# Seas The new reference kit



## Rbsarve (Aug 26, 2005)

So this might be a bit long in the end but this is the first part.

The fine people of Seas sent us a review kit to persuade us to pick up and promote the line here in Sweden. 

The packageing is world class, don´t really see the need for the attached gloves, but it is one on the nice touches. It is quite complete with wires and Torx screws for the drivers. A solid box out of cardboard with a carrying handle and two layers of EP-foam that holds the stuff in place. 
There is a bunch of stickers and a very good manual, complete with T/S values on both tweeter and mid.

The stuff inside the box isn´t half bad either. 

Lets start with the passive crossovers. To start with they are totally separate, one per driver unit. Aluminum bottom plates proper traced boards and smoked transparent lids with embossed Seas logos they look the part. On the boards there is a careful selection of high quality parts. Tasty.
The nicest I´ve seen this side of the Alpine F1's

So I promply put them back in the box. Real men use active crossovers.

More interresting is the tweets.From the front side they look pretty conventional (boring) but they are about an inch deep with moulded aluminium backplate that has cooling fins. 
The dome is suposedly made out of magnesium and there is not a sign of plastic anywhere on the tweets. Termination is made on gold plated spade terminals that are pretty well protected and solid. All in all very nice indeed, perfect craftmanship. 
BUT then is comes to mounting them... They sent a lovely brass WINGNUT to bolt to the back of the driver to hold a steel plate bracket. Apart from electrocorrosion issues with this it adds about half an inch to the install depth! 
So I press fitted them in baffles instead.

So to the mid drivers. 
At the back you find a rubber gasket clad magnet assembly. The rubber gasket can be removed to gain 2 mm mounting depth, and the magnet system is still quite well finished, no visible glue on the drivers I have. 
Termination is done on gold plated spade terminals and uses normal tinsel leads that has partly been dipped in rubber, probably to prevent cone slapping. 
The drivers use a magnesium moulded basket with good design giving proper air flow and cooling outer diameter is 165 mm so that is standard 6,5" alright, but since it has a very narrow flange that only uses half holes at the edge of the outer diameter it won´t fit a stock 6,5 location without modification. I ended up doing a pair of baffle rings out of MDF. The advantage of doing this is that the cone can be slightly bigger and hence able to push more air around. I like that. 
And I like the cone quite a lot, it is a coated magnesium thing that is pretty stiff but still doesn´t seem prone to ringing effects and in the middle of this sticks out the now trademark like Seas phase plug. On these drivers the copper have been given a silver paint finish to match the basket and it does look very good.

I´m adding some personal notes on the fixed phase plug here. Seas claims that the technology benefits includes better cooling, since the phase plug is a part of the pole piece sticking out and that is gives good air flow to the voice coil and reduces power compression issues. I´m sure it does. It also leaves the most sensitive part of the driver open for dust entering. 
The other benefit of a phase plug is the improved frequency responce, especially off-axis at small signal testing. To my ears this "impovement" usually returns an nasal character to the sound quality, and with a fixed plug like this, the effect (and hence the frequency responce) varies with volume levels.

So stellar build quality, nice package, a bit of extra effort needed on the install side, lets see what they can do.

They arrived just before my vacation and I got a new car the same week. So I had to do a bit of a rush job in fitting a system that would last me over the summer. The new family car is a Peugout 406 V6 SW that has 6,5" stock locations low in the door and tweeters on the dash. 
The Seas manual prefers the drivers to have less separation then this, but this is probably how quite a few of the customers would have them, and I time aligned the speakers, so that helps out.
I did some basic damping to the doors , mostly bitumen mats to the panels, and it´s ok, but there should be more done to them for optimium conditions.

The rest of the system is:
Nakamichi CD400 ("Old Skippy")
Alpine PXA-H700, used only for time alingment and crossover, all eq is flat.
Phoenix Gold Xenon X100.4 powers the Seases and a X600.1 for the subs. These where chosen because I´m very familliar to the SQ of these and to my ears they are very neutral sounding.
Subs used was a box with two PG ZR12´s, chosen more for the needed boot space and fun factor then outright SQ but they do a plausible job.

First impression... OUCH! These needs to be broken in properly. With normal usage it took about 3 weeks to get them to sound right. I recommend anyone who gets these to burn them in before putting them in.

