Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.

[r-carpenter]

A friend of mine owned this pair of speakers for sometime. After the initial purchase, he listened to them a couple of times and they ended up collecting dust.
The woofer is

W12CY Seas excel Magnesium
and the tweeter

famous copper ring T25.
I've listened to the speakers myself and they didn't sound good. Something is off and the sound is irritating.
Why/ I don't know. I will start dissecting the issue step by step and post the data and logic behind the solution.
As far as I know, the crossover was modeled by Madisound.
The components are certainly a very high performance costing over $400 a side. Interestingly, I've heard better sound from $100 a pair speakers.

[craigk]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.

this should be interesting

[dcibel]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.

What does the crossover look like? Schematic?

I'd wager a guess that the resonance from the woofer cone is not adequately suppressed.

[r-carpenter]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.

Oh, I have no idea.
I have the speakers, they sound crappy and I'd like to know why.
The components have a fairly wide overlap.

[maynardg]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.

The tweeter should not be problematic. Those woofers, though, will ring most harshly of the breakup is not tamed.

[r-carpenter]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.

The tweeter should not be problematic. Those woofers, though, will ring most harshly of the breakup is not tamed.

We'll see.
I'd like to do it step by step. My first notion is of course a break up that hasn't been suppressed enough.
The tweeter is one of the most capable out there.

[Paul Carmody]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.

We'd need more info about what about the sound is irritating. As some said, it very well could be an untamed breakup mode. It could also be that the woofer's response through the passband has some sort of hump in the middle. A gradual hump around 1000 Hz can make any woofer sound cheap and annoying to listen to.

[dcibel]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.

I would assume that the "crossover by madisound" is awful. Rip it out, do a redesign and you'll be very happy with those top drawer drivers.

[r-carpenter]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.




good looking thing.
As usually, I'll start with measurement routine.
Good thing, the crossover is actually in 2 sections and I can easily see the response of the woofer and tweeter together or by themselves with the original crossover.

[r-carpenter]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.



The response below 1000hz is not valid. 95cm, 5msc gating.
The level of the tweeter appears to be off near crossover, the break up isn't terrible but not fantastic either.
Let me do a merged response including baffle step.

[r-carpenter]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.


as a side note. This is the near field response of the woofer. Diffraction is not added and it looks like there's almost no BSC. In all fairness, this little monitor I was was intended as a computer set up, to be used near wall.

[r-carpenter]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.


alright, so even if we consider intended near field use and the placement close to back wall, the crossover merge doesn't look too good. At list to me, it's not.
But, more in depth testing needed.

Another note:
the speaker has a port. It's around 1.5" in diameter and may be 2.5" long. The cabinet and the port are fully filled with stuffing, so the output SPL of the port is very low.
(remember the SPL is not calibrated)

impedance

[Face]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.

I used that woofer as a mid in the 3 way towers at our first DIY competition. IMO, they sound fantastic used correctly.

[r-carpenter]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.

I used that woofer as a mid in the 3 way towers at our first DIY competition. IMO, they sound fantastic used correctly.

No disagreement there. I like excel magnesium woofers very much.

[lorenmjones]

Re: Troubleshooting Seas Excel crossover and the sound is irritating.

I have a pair of speakers (Aura NS4 and a Vifa neo tweet) that Madisound did the crossover for. It was like a $25 charge and they sent a schematic and whatever components I chose to buy for it. The crossover was done based simply on their measurments of the drivers or perhaps even on MFR response plots...not sure. I know they weren't done based on measurements of drivers in box nor even with any knowledge on their part of the baffle dimensions and driver placement on the baffle. They sound thin unless they are on a desk or bookshelf....I guess you get what you pay for.