Agreed! I remember there was a time that I couldn't walk into a big box store that DIDN'T have at least a couple pushed in. Apparently the hose from a vacuum will pop them back out. Luckily, I can only say "apparently" because I've never had to find out first hand lol.
You can't compare Maggie's tweeters to compression drivers or other tweeters because of the their overall frequency design, it's part of the "speaker" itself.
I know I'm a bit late to the conversation... but you commented about the validity of a 1in tweeter reproduction of all that sound. Remember the holes in the sides of your head are only about a 1/2 in. Just food for thought
If a "small" 15-inch subwoofer can replicate the sounds of an earthquake, or a jet engine or an explosion, then I don't find it hard to believe that a 1" dome tweeter can produce the sounds of a cymbal or flute. If you consider it, a 2-inch driver in a headphone can reproduce 10hz-20khz depending on the headphone! That's even more amazing. I think it comes down to the distance from your ears. Headphones don't have to be large, because they only have to pressurize a small area around your ears. Speakers have to only pressurize your room. An earthquake has to produce sub frequencies outdoors in an open space. Take your largest speakers and take them outside and I bet a jet engine will out-perfom it in bass. ;-) I think it's amazing, but I don't think there's a rat.
Of course a tweeter can produce a wide range of frequencies, there's nothing hard to believe here. I assume all of this is part of the (sorry for the abbreviated swearing) BS theory common among audiophiles that in order to sound like let's say a piano, a speaker has to have the shape of a piano, or to sound like a cimbal, a tweeter has to have the same shape and size.
Usually that 15" is loaded into a cabinet that makes it perform larger either with porting or a kind of acoustic suspension. Having dealt with building multi tweeter full speaker systems I can honestly say it really does matter that the surface area of a 1" dome is lacking if it is given too much to do. In full range speakers with a 15" woofer usually there is at least a compression horn driver. In the past sometimes there were four way speakers. To my old ears they always sounded best.
Steve, the more I look at your videos, the more I confirm that my long held belief the journalist/critics really don’t know what they are writing or talking about is spot on. You remind of the guys that came over to listen to our beta test loudspeakers as we were designing them in the late 1980s. They argued back and forth if they were hearing gold or silver solder at the speaker wire terminals. Well, the solder was standard lead/rosin.
An interesting question and topic to be sure. I would add that it's helpful to think in terms of octaves when discussing bandwidth and frequency ranges. While 3 kHz - 20 kHz sounds like a huge range, it actually represents only about two and three quarters (2.75) octaves of the ten-octave bandwidth (20 Hz - 20 kHz) that a full-range loudspeaker aims to reproduce. This is still no small feat, but the other drivers are reproducing the lower ~7.25 octaves, which require the vast majority of the acoustic energy.
Consider this: 3kHz to 20KHz is only three octaves. The woofer has to produce something more like six or seven octaves. To me this is why so much more effort goes into the woofer.
may be just 3 octaves, but PHYSICAL demands of energy transfer to the different kinds of transducers G mentioned cannot be thought through with just "octaves". Imagine, that little piece of metal or silk is actually physically moving, vibrating, resonating, etc. Octaves is just a word that helps us imagine abstractions of sound and music, but various heat and stress effects on silk, aluminum, carbon, and etc. are physical events. One can be "fudged" a bit, but the other cannot, without damage to the tweet :)
No, the reason is the ear becomes less sensitive to lower frequencies meaning you need to push much larger volumes of air to hear or feel it. More effort?, subwoofer design is pretty simplistic for speaker manufacturers; the difficult part is manufacturing high excursion drivers that stay linear along their travel whilst having adequate cooling of the voice coil.
I've built many DIY speakers and over the years I realized that I got noticeably better piano sounds from the builds with higher 2way crossovers. ( 6k and up) I came to the conclusion that this was happening due to the woofer being able to better recreate the sounds of the piano than the tweeter. When I lowered the crossover frequency in the same speaker (2.5K) I would lose something. So now I raise my crossover frequencies higher if the woofer can accurately handle it.
The tweeter must be smaller and lighter to replicate higher frequencies. If you want a driver to replicate mid to very high frequencies, typically it must be small and light enough to vibrate at 10 thousand cycles per second under control. Being voice coil based, a tweeter has electrical and physical limitations that limit it to 3kish on the low end. Planar speakers are a one driver attempt for speaker design, so you don't have any crossover issues and a smoother spectrum. It's more or less comparing apples to oranges because a tweeter is inherently designed to be in a multidriver system whereas planars are just coupled with a subwoofer. Large high end multidriver systems use more complicated crossover systems and better drivers to better isolate frequencies for each individual driver, reducing work load for each driver and allowing the whole spectrum to be covered. Other system variables like baffle topology and cabinet design account for added harmonizing of the tweeters with the other drivers. Is it as perfect as a theoretical single point source that produces all frequencies? No, of course not. But it gets the job done quite well and I wouldn't call it anything close to a scam or physical impossibility.
It's possible that a 1" diameter tweeter will cause the high frequency sound waves to issue concentrically from the tweeter dome minimizing phase cancellation providing uniform frequency response and better imaging. A tweeter having a large area could cause phase cancellations and reinforcements when you moved relative to the radiating surface -- what we used to call the "picket fence" effect.
well imo this discussion boils down to "point source" and its polar pattern vs "line source" and its polar pattern. Different polar patterns sound different in different rooms, so (again) the question is "what sounds best *in your room*?"