But then it got a bit better

As those of you wha has dabbled with an active setup know, a small adjustment somewhere can make a big change, so I took some time finding the right frequencies for this system in my car. 

The 6,5" mid has some exaggerated output at around 2,5 kHz which means it makes some very harsh coloration to voices. This mad me choose the crossover ponts with a bit of underlap, lowpassing the mid at 2.2 kHz and highpassing the tweet at 2.5 kHz. The Midbass was also highpassed at 56 Hz, all 30 db/octave. There is still a hint of sybliance left, which was cured with a -2 dB wide Q EQ at 2 kHz.

So after a couple of weeks listening while I have played Opera, Jazz, Metal, RnB, Rock HipHop, Blues, and Pop on them and come out pretty impressed on the other end.

Overall the frequency responce is percived as pretty flat. The above mentioned sybliant tendencies is still evident and I´d like to have a bit more shimmer to the tweeter but that is the full length of my complaints.

Midbass is dry, fast, tactile and hard hitting if asked to be. It has actually managed to bring out higher resolution in some bass lines then I´ve heard before. 
Midrange is also a bit dry, but reproduces individual instruments and voices with very good precision and localization. Especially good is the the rendition of space, the sense of beeing in the recording enviroment rather then listening to it. 
And the tweeter is a jewel. As said before it´s not one that sparkles much, it seems to roll off in the top end, but it plays everything so good, so controlled and well tempered that it must be placed among the very best "compact" tweeters out there. It to picks out some details I haven´t heard in recordings very familiar to me. 

So, there it is the perfect speakers then? Not really. 
They are a very good choise for the "Hi-Fi" minded listener that needs all the details in the right spot and to get everything just right, but for me listening to music is as much about the emotion, the passion and how it makes me feel. And here they leave me feeling a bit cold.
I like what I hear but I don´t tap my foot. 

My suspision is that this might be changed if I go for a bit warmer biased amp. So tomorrow I´m changing to a set of Celestra RA amps instead

t.b.c


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## jay (Sep 12, 2005)

you tease


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## FoxPro5 (Feb 14, 2006)

jay said:


> you tease


Typical Swedes..   

Can't wait for more man!


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## Antnee77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Those are awesome! Get some pics up if you can!


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## low (Jun 2, 2005)

lets hear it!


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## Rbsarve (Aug 26, 2005)

That´s the bulk of it. Will add some pics tomorrow.


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## 3.5max6spd (Jun 29, 2005)

Rbsarve said:


> First impression... OUCH! These needs to be broken in properly. With normal usage it took about 3 weeks to get them to sound right. I recommend anyone who gets these to burn them in before putting them in.
> 
> But then it got a bit better
> 
> ...


How dare you emphasize a break in period!  



Rbsarve said:


> They are a very good choise for the "Hi-Fi" minded listener that needs all the details in the right spot and to get everything just right, but for me listening to music is as much about the emotion, the passion and how it makes me feel. And here they leave me feeling a bit cold.
> I like what I hear but I don´t tap my foot.


That right there hits home when I analize the overall Lotus sound.

Very good review. I noticed a change in tone in the Lotus midbass tonally going from an Arc to the smoother/warmer DLS amps. Looking forward to your findings.


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## scar19 (Aug 17, 2006)

Rbsarve said:


> So, there it is the perfect speakers then? Not really.
> They are a very good choise for the "Hi-Fi" minded listener that needs all the details in the right spot and to get everything just right, but for me listening to music is as much about the emotion, the passion and how it makes me feel. And here they leave me feeling a bit cold.
> I like what I hear but I don´t tap my foot.


What do you recommend, other than these new SEAS Reference?


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## Rbsarve (Aug 26, 2005)

Keep in mind that my comments are with the most severe quality in mind, an ideal. I do not doubt for a second that these can hit home perfectly to a lot of people.

I´m beeing very picky. 

Our own developed Anthem 5 kit is our present top of the range kit, it has custom midranges (on Peerless base) and slightly modified ScanSpeak tweeters. They have a warmer tonal quality to them and a bit more sparcle, but the Seas kit has better image separation and fantasticly clean midbass.


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## npdang (Jul 29, 2005)

Very detailed and thorough review. Thank you!


