[Russell Dawkins]

I was surprised to see the price for the new SEAS 8" wide ranger - $930 a piece, whizzer cone and all.!

You expect to pay a premium for Alnico, but this better sound good for that price!

http://tinyurl.com/2banz7

The most surprisingly expensive driver I think I've ever seen is the new 5" field coil Feastrex D5e Type II: $7,950 each. The Type III is more costly, I think.

[JohnR]

Cool, could be curious to hear reports on sound.

[Bemopti123]

I thought a corporation could do better at pricing their newest wares....but then, this has been proven wrong.  Now, how much more do you pay to get a more proven sound with Alnico with drivers from Supravox, or even without it with the field coil series?  A pair of them go for $2500....not much more than a pair of these rather mundane looking Seas.  Let someone else spend their money, Seas has priced the item beyond the reasonable reach of most people who might have been interested in a hi efficiency alnico wide bander.   

[Russell Dawkins]

I thought a corporation could do better at pricing their newest wares....but then, this has been proven wrong.  Now, how much more do you pay to get a more proven sound with Alnico with drivers from Supravox, or even without it with the field coil series?  A pair of them go for $2500....not much more than a pair of these rather mundane looking Seas.  Let someone else spend their money, Seas has priced the item beyond the reasonable reach of most people who might have been interested in a hi efficiency alnico wide bander.   

My thoughts exactly, except I would reserve ultimate judgment until I heard them, of course - but I must say I don't like the look of that whizzer.
Would be interesting to hear a shootout between that and the $1205 PHY 8" which is 2 dB more sensitive, has 1 gm less moving mass and looks way cooler for those OBs where you see the back with its cast bronze basket - after all this is the driver that put PHY on the map:

http://tinyurl.com/2pubt6

[hum4god]

the d5e model 3 from feastrex is 19900 $  for the pair.
compared to that seas it is a bargain , only a tenth , you could build a line array .
as all thinks in audio its relative .
i looked at the seas and was very interested but decided to stretch a little further and try the field coil driver from fertin .
there is some more info on diyaudio about the seas . nelson pass heard and commented as i remember.

[SET Man]

....Seas has priced the item beyond the reasonable reach of most people who might have been interested in a hi efficiency alnico wide bander.   

Hey!
   
   Wha?

   You are right about that. Driver like this is something that DIYers like myself would be interested in. And sadly they have priced this way out of reach for most of us

   At this price it is clearly in Lowther's territory

   Looking at the spec I could see why they recommended sealed box for this. Oh! well, I'm now really a fan of sealed box anyway. I guess it is not really suited for me anyway.

Take care,
Buddy

[tanchiro58]

the d5e model 3 from feastrex is 19900 $  for the pair.
compared to that seas it is a bargain , only a tenth , you could build a line array .
as all thinks in audio its relative .
i looked at the seas and was very interested but decided to stretch a little further and try the field coil driver from fertin .
there is some more info on diyaudio about the seas . nelson pass heard and commented as i remember.

With this PRICE my wife will file a divorce? Nah!!!... I would pass and purchase the JBL Jim Lansing model (anilco but not field coil) which has seductive midrange and great defined deep bass.

[rajacat]

I'll bet that the new 8" Omega Hemp Alnico driver will be competitive or better than the others but with the requirement that you buy the whole speaker.

-Roy

ps-- I dunno about the $20,000 Feastrex . For that price it should be one of the best drivers in existence.

[Russell Dawkins]

the d5e model 3 from feastrex is 19900 $  for the pair.
compared to that seas it is a bargain , only a tenth , you could build a line array .
as all thinks in audio its relative .
i looked at the seas and was very interested but decided to stretch a little further and try the field coil driver from fertin .
there is some more info on diyaudio about the seas . nelson pass heard and commented as i remember.

From what I have read (can't listen to any of these without a major commitment of time and money, living on a smallish island) the Fertin is the most frequently mentioned as the best sounding - at least to those who have heard the PHYs and Supravox. However, the Feastrex 5s seem to be unanimously preferred over all. The 9s are not so universally respected, it would seem - something about getting the midrange absolutely right vs trying to cover a wider spectrum.

That said, if the D5e type III is 19,900/pr imagine how much one well-heeled customer is paying for a pair of D9e's, Type III, where he is commissioning the basket to be machined out of solid bronze! Apparently the chunk of bronze needs to be about 30kg per speaker to start with.