Well, one difference is that 1" is the wavelength of roughly 14,000 hz, which as you approach wavelength size frequencies shorter than it tend to beam much, much more narrowly. This isn't the case with AMT tweeters, and ribbons and electrostatic tweeters, although planar tweeters I imagine the size matters, larger ones inevitably beam a ton, but they also don't roll off quite as drastically towards 20khz like dynamic tweeters.
@@jaredlapierre1304 i do not understand what you mean. The polar pattern depends on the wavelength and the width of the source (and a waveguide, if present). It's pure physics! The kind of tweeter does not matter in regard of the width. That AMTs are able to produce a higher output with a smaller surface (compared to a dome-tweeter) does not matter as long as the width is the same. Same goes for planar tweeters: they may have a comparable width and therefore have a similar *horizontal* polar pattern, but in general they are higher than a dome tweeter and therefore have a significantly different *vertical* polar pattern. And again it boils down to "what polar pattern sounds best *in your room*?"
Is there any way you could point me to a source that explains or elaborates on this? I’m not familiar with “point source” or “line source” and their relation to polar patterns. I realize that this post is 2 years old, and I’ve probably missed the boat on this one, but I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
@@robertgipson3153 this is such a deep field, i don't know any specific sources, just googled "speaker polar pattern". These look promising: www.doctorproaudio.com/doctor/cajondesastre/pdfs/brusi_understanding_directivity_game_numbers_doctorproaudio.pdf www.klippel.de/training/attachments/training8/Training_8_Measurement_of_Loudspeaker_Directivity_en.pdf
1" tweeters are able to work due to the level of energy required in the high-frequency range of audio is very low compared to lower frequencies. However, all of the diaphram materials flex (buckle) and generate resonances. Combined this with the rather small radiating surface limits them in cleanly reproducing a drum cymbal at a realistic SPL for example. It is more complex than that though. A drum cymbal sound would be split between the midrange and tweeter. Both drivers will be active for a portion of the band at the speaker's crossover frequency. The two devices are rarely in perfect phase even in high-quality speakers and up to 180 degrees out of phase. This causes distortion and/or cancellations and imaging problems. The more severe the phase mismatch the worse the issue is. This cannot be totally eliminated no matter what the cost of a conventional multi-driver speaker is, just minimized through better speaker design.
There is tools being used right now to minimize cone breakup and new materials as well. I have read of a BMR that exhibited no break up up to 50,000hz using this tool to measure. www.polytec.com/us/vibrometry/areas-of-application/acoustics-and-ultrasonics/$loudspeakers-and-musical-instruments/
I'm not an expert, but as I understand it with point source speakers, the size of the tweeter dome has to do with the shorter/higher frequency of sound waves the driver is being asked to produce. A small 1" driver is sufficient to produce these higher frequencies, whereas a bass driver produces lower frequencies which requires a much larger driver area in order to move more air. The challenge is trying to optimize power handling, frequency response (esp; in relation to the breakup point), and speed. I own Magico S5 Mk2's which use a Diamond-coated beryllium 1" tweeter designed to achieve an ideal balance of damping, stiffness and weight. I can attest that they sound fast, smooth & natural, have excellent off-axis response, high power handling & seamless integration with the midrange driver. To my ears, many textile dome tweeters don't have comparable resolution or dynamics to Magico's latest gen tweeters.
I have some 4" white speakers from a 1965 Sony reel to reel tape recorder and they sound absolutely incredible. They may be small, but they sound HUGE and the detail in the bass is so clean and detailed. The mids are silky smooth and the imaging is superb. The highs are also perfect. These things sound absolutely incredible for the entire frequency range, and despite their size, they sound genuinely HUGE. Size is not everything.
What's your thoughts on small Air Motion Transformers like the Dayton Air speakers use, mostly the tower since the bookshelf is kind of bottom-budget whatever.
A well engineered 1" dome tweeter with an excellent crossover and time alinement is an excellent compromise. You can get life like dynamics with excellent clarity with good transients with such a driver. With excellent cooling amazing output. Most dome tweeters are very easy to drive by even the most pedestrian amplifiers. Magneplanar speakers sound very life like but lack dynamics and do not play very loud. Even when you stack them. Electrostatics are the best sounding tweeters and can easily outperform the best conventional tweeters in every way when painstakingly engineered. The biggest problem with electrostatics is there are only a few on the market that will sound exceptional with inexpensive amplifiers ( IE they are a difficult load to drive consistently over their audio spectrum). Compression drivers for the most part have life like dynamics and play very loud. Most do not sound anywhere close to a live performance. Many bargain compression drivers are painful to listen to above moderate levels. So.......dome tweeters are an excellent compromise.
I like Steve's opinions conjectures and enthusiasm. This is hi fi and fun. Steve has lots of experience and is obviously a nice guy. Thanks Steve! Your Pal, Sky.
Well, I think it is small. I'm an audio engineer of over a decade. I also build speakers. I've been building speakers since 3rd grade. Getting those effortless, loud, transients is all about efficiency when it comes to a home stereo. A dome tweeter is what, 90dB at 1w/m usually? A horn loaded or comp driver horn is usualy 100dB at 1w/m once crossed over properly. So, you get over 3x the acoustical power right there. I have never cared for dome tweeters in a home theater setup where loud, highly dynamic sound is needed. Dome tweeters are better suited to nearfield listening. When I listen to speakers like the B&W, the Martin Logan, etc., I always miss the Klipsch horn tweeters for the highs. Sure, their mids might be better with their great woven kevlar driver or whatnot, but then, the highs and lows are lacking. I have stuck with Klipsch because of the effortless, transparent, output of their horn tweeters. It just works better when listening at 15+ ft away with movie transients blasting through the speakers. The dome tweeter are very accurate in frequency response at lower volumes, but can they handle the transients and make the music sound deep and three dimentional? At high volume I would say a horn loaded driver does a better job, although much harder to design and sound good.
