The Last Loudspeaker System

By Stig Erik Tangen
15 Dec 1997

Drivers

We did not want too much compromise regarding drivers, so we selected (IMHO) the best mid/woofer available today; the Seas W17EX002. It features a magnesium cone, of which Seas is the only company to provide. The driver is now slightly changed since it was introduced in 1995. This change resulted in a much reduced breakup resonance peak at 5 kHz, and it is also been said that the distorsion is even lower. The distorsion is low! The frequency response is also smoother than on the original version. Please visit Seas' home-page on the net for further details on this Excellent driver.

I measured the driver in the selected box, and this is what it looked like throught the Techron TEF-20 Fig. 1. Seas W17EX002 measurement.

This is the smoothest midrange response I have ever measured! It sounds incredible too.

The T/S parameters of the W17EX002 works well with a 15 liter box. I set the tuning frequency to 36 Hz. This results in a smooth low-frequency rolloff, and a -3 dB point around 40 Hz when placed in a listening room.

The tweeter I selected was the Focal TC120TD, unfortunately a now discontinued model from Focal. (The TC120TDX should be the same, exept that it has a phase diffusor). It features a titanium-oxide inverted dome, a very powerful ceramic magnet system, and most important; no hornloading (most tweeters are slightly hornloaded!). Even though the driver is not hornloaded, the sensitivity is quite outstanding. It does not drop down above 10 kHz either like almost every other tweeter, even 30 degrees off-axis. I've measured the distorsion as well. That did not look as good, but quite well compared to other tweeters. The frequency response is not at all as smooth as the Seas Excel, but not really bad. The Focal tweeter sounds very fresh and clean, and matches the sound quality of the Seas Excel very well Fig. 2. Focal TC120TD measurement.

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