Diamond Tweeter?

[merrymaid520]

B stock pricing on this thing?

Interesting! In a few years (after we move) I might have some interest in a high end Tower. While you are at it, any advantage to going all out and investigating some of the high end SEAS mid and bass drivers too?

Maybe I can continue the trend.....get the first pair Brandon, you cheapskate.

[davef]

B stock pricing on this thing?

Interesting! In a few years (after we move) I might have some interest in a high end Tower. While you are at it, any advantage to going all out and investigating some of the high end SEAS mid and bass drivers too?

Maybe I can continue the trend.....get the first pair Brandon, you cheapskate.

I will reserve the first pair for you Brandon

I have nearly every SEAS Excel woofer and tweeter here. When and if the time comes to start the design process, I will absolutely consider using one of these woofers, along with many others that I feel would be equally appropriate.

[merrymaid520]

I will reserve the first pair for you Brandon

I have nearly every SEAS Excel woofer and tweeter here. When and if the time comes to start the design process, I will absolutely consider using one of these woofers, along with many others that I feel would be equally appropriate.

Well, I heard McDonalds is now hiring. Im off to apply for a second job to afford these gems! (pun intended).

On a serious note, I like having the option as a current Ascend owner to move up the ladder so to speak. Having a cost no object bookshelf at or around $5k and possibly a Tower version for $6-$7k would in my opinion gain some traction in the industry. I was at Axpona in Chicago recently and you would not believe the overpriced crazy high end stuff they sell there. People have the money for $20k speakers! Not me. Best of luck bringing this to fruition. I hope SEAS and Ascend can make it happen. It does not sound as if a whole lot of your time and money would be invested, mostly theirs

[Mag_Neato]

Interesting development here, but this will be WAY above my budget.

Dave, there will no doubt be a market for these. I would offer this advice:
If/when you and SEAS develop a more cost-effective, proprietary version for a "Super Sierra" do yourself and ascend a huge favor......Pay for the rights to the design so that it will not be available for general consumption and show up in copycat designs!!

Just my $0.02

[merrymaid520]

Interesting development here, but this will be WAY above my budget.

Dave, there will no doubt be a market for these. I would offer this advice:
If/when you and SEAS develop a more cost-effective, proprietary version for a "Super Sierra" do yourself and ascend a huge favor......Pay for the rights to the design so that it will not be available for general consumption and show up in copycat designs!!

Just my $0.02

Likely wishful thinking. For seas to recoup the development costs I'm almost certain ascend would not sell enough for seas to make the diamond tweeter exclusive. Just a thought.

[N Boros]

I would want the Sierra with the diamond tweeter to exceed and/or meet the performance of the Sierra 2 and the Sierra towers. More output would be something that clearly would be designed into the Sierra with the diamond tweeter, since that is one of the advantages, so it is reasonable to assume that it would be designed to be maintained throughout the frequency band. However, one area of concern for me would be wide dispersion. This is actually a drawback of dome tweeters is that they don't exhibit the same exceptionally wide dispersion that the Sierra 2 has, at the expense of narrow vertical dispersion.

This got me thinking of a recent Home Theater Geeks podcast episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4BlW39JQdA You only need to watch from 35 min to about 48 min to see the very cool waveguide, though the whole episode was quite good. They talk about a new wave guide that they call a "conic section array" to get an extremely wide horizontal dispersion out of the tweeter. Even at 80 degrees off axis the shape of the curve hasn't changed! Only the level has decreased, but it has done so uniformly for all frequencies. The design does trade off extremely wide horizontal dispersion for narrow vertical dispersion. Are there any other technologies in terms of wave guides like this that could be incorporated? I'm sure they patented this new design technology and even if Ascend paid them to use the technology, it would put the speaker way over budget. I think that if the dispersion can equal or better yet surpass that of the current Raal ribbon tweeters, then this really would be a killer cost no object speaker.

[SGCSG1]

Five grand would be my limit. Six would be a reach that I don't think I could do.

But I'd love to see a five grand Sierra take on the 'seven grand monitor' usual suspects.

[davef]

Interesting development here, but this will be WAY above my budget.

Dave, there will no doubt be a market for these. I would offer this advice:
If/when you and SEAS develop a more cost-effective, proprietary version for a "Super Sierra" do yourself and ascend a huge favor......Pay for the rights to the design so that it will not be available for general consumption and show up in copycat designs!!

Just my $0.02

Hey Mag,

Believe me, I hear what you are saying I will likely never make that same mistake again...

That said, SEAS would not be developing a lower cost version of this tweeter for us. To be clear, the only changes we would be making would be to the faceplate - in the hopes that we can get the White Diamond to mechanically fit into our current tweeter cutouts. The advantage we can offer, is that by selling direct, we can offer speakers with these tweeter at significantly less $$$ than what is currently available.

For example, if it costs $3k to build a pair of White Diamond bookshelf speakers, we can then sell this pair for ~$5500. For retail with typical margins, if it costs $3K to build a pair, they would sell it to their dealers for $6K and then the dealers would sell it for $12K. For higher priced items like these, selling direct has huge advantages...

[davef]

On a serious note, I like having the option as a current Ascend owner to move up the ladder so to speak. Having a cost no object bookshelf at or around $5k and possibly a Tower version for $6-$7k would in my opinion gain some traction in the industry. I was at Axpona in Chicago recently and you would not believe the overpriced crazy high end stuff they sell there. People have the money for $20k speakers! Not me. Best of luck bringing this to fruition. I hope SEAS and Ascend can make it happen. It does not sound as if a whole lot of your time and money would be invested, mostly theirs

Pretty much sums up my exact thoughts. There are a lot of speakers out there at ridiculous prices that have absurd markups... If SEAS comes through for us, it is not a large investment for us to develop upgrades and even new models. The way this tweeter measures, developing an appropriate crossover for it is relatively simple.