Steve was not saying dome tweeters can not produce high frequencies as some here misunderstood. He was saying they can not produce the sound of certain instruments with a sense of "the ease" that say a Maggie can. One of my complaints about being a drummer and listening to various speakers with tweeters, is that they lack the sense of "ease" that real music provides. Steve just confirmed something for me. For someone has been recommending that good quality ribbon tweeters as having a more musical sound. I am always wondering where the "ease" went when I hear certain cymbals and overtones to instruments are being played. Many years ago I heard a pair of Maggies being demoed in a shop. And,now after listening to this video, know why they have left an impression on me to this day. Thanks, Steve.
And what's the diameter of a microphone membrane? You're biased against those kind of tweeter, besides, the smaller the diameter of the tweeter, the better its direccionality.
@ uh, last time I checked most sounds have harmonics, many instruments harmonics occur in the 10khz - 25khz region, where a 1" tweeter will have poor off axis performance at 14khz+ as opposed to a smaller tweeter. AMT offers the best of both technologies, IMO
@ LOL Off axis response is extremely important! The way we hear it isn't just the on axis response that we hear. You might want to read on power response, dispersion and directivity!
I enjoy your videos. Keep up the good work. Coming from a long time recording engineer (not an audiophile), I could speculate that the meat (volume) of big transients are usually not above 2k or 3k so a large driver may not be necessary to cover those frequencies. I use Pro Ac 100s that use this type of tweeter and the high frequency response is excellent and pleasing to my clients' ears. So many things are going on with speakers inside and out which is why I see them a musical instruments with a very wide range of possible outcomes even using the same components.
I think this applies to all speakers not just tweeters, I've always been amazed at getting the sound we do get, from what is relatively small pieces of cone material being whacked around by an electromagnet.
I'm still stumped about the fact that all of our cone drivers have the INSIDE of the cone facing the listeners. Wouldn't it work better to have the magnets and coils on the inside and turn the outside of the cone toward the listening area?!
I love my A2s which are my primary speakers I use along with a Yamaha sub woofer. I never questioned the tweeters in the speakers and I don't have a means or the space for a larger pair of speakers at this time. I just enjoy listening to music from my PC on my A2s and Sub. They are way loud enough, tons of bass and sound great to my ears. Nice imaging since they are on my desk at ear level 3 feet apart.
Steve, ever since I was a young boy I have used sound or noise protection around uncomfortable noises. Not just loud but annoying frequencies as would come from a mother in law. I did this because the entire generation of men before me went DEAF because they thought it was a manly or macho thing to handle loud noises. My hearing is great!, People are amazed when I am the only person in the room who runs out when we test the high frequencies of loudspeakers. They hear nothing and I am the dog in the room. That said, I have never heard a ribbon tweeter that I like. My closet has 10 different pairs but I never warmed up to them except the speakers from Legacy. I love Seas, Scanspeak and Dynaudio soft dome tweeters. In my home system I use a Cabasse polycarbonate dome which is also an excellent performer thanks to Geffery Dillon of Dillon audio but I love the dome.
It seems to me that ribbon tweeters are definitley "love em or hate em" designs. Steve's Maggies have a quasi-ribbon tweeter that is quite a bit more tolerable to my ears. A pattern I've noticed with ribbons is they're often liked by older audiophiles - which makes me ponder whether that's tied to hearing loss.
nicholascremato "That said, I have never heard a ribbon tweeter that I like. " What is it you don't like about them? I'm curious because I never heard one but I read some conflicting opinions (and comparing with silk dome), and new designs that are well regarded come with those.
Steve you are right on with this one. It is the surface area exposed to the air, and because air compresses, the more electrical energy you feed it the less efficient it is transferring the sonic energy wave they compress the high frequecies.To couple to the air better you need more square area or a transforming device like a horn. ESS Hiel made an air motion transformer (tweeter) that had a membrane that was folded back and forth like and air or oil filter element in a car. This squeezed the air out the front and rear of the device since it is a bi-polar driver. Ever wonder why heavy rock fans loved speakers like RTR , JBL Century 100's, and Pioneer HPM-100? These used paper tweeters which were veiled and lacked tactile nuance that domes have. So what gives? Square area of the tweeter is what it is, less compression at loud volumes which is why they sound good loud. Loud sound is more lifelike when it is uncompressed. I have 1 inch silk domes on my critical listening system, but my other two systems are Altec Valencia 846A with tube mono blocks, and Sansui intergrated amp pusing Speakerlab 4's for my rockin out system which uses the EV HT-35 compression horns, same as the old Klipsch tweeter. The Altecs are better for vocal, acoustic, or soft music, they get too wiggy if you try to play them too loud.
Except there is no such thing as a point source. At high frequencies dome tweeters are quite directional. Above ka = 1, for 1" dome tweeter becomes directional at 4,35 kHz. At ka=3 (13 kHz) it is very directional level drops significantly at angle 25deg it is -3dB
The sound pressure produced by the driver is proportional to the sound frequency squared and is proportional to the volume of air it moves. What this means is that the driver has to move 10000 more air back and forth to produce the same sound pressure for 30Hz when compare to 3kHz. So a 10" driver playing 30Hz is still require to have 100x more linear movement than a 1" tweater playing at 3kHz.
