I DIY is great but...

[ShinOBIWAN]

...has anyone else taken note of XTZ loudspeakers?

Seems to me 99.26 model with Seas and fountek drivers is silly money.



http://www.xtz.se/produkt.php?allman...kt=31&eng=true

£520 for piano black pair delivered in the UK from here:

http://www.avforums.com/forums/speak...-powerbuy.html

In comparison a pair of Seas Excel nextel is £240 then £160 for a pair of Fountek 3's and I'll take a lowball guess at £50 for the crossover components. That's £450 just for drivers and crossovers. Expect to spend many hours building and finishing the cabs to the XTZ standard.

Someone order a pair and let me know how they sound because I'm very curious.

[Taco]

I wonder if they can get away with the compromised cross-over design, i.e. the tweeter doesn't like it < 2 kHz while for the magnesium driver it is paramount to cross < 2 kHz with steep slopes and a notch on the resonance peak. IMHO the 12 dB electrical slopes are insufficient for those drivers.

The outcome could be audible distortion of the tweeter with a rather well behaved woofer or some evidence of ringing of the magnesium driver with a proper filtered tweeter.

That said, however, the price is very attractive. Replace the tweeter with a proper one (in terms of low frequency bandwidth), design a new cross-over and you are done ...

[KevinP]

Originally posted by Taco
I wonder if they can get away with the compromised cross-over design, i.e. the tweeter doesn't like it < 2 kHz while for the magnesium driver it is paramount to cross < 2 kHz with steep slopes and a notch on the resonance peak. IMHO the 12 dB electrical slopes are insufficient for those drivers.

The outcome could be audible distortion of the tweeter with a rather well behaved woofer or some evidence of ringing of the magnesium driver with a proper filtered tweeter.

That said, however, the price is very attractive. Replace the tweeter with a proper one (in terms of low frequency bandwidth), design a new cross-over and you are done ...

Nextel driver is not magnesium, it is coated paper. No metal break-ups to tame

[KevinP]

my posts are under moderation for some reason, so lord knows when they'll actually show up in the thread.

Anyhow, after reading the description on the manufacturers website they state the woofer is indeed magnesium, although it sure looks an awful lot like the Nextel coated Excel drivers and nothing like the magnesium cone/gold phase plugged Excel drivers... wonder if they even know what the drivers they are using are made of?

[ShinOBIWAN]

Yep, your right, the excel is a magnesium variant rather than nextel. They also replaced the gold phase cap with the nextel silver and had the cone in black instead of grey.

I haven't read specifically where they cross but they do inform they use 2nd order. The excel could be OEM where they pushed the breakup higher to suit the XO.

[Taco]

Originally posted by ShinOBIWAN
Yep, your right, the excel is a magnesium variant rather than nextel. They also replaced the gold phase cap with the nextel silver and had the cone in black instead of grey.

I haven't read specifically where they cross but they do inform they use 2nd order. The excel could be OEM where they pushed the breakup higher to suit the XO.

A similar black coating is used by other manufacturers (like Snell or Tidal for example). As magnesium always needs to be coated to prevent corrosion, I do not think the additional coating influences the break-up in anyway, it's just another colour instead of the stock one.

Also, without changing the geometry, thickness or material of the cone itself I do not see the break-up move much higher. Let alone an additional octave as would be required by the presumably shallow electrical slopes of the cross-over.

Do not get me wrong I am not negative about Seas. I've used Seas excel magnesium drivers extensively and do not want the opinion about these great drivers be negative due to poor execution.

[ShinOBIWAN]

We are both postulating so no conclusion can be drawn.

The way I see it, they've changed the basket, cone finish and phase plug therefore its not the same driver as available to us. The rest is guess work.

Where did you see the bit about 2Khz crossover or was this another guess based on the excel available to us?

[KevinP]

it's possible they also use notch filters, right? The breakup on the W18 doesn't start until around 4.5k...

[JoshK]

You can always get their 99.26P version and toss their XO and make your own.

Another option is their 99.26P paired with a pair of 99w10.17P and use with DEQX + appropriate 6 channels. Replace DEQX with whatever DSP/XO your heart desires.

Very tempting.