Seas Mimir 2-Way Speaker Kit - Pair - Parts Only

Manufacturer: Seas Prestige

1 Customer Review(s)

Product ID: MIMIR-KIT

$553.00

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10 - 10,000
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Seas Mimir Speaker Kit Pair
Price shown is for a PAIR

Please note: crossovers now built with the highly regarded ClarityCap CSA in series with tweeter. Older SA cap shown.

The Kit includes drivers and assembled crossovers for one pair of speakers.
Accessories are available separately.
The crossovers now use Solen PL nductor on the woofer, air core coils everywhere else and there is a ClarityCap CSA cap on the tweeter. Metal oxide film resistors are use on the tweeter.

Named after Mimir, a primal god of Norse mythology who was renowned for his knowledge and wisdom, we present a new high-end two-way speaker kit. The Mimir consist of an 18 cm long throw woofer with a coated paper cone - CA18RNX , and a 27 mm coated fabric tweeter - 27TDFC . Full documentation on this design can be found on the Seas website.

Enclosure and stuffing

The Mimir loudspeaker is based on a standard 14 liter (0.5 cubic foot) vented cabinet. This cabinet was chosen to give people an easy start to building a loudspeaker. The important thing to remember is to keep the baffle width and internal volume of the original enclosure. Adding braces to stiffen the cabinet is a good tip for the advanced builder to take the loudspeaker just a little bit further.

The amount of stufﬁng and port tuning is based on measurements and extensive listening. The cabinet is ﬁlled with 100g (0.22 lb) of stuffing (use wool or acousta-stuf). The stuffing is distributed evenly in the box, but kept away from the port opening to allow free movement of air. This to ensure that the airﬂow noise stays as low as possible. The port length is 20 cm including the ﬂanged end and the inner diameter is 5 cm. This gives a port tuning of 42Hz providing a smooth low frequency roll-off. (This is a 2FLARE 2" diameter port by 7.8" long)

7' of speaker wire is enough for internal wiring and we recommend the Supra Classic 1.6.
You can use our foam tape for making gaskets to mount the speakers, 8ft is needed.
(16) Black Ox & Wax Screws 8X1 or Black Ox & Wax Socket Head Screws 8X1 - for mounting drivers into cabinet
(8) Black Ox & Wax Screws 6x1/2 - for mounting crossovers to cabinet
Cabinets measure 9.1" W x 15.4" T x 10.5" D
Enclosure plans (PDF)
Example of cabinet shown below

Drive units

The woofer used in this system is the SEAS CA18RNX (H1215) . This is a long throw 18 cm woofer with a coated paper cone. The classical coated paper cone gives a smooth extended frequency response with a controlled roll off. The large magnet system gives good transient response, and the bumped back plate together with the very long, and light weight copper clad aluminum voice coil allow for extreme coil excursion with low distortion. The extremely stiff and stable injection molded metal basket, keeps the critical components in perfect alignment. Large windows in the basket both above and below the spider reduce sound reflection, air flow noise and cavity resonance to a minimum.

The tweeter is the SEAS 27TDFC (H1189). This is a 27 mm High Definition coated fabric dome tweeter with a wide, soft polymer surround. The dome and surround materials give high consistency and excellent stability against variations in air humidity. The voice coil is wound on an aluminum voice coil former with adequate ventilating holes to eliminate noise from internal air flow. The voice coil is immersed in low viscosity magnetic fluid, for high power handling capacity and simplified crossover design. A stiff and stable rear chamber with optimal acoustic damping allows 27TDFC to be used with moderately low crossover frequencies. The chassis is precision molded from glass fibre reinforced plastic, and its front design offers optimum radiation conditions. For detailed technical parameters on the drive units see the data sheets.

Crossover

The crossover is designed in LspCAD from IJData, with the objective to obtain a simple design without sacrificing the overall quality. Driver response and impedance were measured with the drivers mounted in the box at 1 meter distance 15 degrees off the tweeter axis in an anechoic room. This reference point was used in the design to minimize the influence of baffle edge diffraction. By measuring the drivers at the same point it is easy to simulate the summation of and phase response between the drivers. The crossover was developed empirically, without confinement to the traditional textbook filter formulas.

The drivers should be in phase at the crossover frequency, and the sum should be flat when both drivers are at -6dB relative to the pass band level. Now the inevitable vertical off-axis cancellation, which is always present with the use of non-coincident drivers, is at least outside the listening axis (tweeter axis). To accomplish the design goals it was necessary to use a 2nd order electrical filter for the high pass section, with an “l-pad” for attenuation because of the different sensitivities of the drivers. The low pass section was realized with a 2nd order electrical filter and a baffle-step compensator consisting of a parallel connection of an inductor and a resistor in series with the driver, thus providing a flat frequency response.