My compression drivers have 1.75" diaphragms with 1" throat apertures. I use Karlson couplers, rather than horns to provide loading and dispersion. They seem effortless to me. The area of a 1" diaphragm is 0.785 sq. in. and a 1.75" diaphragm is 2.405 sq. in. Both of these are significantly smaller than the 63 sq. in. of Steve's Magnepans. It leads me to believe that excursion, area and geometry are all important.
A speaker cone or dome needs to move as one piston, compressing and decompressing the air. The more surface area this piston has, the more air it will move. A woofer moves at a low frequency, which is why we can make them rather big, and still have the whole thing move as one piston. However, tweeters move at high frequencies, which means that in order to make them act like one piston, they either have to be extemely rigid (making them too heavy) or very small, like, say 1 inch. A tweeter simply has to be small to work properly. Horns are able to increase the effective surface area of a small tweeter, which is why a horn loaded tweeter produces more sound than a standalone dome tweeter.
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Take a look at "bending wave " types. One of the majors just reviewed one. TAS or Stereophile. Begins with a Z, me thinks. Highly reviewed.
I totally hear you. A big speaker is a big speaker. You're absolutely right. Dome tweeters are ok, but will never do what a good compression driver will do. A dome tweeter generally has a common ringing which I'm not a fan. Dome tweeters are mainly used due to marketing reasons as they were the in thing many years ago and these days are a must as people wouldn't buy the tweeter. Just like paper cone woofer to me are still the best sounding drivers, however due to marketing they are no longer in. You cannot beat a well designed large diaphragm compression driver as it sounds very natural due to no unnecessary diaphragm movement.
Steve I'm giving my home system to my son later this year. The replacement speakers will have 1" silk dome tweeters. Why because they sound right to me on the material I listen to. Part of the reason a 1" tweeter can work is the length of a full wavelength at 2,000 kHz is 6.75 inches and at 10,000 kHz 1.35 inches.
Should there be a similarity between the size of the instrument and the transducer (speaker) .. hmmm if so, then how about the mike!!!! After all, we are talking about energy transfer from and to air and to your ear. Just an idea that popped into my head. Thanks Steve, your talks are very thought provoking.
The amount of volume displaced to reproduce a given frequency is quickly reduced as the frequency goes up. 4x per octave I believe (have to check my notes). But I don't entirely disagree that a lot of dome tweeters are overwhelmed when the volume is turned up and the music gets dense.
I'm not an expert either but when I think about it, the ear is much more sensitive to high frequencies in that you need less power and less air movement compared to lower frequencies. It doesn't take much surface area. The higher the frequency the more directional the sound. The spatial cues are in the high frequency range. When you use a large surface cancellations may happen and due to the larger mass you need more power to drive them. I'm not sure how that physically works out with Magnepans tweeters though. Then the crossover is also important and speaker placement, room treatment etc. With my diy speakers I use them in quad stereo setup and find the sound stage similar to headphones while retaining the detailed bass punching in the gut :) And time of arrival is also important for impulse sounds like the crashing cymbals. So the drivers should be at the same distance from the listener so cone alignment can be important. Crossovers can shift the phase to that's also important (commercial speakers often have sub par phase implementation in the cross overs if I can believe GR-Research).
Absolutely agree with you. I think speaker manufacturers have hypnotized us into thinking two way speakers with shrill top ends are desirable," just look at our frequency response graph". Damn your graph it hurts my ears! I am building some 3 way speakers now with a 4" mid-range, I am going to be using an electronic signal processor / crossover to see how high it will go, to take the load off that poor overworked little dome.
It is absolutely true that the area of diaphram is the governing factor of a cone loudspeaker's efficiency however, the efficiency factor is always divided by the moving mass of the loudspeaker. Tiny dome tweeter's lightness (a dome is just another variant of a cone) compensates for the smallness of the area. Then there is another interesting factor literally in the air. The higher in frequency a solid object vibrates, the more efficiently the vibration energy transfers to the adjacent air. Less electrical power and smaller area are just enough to reproduce useful sound pressure at high frequency region.
It is all about the power distribution. Only about 15% of the power goes to the tweeter when it is crossed over at 3kHz and 35% when cross at 1.2kHz. That is the reason why for most cases a 1” tweeter is more than enough to handle the music. More importantly, higher frequencies then to start beaming when the diameter of the cone is greater than the wavelength of the frequency. That is why bass is omnidirectional cause u don’t have a driver greater than 3’.
I sure shit wouldn't want an 8" playing >3 KHz. That is like ka=5,5 ... -3dB at angle ~15 deg. At 6 kHz it is beaming like hell. I don't want my head in vise to enjoy music. Tell that to the full range crowd.
Steve, some years back McIntosh made a high-end speaker with 1 inch or thereabouts Dome tweeters that were arranged in a vertical line source manner -- they were awesome. ( if I could have afforded them I would have purchased them :-) ) The multiplicity of drivers enabled them to handle a lot of power, effortlessly and transients were no problem for them at all.
