well established others? Reading around I as under the impression the AE TD12M, and it's siblings are really highly regarded and sometimes referred as midrange class kings,mbut they are horrendously expensive lol. Are the other pro audio drivers pretty close to those? I was trying to research it some but it seemed most people said your just not gunna find a AE driver equivelant. Of course a problem with those, and all other pro drivers is that I do not have a sub, cannot afford one anytime soon, and need to figure some design that has decent enough extension to play music full range well. I don't need my brains rattled out at 20hz, I just don't want to feel like I'm missing the music. Thought!?
Generally a speaking the less expensive pro drivers won't be quite as low distortion as Seas Excel level hifi woofers. Of course Seas Excel woofers cost as much as these kits so it doesn't seem that they would be in your budget anyway. What exactly is your budget? I would suggest trying to find a way to budget for a sub even if it is not a world beater. There are flat packs available and you can get pretty inexpensive amps and driver combos.
The best SEOS design I can think of if not using a sub is the designer 12 by Bill Waslo. I think someone needs to design a SEOS speaker using a bass king. Something from SB Acoustics I think.
Hmm a budget, the root of all evil. I started looking at overnight sensations... Then I thought hey a few more bucks and I could build something like swopes.. Then some prick drops the SEOS line on me and I'm like hey maybe a few more bucks and I could build a SEOS. Lol the cycle continues. Realistically I want to stay under 250 per speaker. If its seriously worth the investment I could be persuaded to drop 800 on a complete pair. I haven't seen the final figure for designer 12 but the woofer alone is only like 90 db efficient? T be honest part of the awesomeness of the seos designs is gettings those crazy 97-99 db designs. I'm going to power via a Sherwood r972 so it's really cool thinking of being able to get screaming off very little power. Part of my future thinking would be using something like the fusions 8"s for 5.1, and maybe the fusion mtm for center I hear Jeff b is submitting? My honest preferal would be to build something like a 10 or 12 inch TMM that had a bit more authority down low to call safe for music and safe HT intro. Then in the future build a dedicated hometheater earth rattling Sub. Purely looks wise I'd prefer a TMM in general. With the pro woofers being so large I think it would be a hard sell on WAF to have such a large sqaurish box 15 inches wide that's looks like a PA that can't even dig deep, vs a more traditional looking 3 foot tower. Sounds counter productive, but I'm sure it would be a much easier sell having a more proportional tower speaker if it has to be so wide! Perhaps another difficult aspect with pro woofers, but I'd like to use nicer looking drivers where possible, and the Ae drivers had that part down. I have a hobby in wood working and would be making some beautiful cabinets with fun exotic woods, real show stoppers, and I don't want to cover it up will grill cloth!
Is your $250/speaker including the entire box or just the drivers and crossover components. AE drivers start around $250 (or $200 on a group buy) so there is no way to do them with a SEOS-12 on even your $400/speaker budget. Personally, I would downsize the mains a bit if it means leaving some budget for a sub. I would also build a sub before a center and surrounds. Going without a sub, for music or HT is simply a false economy. Here are the reasons: 1. You can move a separate subwoofer to a location which gives you the best response. 2. There is virtually no way to get a 97db+ sensitive speaker to reach 20hz with your budgets. 3. Drivers that can play the midrange AND reach even 30hz ported tend to be more expensive and require bigger boxes. Even if the sub is a $120 driver in a ported enclosure tuned to around 20hz with a plate amp, it will outperform any main speaker in your budget range from 20-70hz. Given your $500-800 budget this is what I would do: 2 Fusion 8 kits for $250 plus $100 for two boxes 1 Dayton RS 15 Sub kit for $436 That puts you at about $800 and IMO gives you the most complete system. If you have the ability to cut your own wood you could build your own sub for less too. IMO this will outperform even a SEOS-12 TD12M setup that is lacking a sub. Unless you only listen to solo vocalists without a backing band you need a sub IMO. It doesn't matter how great things are above 100hz if you neglect the sub region. One other positive to the smaller mains approach is that when funds become available and your budget expands you could move them to surround duty and go bigger on the mains. If you stick to the same crossover designer with similar compression drivers, you can easily get a tonal match.
if you want deep bass with efficiency, the box doesn't have to be big. It has to be HUGE. For instance the Karma 15 can get you to 97dBSPL and go down to 35Hz. But the box has to be 13 cubic feet and ported. Your TMM scheme would need to be basically a TM on top of a sub, but the sub would need a separate amp because of lower sensitivity. And then you couldn't move the subs to the best location for sound (the best is approximately never where sound is best from the mains). A's the saying goes, with speakers, there is sensitivity, size, and bass extension- but you can only choose TWO!
I'm thinking of going either tempest or zephyr. Larger floor standing box. Working turnings and reasonable box sizes in winISD gets me either flat to 40hz or a slight gradual roll down to 30hz or so that may be close enough to flat with room gain. Considering high efficiency and 120 watts per speaker I likely have decent headroom for eq as well. Adapt to a large HT sub system down the road. What would you go with? The tempest gets a lot of praise but there's not really anything out about the zephyr. zephyr is technically a better lower distortion it and is what I was modeling in winISD. Tempest can get close but needs a box 2x th size which won't happen