Re: Information about new Sierra-1 and Towers?
Dave,
You've mentioned the focus behind the towers will be geared towards the mids and highs instead of low end grunt. If sealed cabinets produces a more tighter sound in most cases, what is the reason behind the towers being ported? Are the towers being designed to be used with a sub in mind for 2 channel purposes?
Blake
Re: Information about new Sierra-1 and Towers?
Hi Guys,
I'm new to the thread so please bear with me. As everyone knows, speaker design is a BIG compromise particularly at this level of expense if your trying to create something that's affordable and meets A LOT of people's expectations. (There are no free rides I've discovered, unfortunately.) I'm sure Dave is going crazy juggling all these driver and design choices he has to choose from in order to give US the "best bang for OUR buck".
To try an answer the previous email, intergration with or without a sub can be a real problem with a tower speaker as I see it. Some guys like NO subs and others prefer it. Some have home theaters others are strictly stereo music guys and want as "full range" of speaker as they can get. I'm sure Dave has had many a sleepless night trying to figure out the right equation for his particular niche in the speaker buying community which these days is enormous and highly competitive.
I'm a movie guy so I prefer a small monitor like the Sierra-1 to integrate with a good sub and take pressure off of the low frequency driver and allow it to become a mid range point source. I've found that the smaller the speaker the better the imaging, clarity etc.. Nothing is perfect unless you want to spend mucho dollars and even then, in many cases, it's only marginally better.
My hats off to dynamic speaker designers. It's a long hard road competing with panels and electrostatics but tradition, I think, has won out.
Re: Information about new Sierra-1 and Towers?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Blake1214
Dave,
You've mentioned the focus behind the towers will be geared towards the mids and highs instead of low end grunt. If sealed cabinets produces a more tighter sound in most cases, what is the reason behind the towers being ported? Are the towers being designed to be used with a sub in mind for 2 channel purposes?
Blake
Tt may sound tighter, but it will not play as deep. The sierra woofer plays tight enough to be ported. I dont think they are designed solely for 2ch music with a sub, other wise dave would have opted for a sealed cabinets as they tend to blend better with a sub.
Re: Information about new Sierra-1 and Towers?
Sooooo............any updates to the NrT upgrade timeframe, or the towers? I need to buy this sooner rather than later before I find something else to spend the money on!
Re: Information about new Sierra-1 and Towers?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mag_Neato
Sooooo............any updates to the NrT upgrade timeframe, or the towers? I need to buy this sooner rather than later before I find something else to spend the money on!
Sorry for being so out of touch these past 2 weeks :o So much going on over here with the new products, the start of school and this darn stomach flu which has ravaged my family this week :mad:
NrT tweeters have arrived safe and sound and as with everything SEAS, production models perfectly match the early prototypes and consistency from one unit to another is remarkable.
I should mention that we have managed to squeak out even better performance by changing the internal dampening material and slightly lowering the tweeter's resonance frequency. We are now going to fine tune, by hand, each and every NrT tweeter and the change in dampening material has also resulted in improved back-wave absorption, yielding even better transparency. This is the good news.
The bad news. Unfortunately, our parts supplier has had some delays in sourcing one of the capacitors that is required for the new crossover. This has resulted in delaying the official release. We are doing everything we can to speed this process up and as of today, we are expecting a mid November release. We are trying to improve this time frame and I will keep you updated.
We have gone well over the original # of upgrade requests (first 50 customers) and due to the delays; we will keep the special pre-order pricing open to everyone until the parts arrive. Our initial order quantity is relatively small but we are already preparing for the next PO so there will be plenty of parts on hand in the near future (as we get fully up to speed)
As we get closer to the formal release, we will send each of you a private link to order the upgrade parts online at the introductory pricing. This will save us a lot of time compared to taking the orders by phone (of course, phone orders will certainly be accepted). Since we have a LOT of upgrade requests and we want to ship immediately once the parts arrive, it will be a huge time saver for us to prepare all of the billing, invoicing and shipping documents prior to the arrival of the parts. We would like to begin this process no later than 2 weeks prior to the arrival of the parts so for those of you on our upgrade list, please expect an email from us with ordering information sometime around Oct 25th.
I am quite excited about the release of the NrT's... We have given many demos thus far and to my surprise, everyone has clearly noticed the differences and has preferred the NrT's. I should say that for those that have done A/B comparisons, we are at a remarkable 100% of listeners that plan on ordering the upgrade.
Thanks so much for your patience!!!!
Re: Information about new Sierra-1 and Towers?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mag_Neato
Sooooo............any updates to the NrT upgrade timeframe, or the towers? I need to buy this sooner rather than later before I find something else to spend the money on!
With regard to the towers:
These are coming along VERY nicely :) I have made a few changes since the original design, electing to go with a single higher flow, lower tune port tube compared to dual port tubes. This has resulted in much less air turbulence at very loud volumes (no port noise whatsoever!) I also plan to change from front ported to rear ported. This change, surprisingly, has resulted in improved performance as we are now getting tighter phase integration with the output of the port and output of the woofers.
The new port tube is also tuned to accept and properly utilize our Q-Plugs. Like with the Sierra-1, we will now be able to tune the bass response of the tower allowing for maximum placement options and improved subwoofer integration.
In addition, we have made some changes to the dual woofers that have yielded some noticeable benefits. One of these changes was to increase the number of voice coil windings which has resulted in slightly deeper bass combined with a more manageable impedance profile. While the aesthetics are the same, these are no longer the exact same woofers used in the Sierra-1.
I plan to have this design 100% finalized by this Sunday evening. As to a formal release date, I can only estimate at this point but please send me an email to discuss privately.
Anyone up for another listening session? These sound SO GOOD and I need an excuse to spend a full day enjoying them -- away from the family ;)
Re: Information about new Sierra-1 and Towers?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
davef
With regard to the towers:
Anyone up for another listening session? These sound SO GOOD and I need an excuse to spend a full day enjoying them -- away from the family ;)
Twist my arm.
Re: Information about new Sierra-1 and Towers?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
DavidD
Twist my arm.
Mine too! :)
Re: Information about new Sierra-1 and Towers?
I don't need to be asked more than once.
Re: Information about new Sierra-1 and Towers?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
davef
With regard to the towers:
:D:D
Cant wait, wish i could hear that test session!
If you want to test them out up here, i would make my house available:p