Because of their dispersion characteristics and low frequency performance. Most domes can reach down 1-3khz, ribbons much higher toward 5k often. Also, their dispersion is quite wide without a waveguide. 60-80° easily, some more. Making designs using them less needy for placement. Both of these things combine to make matching up with an average woofer quite possible. Both in terms of mitigating beaming from the woofer, and allowing both to play in an optimal range. Basically, they are a godsend for simple 2 way designs, and without requiring a waveguide or horn like a compression driver. Ribbons generally go in 3 way because of the high cross frequency, most woofers are well into beaming and breakup at that point, so they add a small midwoofer or dome to cover everything in between. Compression drivers aren't generally cost effective, and are a bit different to work with, not to mention the physical mass and size of most compression drivers. So it all circles back to the nice and easy dome tweeter. Such a simple design that does so much. Want more? Go for better designs 🤷♂️ I personally like a 4 way. Subwoofer taking care of 1~50hz, woofer taking care of 50~450, midwoofer taking 450-3k, 3k to 20+ taken care of by a coaxial compression driver. It's what I'm working on right now with a b&c triaxial, and jbl cinema subwoofer. Sensitivity will be near 94db, though will probably only go down to ~24hz without issue. After that I'm going to be excursion limited under that at 110db and I plan for much much more. Probably change the box and tuning for the jbl cinema woofer and add a large powered horn loaded ulf section to take care of ~30hz down. Then I can run all the way to 122db before I need a different woofer. Which will probably be fine in my space.
Thank you for providing this insight Steve..I’m in the middle of putting together an audio system in my vehicle and I’m going back and forth between a setting up a 2 way vs a 3 way in each door...and based on this video I think I’m leaning towards a 3 way...
I have always wondered why there are not 5 speakers per side. A woofer, mid woofer, midrange, mid tweeter, and tweeter. It takes all the strain off any 1 speaker and depending on angle or side to side placement, allows a designer to play around with the harmonics of the totality of the speakers. I went into electronics repair and design and not audio but sometime I wish I had learned more about the audio side and speaker design. I used to build award winning Car Sound systems and can design a sub box and setup to rock the street, but never went far enough to build speaker systems.
Must agree. I have Acoustat 2+2 full-range electrostatic speakers that have an effortless, flat high end to die for. A few months ago I listened to $16K Wilson speakers -- don't know which specific Wilsons -- driven by extremely good electronics (i.e., Bolder power amplifier and like quality line amp and DAC). The high end was unnatural, shrill, and with a peak around 4 to 8 k. I'm so glad I don't have to live with those things in spite of the fact that they're very good speakers. 90 percent of the time I listen to classical music with a heavy emphasis on solo piano and chamber music. In my view, this genre of music is best served by electrostats or maggies. On the other hand, if you're principally into rock and other sorts of music with a lot of "slam," then you're probably going to find my speakers anemic and too analytical. The other disadvantage of my speakers is that the soundstage is not the best. I have excellent resolution from top to bottom and from side to side, but a relative lack of sharply defined instruments sitting on a stage behind my speakers, especially if there's many instruments (solo instruments and voices can be exquisitely imaged). This problem has been significantly improved by my acquiring a tube line amplifier (Asthetix Calypso Signature), an Ayre CD player, and a Bryston 14Bsst2 amplifier, but I've heard better. One finally observation: I can listen to my system for many hours without a break and suffer no fatigue. Can't say that for my experience with the Wilsons. After about an hour I wanted to get out of the room. Don't know what that was about.
In car audio we normally cut the frequency going to tweeters at no less than 5kHz. I prefer to cut them off at +8kHz. Never had a prob with imaging or sound reproduction from tweeters.
Ribbon style tweeters in a line source (many drivers stacked) were-are the way to go. Infinity got that right years ago with some of their speakers. PS Audio is now designing speakers like that to be released next year. Big bucks however.
I find this video very intriguing and does go back to the argument of point source vs line source. I have been a fan of line source speaker such as the Infinity IRS and planar speakers such as Magnepans for almost 50 years. Cost , size and space considerations make them impractical for most folks, but what a sound!
Steve Roginski.Couldn`t agree more.I have Apogee ribbon planar speakers actively driven which have large single mr/treble ribbons 4 feet long which have much lower distortion than a single dome tweeter and also don`t suffer from thermal dynamic compression due to their large radiating area, 48 square inches which is aquivalent to a 10 inch moving coil driver.
Until you made the statement that there seems to be an overabundance of soft dome tweeters in use from low to high end speakers, I hadn't thought about it. But you are exactly right, and I must say when I started looking at speakers from your question it does make one think that there would be more diverse, and innovative tweeters available and in use. Especially with speakers costing tens of thousands of dollars a pair. And that the public is being laughed at for being "suckers" by the speaker manufacturers. I think you are on to something here.
Like everything else it depends on how loud you like to listen. If you want to listen to a cymbal as loud as a cymbal goes I'd recommend more tweeter. That or add a midrange that goes to 5 or 6 khz. Probably some sort of tractrix compression horn. An eminent apt80 horn tweeter gets very loud for its size above 4k. What helps out is ears are very sensitive up here so it doesn't take a lot of power to get them loud.