[Russell Dawkins]

ps-- I dunno about the $20,000 Feastrex . For that price it should be one of the best drivers in existence.

Well, some people are saying it is!

Classic case of supply and demand in action!

[rajacat]

Does the bronze add anything to the sound quality or is it just expensive audio jewelry and cast steel would suffice?

-Roy

[richidoo]

I own the 'pedestrian' Feastrex D5nf and would have to concur it is the best transducer I have ever heard. Word is that the more powerful motor of the 5e adds another level of transparency. That's hard to imagine, but the accolades are extreme. There is an ACer who just bought a pair, and I am also saving up.

I did not know that the D5e used bronze basket. It is non magnetic and even less resonant than aluminum cast basket I have, so it makes sense. Feastrex is a price no object endeavor, aimed at being the very best available.

The new SEAS will be fun to hear! They have the resources to make something very special. With all the single driver speakers at RMAF last year I hope someone will demo the new SEAS next year.

[Christopher Witmer]

Bronze is not a standard frame material for any of the Feastrex drivers; the fellow who is getting bronze is getting it as a special order item. If it works out well I hope Feastrex looks into the possibility of getting bronze frames cast rather than machined from a block of metal the way these one-offs are being made. I'm looking forward to hearing those all-Permendur 9-inch drivers when they are finished (assuming I'll have a chance to hear them). Bronze has a specific gravity three times that of aluminum, so I expect it ought to have some sort of an affect on the sound . . .

-- Chris Witmer
(Tokyo)

[JLM]

This Seas driver doesn't look like much special to me.  Rising frequency response, overstated bass response.  You'd lose much efficiency trying to bring the response back to something towards flat.  For 1/3rd the price, the Fostex F200A has a bigger magnet and much flatter response with probably better efficiency once the Seas driver has been EQ'd.

I've never liked the idea of whizzer cones anyway, but an 8 incher beams from roughly 4,000 Hz on up without some sort of help.

[Les Lammers]

I own the 'pedestrian' Feastrex D5nf and would have to concur it is the best transducer I have ever heard. Word is that the more powerful motor of the 5e adds another level of transparency. That's hard to imagine, but the accolades are extreme. There is an ACer who just bought a pair, and I am also saving up.

I did not know that the D5e used bronze basket. It is non magnetic and even less resonant than aluminum cast basket I have, so it makes sense. Feastrex is a price no object endeavor, aimed at being the very best available.

The new SEAS will be fun to hear! They have the resources to make something very special. With all the single driver speakers at RMAF last year I hope someone will demo the new SEAS next year.

What kind of enclosure do you have the D5nf's in? Where did you but them?They certainly look interesting and so do the SEAS. A sealed 2 cubic foot box should be rather easy to have built. I would not dismiss the SEAS until I heard them.

[-Richard-]

I spoke at length to one of the key gentleman who sells and represents Feastrex in San Francisco (where they have a show/room/store) and he thought that using their speakers for Open Baffle use would not work!!!!

I gently pressed him to go a bit more into his reasons for saying that... I explained as best as I could some of the science behind OB implementation but he was rather insistant... he told me "it would be a waste" of the Feastrex drivers potential sense they were designed for box speaker implementation.

That was as much as he would say in that particular phone conversation... I concluded that either the Feastrex engineers may not be informed of the potential of their drivers in OB use or that he himself was simply insufficiently aware that there might be interest from OB lovers in their drivers.

If anyone would be interested to call their San Fransisco store and would like to report in this thread what they learn that would be most interesting to hear: http://www.lotusgroupusa.com/     415.897.8884

I would also suggest that it may be that the actual impact of specific speakers on the OB sound may be proportionately less in absolute terms than a well-implemented inexpensive OB system... generally speaking... which is to say that the magic we hear may be more the result of what OB does and less dependent on a specific speaker... throwing a great deal of money at an OB system may not result in proportionately that much better sound reproduction.

Warmest Regards ~ Richard

[Les Lammers]

Hmm.... the Lotus website has a bass reflex enclosure design. PHY are best in an open baffle though some people, with little success, have tried them in boxes. Maybe the Feastrex are just designed for a BR box? I think I will call and price a pair of the D5nf.

