Adrian -
I hope you didn't take offence at my posts - if you followed the ensuing little debate I think anyone should realize that my intention was not to insult.
No offense taken. Your scepticism is probably wise. There are a few individuals selling speaker designs on the internet that I would not personally build. For the uninitiated, it may be difficult to separate good designs from bad. And teh situation is even more complicated in that some people writing reviews on the net are not all that qualified.
So I am used to dealing with a degree of scepticism from individuals who have not dealt with us before. But I do notice that as time goes on, more and more people are realizing that we are producing truly world-class speakers.
Our HT3's, for example, are most often compared to Joseph Audio Pearls which cost $20,000 per pair and also use Seas drivers. In fact, many who have heard both designs feel the HT3's are superior in that the top end is more transparent and bass more extended. Over the past 2 years the HT3's have replaced many speakers from very well-respected manufacturers in the $10,000 - $20,000 price range.
Just out of curiosity, if someone like me came along with a rough sketch of a cabinet design would you take that design, makes some plans and build it and would the cost be similar to your standard designs, assuming equivalent woods, drivers, size, complexity, etc?
Yes, provided it would not compromise the performance of the design. But in that case, I would discuss it with you (or someone like you) to make sure the constraints are understood and that the resulting cabinet design would perform as it should (internal volume and front baffle width are appropriate for the drivers and design, etc.).
For example, here are some subs I built for a gentleman who wanted 12" subs to use as stands for his Vercaity HT1's. He sent me the drawings, we adjusted the internal volume and went to work.
Here are some HT2's I was requested to do at a maximum of 38" (normally 40" tall) and a tilt of 3 degrees for use under a home theater screen (he actually purchased three although only two of them are shown here):
In this case, an MTM using Seas drivers was not a design we offered at the time. But that is what the customer wanted so we designed the HT2's and added them to our product offerings.
In short, we are a custom builder and work with clients to try and deliver exactly what they want provided we are certain that the results will meet our standards.
I might point out here that I owned a recording studio in the early '70's and spent the next 30 years working in studios around the country. So I am used to working with very high performance speakers systems costing up to $75,000 per pair or more. So I tend to analyze speaker performance from this reference point. I have turned down more than a few speaker projects because I felt the results would probably not be something I would want to be associated with.
Surely sensitivity together with nominal and min impedance are better specs to match amps as ideally you're aiming never to clip at all (as I assume you implied) and if you are clipping you should buy a more powerful amp and/or turn the volume down and/or buy more sensitive/easier to drive speakers.
I agree. Keep in mind that most of the time you are probably listening at 5 - 8 watts and the rest is for headroom. I tend to listen to my HT3's at moderate volume levels (which my wife rgards as too high) and my 40-watt tube amp performs just fine. But I would certainly regard it as a minimum. If someone asked for my recommendations on a tube amp, I would probably suggest something more like 60-watts just to be safe.
As for sensitivity, I might point out that speaker design is all about trade-offs. Our Veracity line, for example, was designed to be extremely accurate, highly detailed and very low in terms of distortion. We certainly could have used drivers with higher sensitivity. But there are currently no higher sensitivity drivers available that are as detailed and accurate as the Seas Excel drivers. So, in order to gain sensitivity, you would have to either use multiple drivers of the same type (which introduces other trade-offs including, but not limited to, higher cost), or you would have to live with less detail and higher distortion levels. There is no free lunch.
Maybe a clear link at the top or bottom of the page or even including the spec table directly in the page would fend off pedantic critics like myself?
Good point. Perhaps when I get some free time to work on the site, I can make some changes in this regard. There are quite a few things I would like to do to improve the site, but my time is somewhat limited as I have a lot of speakers to build.
One thing; the HT3 spec says Impedance (Average/Min): 8ohm.
Surely it's not as flat as that? Or did you just forget to put in the min impedance?
Good catch! I missed that. The minimum is 6.8 ohms.
- Jim