it all comes down to 2 things which led to the dome tweeter. assume that we are looking at a hypothetical single driver speaker with a flat response. this means that anywhere within its frequency response +-0db, our woofer's diaphragm will move from peak to peak at the same rate regardless of what frequency you're playing. the rate at which the woofer moves corresponds to the volume of the speaker. so the longer it takes to complete a full cycle of a waveform, the further the woofer will move peak to peak. so lets say we want to play a loud 20 hertz sine wave. the only way we can have both loud and low frequency is by having the woofer move extremely far from peak to peak. but there is a solution. people who developed speakers quickly realized that the larger the surface area is, the louder the speaker can be. so instead of having a crazy large peak to peak excursion value, we can increase the surface area of the woofer so the woofer doesn't have to move back and forth as much. if we are only concerned about higher frequencies, then the peak to peak value of our woofer would be exponentially smaller than when we were playing the low frequencies. in fact, if you were to put your finger on a bluetooth speaker's woofer when it is playing a high frequency, it would not appear to be moving at all. so, there is no need for a large surface area when producing high frequencies at the same volume as a low frequency. we can increase the peak to peak travel distance of our new woofer (which is still incredibly small even after the increase), and decrease the surface area, which explains why the tweeter is so small. it also makes sense to use a small high frequency driver (dome tweeter) because the weight of the silk dome and voice coil together is very low compared to the woofer. as you might know from physics class, mass is the opposite way to get something to move fast. so, the lighter the tweeter is, the better it accepts transients and acceleration, and requires less wattage. the dome tweeter is, to my understanding, the most efficient balance between surface area and peak to peak travel distance for a typical voice coil driven tweeter. side note: many speakers have more than one driver. this helps because we dont need to make a huge woofer that is incredibly lightweight yet stiff enough to not distort. so by adding a dedicated high frequency driver, we can worry less about the weight of the woofer.
Good discussion. Tweeters have been on my mind lately. My Klipschorns have that "ease" that Steve mentions, but to my ear the K-77 tweeter is a bit dry and lacks the sweetness of many domes. But high marks for excitement. Whew! No better speaker for "Kind of Blue"! Not selling them anytime soon. But I'm intrigued by Paul McGowan's (of PS audio) plan to use multiple ribbon tweeters in his upcoming speakers, which are based on the old Infinity IRS speakers designed by Arnie Nudell. It seems to me that ribbons have the same advantages as electrostats at the high end: superb transient response. And multiple ribbons might allow for greater ease and detail. But I imagine comb filtering becomes a challenge when you have multiple high-frequency point sources arrayed near each other. Not sure if the physics of ribbons and/or line arrays changes that fact.
The titanium diaphragms are a vast improvement over the K77 phenolic. They won't turn them into polite British speakers but they'll take that edge off. Maybe one day Klispch will discover that an even better approach would be a compression driver with PEI dome. As for ribbons, they're a love em or hate em design in my opinion. They tend to beam like lasers, or in the case of large ones - have comb-filtering problems as you suggested. The large ones also tend to blur imaging definition so the soundstage is presented as a sort of impressionist canvas.
The new(er) tweeters in the Klipsch Heritage line with the titanium diaphragms (as well as the midrange) are to many ears smoother sounding than the older tweeter. It wouldn't be that difficult to upgrade yours.
i can say, with personal building experience for the past 2 years, power handling and ease of integration is the biggest reason for 1 inch dome tweeters. i personally use a subwoofer, midbass, full range that is used to cover the vocal range and into the 4-5k range, and then either an amt or a silk dome and bullet super tweeter. i like splitting the frequency range across drivers well suited to those frequencies, and i like to stay on the large size for all my drivers. a 12 inch servo sub with a pair of passives, 7 inch midbass, 5 inch full range, amt, and a bullet makes for one of the most dynamic and gigantic sound profiles to ever come out of a boring looking set of "towers"
Tweeters need to have low mass (weight) in order to move fast enough to recreate high frequencies without distortion. That’s why larger speakers suck at high frequencies because the mass reduces their speed. So theoretically, the smaller the better (or the smaller the cleaner) except when you go too small you lose output volume. Basically you have to strike a balance, and only a well trained ear can really assess that balance properly regardless of the specs or graphs.
You cannot say one size tweeter is better than another; basically a great tweeter will have extremely low mass and high force so it can respond quickly whilst also having the right shape to radiate sound images effectively. At 20Khz the wavelength of sound is 17mm, so there is good reason to keep tweeter size below this to stop off perpendicular resonance and away from harmonics(fractions of that wavelength) at sizes (17/2,17/3,17,4..)
We're talking about 3 octaves, so how about 3 1" dome tweeters with crossovers that would give each one an octave? I don't know if I'd notice the difference, but it would probably get rid of some Doppler distortion.
I have several speakers in my home. Paradigms, B & W etc. ALL have 1" dome tweeters. They seem to do a good job. BUT...I'm 58 years old and I'm sure my hearing isn't as good on the high end as it USED to be, so I might have to agree with you, Steve! 15" woofer and a 15" dome tweeter should get the job done! LOL!
Hi Steve, have you heard or reviewed the Lance CORONA plasma tweeter. the specs and Internet soundings have put it on my"to listen too" wish list. Love your energy and show.
And that's why I'm a 3 way fanatic! A 4 inch midrange can do marvel for transient and dynamic scale. Also they can support more power whitout distortion, but the crossover must be up to par.
I mean, it really just depends on the wave size and intensity. but, I think the real argument is the woofer going up to 2 or 3k. The dispersion of a woofer at 2kHz is extremely narrow. That kind of messes things up off axis. That's why a horn or using a midrange driver might help the sound quality throughout the room
Legacy doesn't have just one tweeter in their giant boxes. Many companies are moving to ribbon tweeters for a higher output. Saying that my Paradigm speakers have dome tweeters (metal) that sound exceptional with all the music I play. My Canton pedestal mount also has exceptional highs with their dome tweeters. Sometimes "thou dost protest too much!"
I'm using 9 3/4" soft dome silk doped ADS tweeters in my Atmos system. They can't compete with electrostats like Magnepan, but the Magnepans can't compete with the dynamics in the bass. The attack decay and sustain and release of these light little domes are hard to beat.