Measurements Anechoic free field response at 1 meter, 15 degrees off tweeter axis, measured at 2.83V. Impedance measured at 2V.

As seen in the figure the average sensitivity is 84dB and the response lies within ± 2dB. The black curve shows the response with the tweeter connected with opposite polarity. In this curve we look for a deep and symmetrical notch around the crossover frequency, which indicates that the drivers are in phase in the crossover region. Here the notch is more than 25dB deep, and that confirms that this system has a very good phase response. The blue and green curves show respectively the response of the woofer and the tweeter.

The 2nd order electrical crossover combined with the natural roll-off of the drivers gives a 4th order acoustical Linkwitz-Riley slope. The crossover frequency is 2.2 kHz, high enough for the tweeter to operate inside its limits, even at high amplitudes, and low enough so that the woofer doesn’t become too directional, and thus providing a smooth power response. The off-axis response of the Mimir is shown below. This figure shows that the power response is very smooth throughout the whole frequency range, and the controlled off-axis roll off of the tweeter.

The next figure shows the 2nd and 3rd order harmonic distortion with an output of 96dB at 1m. The overall distortion is very low and without any peaks that might become noticeable. This makes the reproduced music very clean and without coloration.

1 Customer Review(s)

Excellent value

Reviewed by bpkeagle on 03/27/2015

See, this is why I love DIY speakers. If I were to buy a pair of speakers that sound anywhere near as good as this kit, how much would I have to spend? Hard telling, but I'm sure the Mimir kit can easily stomp many commercial speakers that sell for well over $1000/pair. Don't get me wrong - companies like Klipsch, B&W, Paradigm, etc. make some fine speakers... but when you buy them you are not only paying for the cost of the parts. You are also paying a little piece of the engineer's salaries, the sales team's salaries, the HR department, the Finance department, the CEO's annual bonus, lease payment on factory space, etc. etc. With some modest woodworking skills you can cut out all the middle-men and build something that sounds even better for a lot less money.

The Mimir may be a "Bookshelf" kit, but it has the room filling presence of a floorstander. Our living room is 24x24 with 13 foot ceilings, and the Mimirs have no trouble at all filling it with sound. Even in this large space they can just about make your ears bleed if you so choose. As a matter of fact, I actually made mine into floorstanders - I built the .75 cu ft boxes as suggested, but then clad the boxes inside bigger boxes made of solid cherry and cherry paneling. Yes, I know, I probably introduced some unwanted panel resonances, but I made sure they were well braced. Anyway, they are gorgeous, and sound wonderful. As I said, they have no trouble filing the room, and at the same time they disappear acoustically, as a good speaker should.

The parts are all very high quality - absolutely no complaints whatsoever. Fit and finish is perfect. You will have to solder the wires onto the crossovers, so make sure you have a decent soldering iron. You should probably solder the wires onto all the leads too, though you can crimp them or use clips if you prefer.

The kit seems to have been designed with a somewhat lower crossover point than is typical - 2.2 kHz. Trying to get inside the designer's head, I think I can guess why this is so:

1) The Presige 27TDFC tweeters can handle it with no problem.
2) The CA18RNX drivers are 7" as opposed to the more typical 6" size for bookshelf models. The slightly larger driver gives better bass, but at the expense of the highs.
3) Using a lower crossover point helps reduce phase cancellation. Phase cancellation is always a problem for any multi-way speaker system, no matter how much it costs, because both the mids and the highs are producing sound all throughout the crossover range. Pushing the crossover point down a bit means that the crossover range is now into lower frequencies with longer wavelengths. Longer wavelengths means less phase cancellation. So those frequencies that normally get botched up by coming from more than one driver... more of those frequencies are now handled exclusively by the tweeter.

I'm no expert, but that's my theory and I'm sticking to it! :-)

Some may look at the drivers and be unimpressed by the treated paper cone and cloth dome tweeter. Yawn, right? Well actually, no. My 30,000 foot view is that manufacturers keep trying more and more exotic materials, such as various metals, kevlar, carbon fiber, etc., but consistently it's hard to beat treated paper and cloth. Think of it this way - pretend that treated paper had just been invented today. If someone told you that they had just invented a speaker cone material that sounded open and natural, didn't break up erratically, was plentiful, and best of all inexpensive, you'd probably think they were a genius, right? Well I've just described treated paper. The same can be said for cloth tweeters.

Anyway, there's no question that the Mimir kit is fabulous. Sometimes I think why on Earth would anyone really need anything more than this? They are plenty loud, plenty detailed, and have plenty of bass. Do not hesitate for even one second on buying this kit.

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