Sierra-2 Development Thread

[JustABrah]

As much as I'm looking forward to the Sierra-2 I'm still impressed with the Sierra-1 NrT nearly a year later, just love them, best deal in audio, should be 2-3x the price for their great built and sound.

[Dark Ranger]

^ Oh, I completely agree. A big part of my excitement over Sierra-2 is because Sierra-1/NrT is such an outstanding speaker. Easily my favorite bookshelf speaker I've heard so far, and so darn sweet-sounding. Music is really special on these and I just love listening to my albums on the Sierra-1.

I'm still rocking with the standard tweeter. Actually, I was going to upgrade to NrT over summer 2012, but decided to hold off after Mag_Neato started this thread in April 2012 and Dave weighed in about his experiments.

[davef]

Is the basket going to be painted black or left the natural alloy color? I think the natural alloy looks pretty darn cool, but would understand if it's going to be painted.

I like the alloy color as well - I wonder if it's a finish grade or paint grade.. If you like it you could always try to buff it out It's nice to come home at the end of the day to good news and nice photo of the developments. Looks great. Looking forward to finding out about pricing

I hope it comes painted black over the alloy colour... It'll stand out too much for my piano black Sierra-1s, not a big deal if its left alloy but hoping for it to be black like the others. I think the alloy look would be a cool option cause on the naturals I think it would really be a nice fit.

This is just an unfinished basket frame so that I could approve/disapprove the tooling from which the cast is made. First the basket frames are cast using our tooling, from there they then get prepped and then powder coated. They must be powder coated to protect the alloy. The finished basket will be the same finish as all other cast SEAS woofer baskets, a powder coated textured black finish. Quite nice actually

Spent another 90 minutes tonight listening to a variety of different music though the "two's" I must say I am really looking forward to getting these out there finally. Hard to believe that this thread is now ~ 18 months old...

[JustABrah]

Dave, I think we're all looking forward for you getting these out there too

Yeah, I thought they would be painted black, it looks great the way you finished them on the Sierra-1s, would only make sense to continue that with the 2s.

I have to say watching horror movies on the Sierra-1s really makes the movie that much more scarier and some scenes sound like its taking place in my house, love it. Starting to think horror movies might have to be my new go to test demos cause there great for audio effects.

[petmotel]

Indeed, it is a custom built RAAL ribbon tweeter designed specifically for our requirements. It is 10mm in width (same width as the retail 70-10) and 1/2 the width of the OEM only 70-20 we use in our Towers. This tweeter marks the conclusion of an exhaustive project we started with Aleksandar (owner and chief designer at RAAL) nearly 2 years ago.

In this application, I must say I actually prefer this tweeter to the 70-10 as the response is more linear (with a low end roll off and frequency response shape specific to our needs) and it does not require any foam pads to tame the top end. It can not be crossed as low as the 70-10 (certainly not as low as the 70-20 our towers use) and it does not offer the same overall power handling, but -- in the way we are implementing it, we easily hit 108dB in our extremely well damped listening room measured at 12 feet back so power handling and dynamics are not an issue. This new tweeter has very broad horizontal dispersion but the polar response is not quite as good as the 70-20xr we use (I don't think ANY tweeter can match the remarkable polar response of the 70-20)

At some point there will be a retail version of this tweeter. This is something Aleks and I have discussed in detail as he needs to recoup his development costs, but while the retail version will look similar, it is not the same unit and the two have considerably different performance characteristics.

There is more to the Sierra-2 than just the custom RAAL ribbon tweeter though... More to come as we get closer

I'm wondering if you'd be willing to comment on the crossover point? From the Madisound web site I found the following recommendation for the RAAL 70-10: Recommended crossover: 4th order L-R @ 2800 Hz.

With the above comment that the new RAAL tweeter can not be crossed as low as the 70-10, I'm wondering what part of the frequency spectrum this new woofer is going to have to handle? Was this part of the difficulty in getting the new driver to meet your needs?

In any case, this project would seem to be an engineering marvel, I will be owning a set to be sure!

Jay

[Mag_Neato]

Looking good, Dave!

Now that the cast basket is approved, how long before you have some full production units in hand?

[Mag_Neato]

That is gorgeous! That basket really knows how to pose and pile on the charm. Bear with me, boys, I gotta stay seated for a few minutes!!!

This makes me super-psyched even more than I already am. Talk about a perfect fit. That's literally a drop-in replacement. Is the basket going to be painted black or left the natural alloy color? I think the natural alloy looks pretty darn cool, but would understand if it's going to be painted.

If I look really hard, I can almost see the woofer itself. I think I even see a phase plug! I guess my Jedi training is finally paying off. Or is that just the magic mushrooms I had for dinner?

A driver with a phase plug would certainly be in line with the mid driver of the Tower, but would it be the best choice in this case? Dave mentioned that the new woofer will not play quite as deep as the standard Sierra-1 woofer, but we know that the Tower mid w/phase plug does not play anywhere close to the low end of the Sierra-1 woofer.

[Dark Ranger]

This is just an unfinished basket frame so that I could approve/disapprove the tooling from which the cast is made. First the basket frames are cast using our tooling, from there they then get prepped and then powder coated. They must be powder coated to protect the alloy. The finished basket will be the same finish as all other cast SEAS woofer baskets, a powder coated textured black finish. Quite nice actually

Thanks for the info, Dave; no worries. That makes sense and I completely understand why the frame will be powder-coated.

A driver with a phase plug would certainly be in line with the mid driver of the Tower, but would it be the best choice in this case? Dave mentioned that the new woofer will not play quite as deep as the standard Sierra-1 woofer, but we know that the Tower mid w/phase plug does not play anywhere close to the low end of the Sierra-1 woofer.

I was just joking about the phase plug. It may not be needed in this case.

[RRT-NPS]

Any updates? Some of us are making purchases as Christmas gifts. Sure the gift is to myself, but a gift nonetheless.
Release date? Price? Sierra-1 to Sierra-2 Upgrade Kit price?

The price is the last factor in deciding to go Sierra-2 or Tower.

[Mag_Neato]

Seeing as Dave gave the final approval on the final component, pricing should be here soon. At least according to his own words!

C'mon Dave......we know you want to spill the beans!!