Thank you for your video. Twice you went through a list of dome materials without mentioning the granddaddy of them all, plutonium dome tweeters. Plutonium dome tweeters really radiate sound, or is it irradiate, I can’t remember.
I agree! Not just in tweeters, but more surface area is better at all frequencies. It's better acoustic coupling to the air mass in the room and a large area requires less excursion to get the same volume displacement. Personally I like Air Motion Transformers for tweeters that are large enough to have significantly more surface area than a 1" dome. My 2-ch system uses the Dayton AMT-Pro4 and in my opinion there isn't a 1" dome anywhere that can match the performance. For my new home theater I'm building CBT line arrays with fourteen of the AMT-Pro4's in each main line and ten in the center line. These will have dramatically more surface area than a dome tweeter. I expect these to sound very effortless!
It's a 1" diameter point source, that is not dipole that really chokes the treble. Take any box speaker and add a top facing or rear facing tweeter and the speaker will sound much better because it will have much better presence because the highs will be coming from the back wall and/or ceiling as well, and that's before you zero in the crossover slope. I like ribbon tweeters and Air Motion Transformer (AMT) tweeters, but they have to be dipole for me. Larger radiating surface and bi-directional. I have the 1.7i's and augment them with full range Fostex 168E Sigma's and they sound amazing because I use them in a dipole configuration facing the ceiling. You can try this out by going to Parts Express or Madisound and buying a tweeter, crossover and pot and hooking it up to your existing setup. Then you'll really start to wonder what's up!
I have read some of your articles in the past Steve and thought they were well written. But I was disappointed by this discourse. As an audio journalist or just a journalist in general, if you pose a question you are supposed to go and find the answer instead of forming your own conclusion and making an opinion piece. I think you need to talk to designers, and a wide variety of them so they can tell you why they used a 1" dome tweeter on a $59,000 pair of speakers or didn't and used some other alternative. If you smell a rat, go and find it.
@@tigergallant I generally avoid talking to anyone who labels themselves an audiophile because it devolves into an agument, so that is completely true haha
I think there are some pretty good soft dome tweeters. However, they must not be smaller than 1 inch. With the exception one companies .75 inch soft dome tweeter, I haven't heard a good soft dome tweeter below 1 inch in diameter. And, yes I think compression drivers outperform the soft dome tweeters a large majority of the time. I cannot comment of the ribbon tweeters, haven't heard them yet.
it depends on the crossover. but the lesser the frequency the lesser the movment. so crossovers make all the difference. what do you prefer 2 or 3 way? 1 or 5 way?
the thing with dome tweeter is the ability to handle power and also radiation pattern issue. a properly designed dome tweeter(yes, with a horn or waveguide) sounds better than normal dome. the thing is that bigger driver or horn loaded driver has better impedance matching with air. like you have a funnel with steel balls filled and you push the one steel ball from the smaller side of funnel(throat of horn and less air molecule), it moves the many stacked in front(more air volume at mouth of horn), so you get efficient speaker, which can be then reduced in sensitivity by circuit so driver move less. the issue is more of power handling and those small driver power limit hits quickly and they distort compared to bigger counterpart and about horn loaded, they dont need to powered much to get much loud.
If someone stole that little "pillow" in the corner of your ceiling while you were away, would you notice that the sound is different when you returned?
Is the different the scale? or the type of driver? The implementation of the crossover and any roll-off filters? I'd be curious how much of that is clearly audible in blind testing, versus what we impose on it based on our expectations.
I'll go along with your assessment between dome vs loaded horn but magnepan's magneplanar diaphragm design, although having some amazing characteristics, has it's own issues. They seem to be doing a lot to overcome some of the challenges of that design, i.e. efficientcy issues and durability, so it may be the best design in the long run. I think people will continue to prefer different type of tweeters. I personaly would love to own a pair but properly powering them is out of my price range currently.
If you referring to the dynamic range of those mid-high to high frequencies, I think multiple dome tweeter combined to be 42" tall would work just as well. Our eardrum is much smaller than an inch yet can detect those sounds you speak about, so a tweeter should be able to reproduce just as well.
They do measure OK regarding frequency response, BUT they definitely dont measure the same when you start measuring THD@high SPL... Yes those large surface area speakers you mentioned definitely have way lower distortion, plus sound dispersion pattern is way different (does not involve room so much because of beaming effect) so yes they do sound different, better (subjective though)...
1. they radiate well. 2. they''re cheap to manufacture relatively speaking (as compared to a good horn or ribbon). 3. They have sensitivities that are fairly easy to match to midrange and bass cone drivers (makes crossover design more straightforward).
I hear what you are sayin' here Steve. Yes. Obviously, you can get a lot of sound out of that small speaker. Goes without question. The question (in my tiny mind, at least) is whether you can really get the full "richness", shall we say, out of that one tiny driver? Would larger tweeters work better? Or would a multitude of tweeters that are each wired (crossovers) to respond to just a smaller part of that 3 to 20+kHz range (acting like a small choir) be a better option? I would like to try my hand at designing my own speakers in the near(ish) future. I'm thinking that perhaps two or three larger tweeters wired to "sing different parts" would produce a fairly rich sound. Now, all I need to do is figure out how to design the crossovers to do that! (Yep. Just bit off more than I can chew!)