Here is Dick Olsher's OB iteration: http://www.enjoythemusic.com/Magazine/equipment/0107/diy_loudspeaker_project.htm

*I* like the simpler BR box but to each their own.

[Christopher Witmer]

I spoke at length to one of the key gentleman who sells and represents Feastrex in San Francisco (where they have a show/room/store) and he thought that using their speakers for Open Baffle use would not work!!!!
[SNIP]
I would also suggest that it may be that the actual impact of specific speakers on the OB sound may be proportionately less in absolute terms than a well-implemented inexpensive OB system... generally speaking... which is to say that the magic we hear may be more the result of what OB does and less dependent on a specific speaker... throwing a great deal of money at an OB system may not result in proportionately that much better sound reproduction.

DaVinci Audio Labs in Switzerland, which is a Feastrex representative for the German-speaking countries, markets a sort of OB speaker and I believe they tried a Feastrex driver in it but concluded that the woofer, despite its high quality, couldn't keep up with the Feastrex driver. (That is not something I heard directly from them, by the way, so I'm not sure I have fairly represented their position, but it seems to comport with what the Lotus Group says.)

To my understanding, the most successful implementation of a feastrex driver in OB to date is the one described here:
http://www.hawthorneaudio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1363&p=18141&hilit=feastrex#p18141

Richidoo, who has posted above, is also working on his own Feastrex OB project right now.

I can understand what The Lotus Group is saying. When properly set up in a simple ported enclosure (and perhaps other types of box enclosures as well) the quality of the bass that comes off of any Feastrex driver is amazingly good. Integration becomes a non-issue. Also, the sheer amount of detail and sense of immediate presence and soundstage that you can get from these drivers may make some OB fans decide to forego OB in the case of these drivers. On the other hand, I think it cannot be denied that you still get a characteristic "boxed sound" from Feastrex drivers in boxes, and there may be people who want to get away from that. Such people may find OB to be rewarding. But the bass is going to be quite a challenge when using Feastrex drivers in OB, and it will be a rather ironic challenge because the bass of the Feastrex drivers in boxes can be, as I said, surprisingly good.

I would suggest trying to get feedback from Richidoo and "LP" on their OB implementations.

I have heard Feastrex drivers on very simple open baffles without any bass support at all and I really liked them. Of course they lacked bass but the OB sound has quite a strong appeal . . . I would suggest that people on both sides of the OB/box issue should try to keep an open mind. Such a high quality fullrange invites the listener to rethink a lot of assumptions. Whether it will ultimately alter those assumptions is another matter, but it does invite you to go back and rethink quite a few basic things about loudspeakers.

-- Chris

P.S. here is a link to Richidoo's ongoing OB project:
http://www.audionervosa.com/index.php?topic=855.msg8115#msg8115

[Vinnie R.]

I'll bet that the new 8" Omega Hemp Alnico driver will be competitive or better than the others but with the requirement that you buy the whole speaker.

-Roy

ps-- I dunno about the $20,000 Feastrex . For that price it should be one of the best drivers in existence.

Hi Roy,

Louis showed me a FR plot of the upcoming 8" Omega Hemp ALNICO and it looks most impressive... it is quite flat!  Having heard the prototype of this driver in a pair of Maxhemps, it is clearly one of the best sounding full rangers I have heard.  I believe we'll have them at the Montreal show next month!

I asked Louis if he was planning on just selling the drivers and he is not. 

He is working on a "Drivers" page on his website to show the drivers he uses in his speakers.  The 8" Hemp Alnico is a beauty!

Vinnie

[Les Lammers]

I'll bet that the new 8" Omega Hemp Alnico driver will be competitive or better than the others but with the requirement that you buy the whole speaker.

-Roy

ps-- I dunno about the $20,000 Feastrex . For that price it should be one of the best drivers in existence.

Hi Roy,

Louis showed me a FR plot of the upcoming 8" Omega Hemp ALNICO and it looks most impressive... it is quite flat!  Having heard the prototype of this driver in a pair of Maxhemps, it is clearly one of the best sounding full rangers I have heard.  I believe we'll have them at the Montreal show next month!

I asked Louis if he was planning on just selling the drivers and he is not. 

He is working on a "Drivers" page on his website to show the drivers he uses in his speakers.  The 8" Hemp Alnico is a beauty!

Vinnie

Now that's a speaker I'd be interested in! I don't want to build..I'm plug 'n play. It's all about implementation!