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## DearS (May 14, 2005)

I'm Very happy over the review. 

I was wondering if Metal drivers might not sound warm. Perhaps is that some are too cold. I consider it when choosing a speaker. Thank you!


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## bassfromspace (Jun 28, 2016)

DearS said:


> I'm Very happy over the review.
> 
> I was wondering if Metal drivers might not sound warm. Perhaps is that some are too cold. I consider it when choosing a speaker. Thank you!


Much of the whole warm/cold sound is a matter of overcoming old wives tales.


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## DearS (May 14, 2005)

bassfromspace said:


> Much of the whole warm/cold sound is a matter of overcoming old wives tales.



Speakers produce some details different (louder) from others, those details might be what I interprit as cold/warm. Metals for have different dynamic charactiristics than paper. For example metal comes to a stop faster than paper, giving the impression of leaving cold space between tunes. I was thinking that might appear in the sound reproduction.


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## bassfromspace (Jun 28, 2016)

DearS said:


> Speakers produce some details different (louder) from others, those details might be what I interprit as cold/warm. Metals for have different dynamic charactiristics than paper. For example metal comes to a stop faster than paper, giving the impression of leaving cold space between tunes. I was thinking that might appear in the sound reproduction.


HUH?

Metal can't come to a stop faster than paper. Unless you're refering to ringing or something of that nature. That has nothing to do with sound, however.


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## strong*I*bumpin (Oct 3, 2005)

whats with the gloves & seas?


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## Antnee77 (Aug 1, 2006)

strong*I*bumpin said:


> whats with the gloves & seas?


The Reference kit comes with "Handling Gloves" to handle the drivers themselves. Kind of useless, but it's a nice touch.


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## tktran303 (Dec 30, 2005)

Hi,

Thanks for an interesting read.



> Real men use active crossovers.


Could you perhaps give the SEAS designed crossover a go, and tell us how it sounds. I'm sure there's a reason SEAS designed a complicated two-box crossover, complete with notch filter on the high pass


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## FoxPro5 (Feb 14, 2006)

I'm curious if you've used or heard the previous Lotus Ref set and how these compare.


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## PlanetGranite (Apr 12, 2005)

Thank you for the review rbsarve.



tktran303 said:


> Could you perhaps give the SEAS designed crossover a go, and tell us how it sounds. I'm sure there's a reason SEAS designed a complicated two-box crossover, complete with notch filter on the high pass


I will second what tktran said. I don't know how much changed with the new version, but the old Lotus passive network had an electrical -3db point of 400hz (lowpass) on the mid. As you can imagine, that provides significant attenuation to combat the mids ever rising response. Plus the notch at 4.5kHz.


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## Rbsarve (Aug 26, 2005)

Well, I should have done that, but one of my collagues wanted to try it out in his car which has on axis mounting, so it was pulled out of my car on saturday. 

Only one problem occured, when I removed the spade terminal form one of the tweeters it tore with it the whole connection terminal, so I now have a pretty but usless Seas tweeter sitting here. So more info on the kit when we get a replacement tweet.

-What replaced the Seas? A Tec SQ6 kit. And I will return with a review on them aswell, but lets just say that so far I´m smiling...


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## Et Cetera (Jul 28, 2006)

Yup had the same tweeter issue... except mine didnt tear out, the tinsel lead just broke internally... Seas replaced em right away... 

Anyways, tktran is right. I tried em in active mode and passive. And for once, passive sounds way better... This is a great set.


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## mvw2 (Oct 2, 2005)

Just on a side note, I wouldn't completely shy away from minor EQing. One would _like_ to think flat is best, but I can't see an audio system being perfect without some level of EQing, even if only very minor. I know you did some over the crossover range to help ease the transition, although there may be other solutions to blending them together. Since they seemed to come off as a bit dry and lifeless, you probably should have toyed with the lower end of the frequency specrum as well to help bring out a fuller, warmer presence.

It's kind of sad to hear that the tweeter's a bit easy to damage. It sounds like they should invest in a different connection method.


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## Rbsarve (Aug 26, 2005)

Normally I would naturally use an eq to tweak the system, but since I´m testing speakers I prefer to do it without an eq. The eq capablilties I have might be more then most pople have.


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