Good morning to all on the forum. As you might see on the side bar this is my first post here on DIYSG. Perhaps I have posted this question in the wrong category and in that case I am sorry (admin is more that welcome to move the post to the correct location) My question is to all the people who build (and now enjoys) speakers using SEOS horns. I have seen the comments and reviews on the site and many of them talks about how loud the speakers are able to play but what about moderate volume? At the moment I live in an apartment and am not able to play at high volume. So I would love to hear some statements about the sound quality at more moderate volume. I use my current system 90% of the time for film (movies, TV series) and 10% music. I hope that you will use a few minutes for some feedback Thanks in advance
I havn't build seos speakers [yet ..] my current system is 15"+1.5 or 2" driver in 2380 horn in 14'x16' room. IMO sound is practically equally good at any using volumes. (from less than 70 to more [don't know how more] 100 dB peak at listening point).
Search SEOS on youtube and there are some excellent demonstrations of the sound quality/imaging of the seos speakers. If it sounds that good on youtube through desktop computer speakers; imagine what it's like in person.
The Fusion 10 is INCREDIBLE for low volume playing because it is crystal clear, especially for male and female voice. You don't have to turn it up loud to hear dialog because of the clarity. My wife and I do 90% of our listening on HDTV. A pleasant conversational level of volume would be about 20 on our TV, with the AVR set to 70. My wife runs the TV at 2 to 4 because it is so easy to hear, and she finds that level of LOW sound very relaxing. At moderate volume the sound becomes very full, especially when run with the sub (recommended). With the sub, you don't hear the sub itself, but the Fusion 10 woofers clearly have more sound reinforcement, and that is where the fullness of the sound directly comes from. At loud volume the sound is still very pleasant, with no compression. It becomes very lifelike just like live! music, but loud would not be all that pleasant for TV watching. Click on the picture below. I have the Fusion 10 Pure for mains, and use a MTM center channel which has 2 7" woofers and a dome tweeter, with a 5.1 setup. The SEOS speakers are the stars of the show. The TV is 47" for comparison. Due to the weird setup of our living room, the listener is actually OUTSIDE the speakers on both sides, no one sits in the middle. The sound is still crystal clear at very low volume.
I have the Fusion-8's and live in an apartment. I'm just running a 2.1 system right now, and the room they're in is 30ft x 25ft with 12ft cathedral ceilings with openings to the kitchen/dining area and the hall to the bedrooms. I have my system calibrated to 75db and generally watch at around -30 to -35 during the day and around -40 late at night. At daytime volumes I can't hear them outside my front door (opens to same room), and my friends find them to be plenty loud. At night time levels when I'm trying to keep it quiet for others inside, the dialog still stays crystal clear and in a silent room even those low volumes sound pretty big when an action scene hits. It's definitely fun to run them loud for a movie with your friends from time to time, and even then I max out at about -20, but their lower volume performance for casual television watching is what really makes them great to me. It's nice knowing I can rock my face off if I want to, but most of the time that's just not practical, and I don't feel I'm sacrificing anything even at typical household volumes.
Hi everyone First I want to thank you for all your responses – I take them all in account going forward. I am living in France and that makes it quite difficult for me (read: expensive!!) to import stuff from DIYSG but I am willing to take a chance. I have looked into the Cinema 1-88 Special for my fronts but I have found out that they are too big for my current room – and probably will be for the next room as well. My dream would be for Jeff Bagby to design a down scaled version of the 88 special. I am thinking the same form factor but using two 4-5 inch drivers and an 8-10 inch EOS horn. In that way the speaker can be quite a bit smaller (= easier to integrate in a living room environment) and I would still get the advantage of a relatively large horn. I Eric or Jeff read this could you give me your thoughts? Kind regards