Good lord no... The only advantage of a larger tweeter would be the ability to play / cross over lower. This would be nice, but in order to obtain this you would be sacrificing top end extension, especially off axis. And to use multiple tweeters covering different frequency bands would be an absolute nightmare. The whole concept is to use the minimum numbers of drivers / crossovers you possibly can to achieve your goal. Increasing the number of drivres you have playing different frequency ranges will mean a nightmare crossover and a phase response from hell. A for "richness" - sound is not food nor does it own assets. Richness is not a characteristic of sound. High frequency extension? Fine detail resolution? Linearity of ampitude response? Because a good 1" dome can achieve all of those things if executed well.
You should go and listen to a 12 inch twitter... in our language is called a subwoofer! :P Joking aside...dome twitters are my favs :) Maybe ribbon close or surpassing it a bit.
adding: 2 x dome tweeter = +3db, 4x dome tweeter = +6db, 8x dome tweeters=+9db OR 1 horn loaded compression driver ~= 10 dome tweeters usually at 105 to 110db efficiency. and waaay lower distortion. twice as loud = approx. +10db
I get it. Large ribbon tweeters sound true to live in an acoustic set. And the clarity and smoothness of their sound does not clip or distort even at high volume levels. They are clear and have an authentic presence.
I agree with you to some extent, Steve. I think what to are responding to is a combination of distortion and the power that gets into the room. Most tweeters, even those with a short coil in a long gap, struggle to get to -50dB THD. That's 0.3%, and quite often at less than 1W. The Magnepans, while not ideal, need to move perhaps a 100th of the distance for the same level of output so don't get to see excursion or field non-linearity. Nor do they heat up and vary the current in the coil (though I have found it very hard to pin down this supposed compression effect, and just haven't seen a significant change in resistance). The other thing is that the horizontal directionality in the Magnepans is built into the speaker, being determined by the width. Because this is the same for the midrange and tweeter it should be very easy to achieve a seamless transition from mid to treble; in a standard speaker without a tweeter waveguide there is a notable discontinuity in directionality with the tweeter radiating in a forward full hemisphere and, at 3k, the midrange managing perhaps half that angle. The solution to this in a 'standard' speaker is to lower the crossover point to around 2k-2.2k for a (slightly) better match, but this makes the distortion worse. The situation is complicated, but if the designer is maintaining a flat response through the crossover region axially then the sound coming off the walls will have a higher low treble content than the direct sound. The designer may decide to ease off on the treble a touch to make up for the subjective effect of this. If he does, then you can expect to lose that sense of real power. Some of the most popular crossover alignments can suck out power too, giving you that totally domestic sound with pint-sized musicians playing on your mantlepiece. If the designer then decides to compensate for the rise in treble response on axis (tweeters do become directional as well), then you are all the way back to the Spendor BC1. :) A well executed design with the tweeter in a waveguide, or concentrically mounted in a midrange, should get you over these problems and reproducing scale shouldn't be a problem. Because the tweeter is radiating into a narrower solid angle its sensitivity goes up (by 5 or 6dB) and this helps on the distortion side. With a 1" tweeter there will always be a cap on the undistorted peak output (and I would argue for something larger than 1" for this reason, as well as the distortion at lower levels) but you are then talking about a whole different class of speaker if the bass unit excursion is not going to become the limiting factor. For the sort of rooms that ordinary people live in, a 1" tweeter should be more than adequate.
Soft dome tweeters have a maximum design and physical output in terms of loudness which may be less than hard dome tweeters,cone tweeters etc. I don't think they are inadequate in the way you said you felt, because the answer is simply to use multiples of them to obtain the necessary volume in order to benefit from their sweet tone. Of course,multiple tweeters of any variety follow the same rules.
For many decades I've enjoyed the Celestion HF1300 tweeter along with a supertweeter. A combination used by the BBC. I run BBC/ Rogers LS3/6 speakers, they use Celestion HF1300 tweeter and Celestion HF2000 as the supertweeter. As for larger panel tweeters, I have Quad ESL57's and ESL63's
Regarding the "transients of music", Nyquist's Information Theorem still applies. Those transients can't be TOO small in duration or they'd by definition be out of the range of human hearing. Any transient that can be heard must be wthin the range of hearing. Stating the obvious. If the tweeter, combined with the other drivers, can cover the full range of frequencies you can hear, then they must be able to reproduce any audible signal including audible transients. Now, the dynamic range and responsiveness of some tweeters will be better than others. Sure, there's a difference between tweeters. But there's nothing at all inadequate about dome tweeters in general and their commonality and widespread acceptance is itself evidence of the sonic integrity and capability of the design. It's the wheel of the speaker world. It doesn't NEED to be reinvented, now that we have a nice round thing that rolls smoothly and easily and can carry a decent load.
I have listened to very high end dome tweeters, but Im afraid this guy's argument doesnt hold water. Planars are ok, but the soundstage is limited, and a dome tweeter seems to do this with ease. It really depends on the materials employed as to how well the tweeter handles the material. Im not a fan of planars, save in headphones where they really shine.
Michael Richter kef went down hill for me when they switched to a one Inch dome tweeter to handle not even just the highs but more of the mids as well. This have them this receded yet bright. Sure it appealed more to the American thump and tizz market but the speakers no longer disappear like they used to with practically everything important coming from the most receded element hidden behind the tangerine waveguide which was supposed to make up for the loss in air. They even went all boxy and went with 2 dummy radiators vs 2 active LF drivers each with their own tuning which always played way better with a sub.
I have Martin Logan's ESL's. I have loved their sound for years for years before I bought a set. I love their openness if you like . They have to me a realistic sound. Mine are the cheapest but all their speakers use a vibrating plastic films to produce their sound.The go up to 22000Hz I believe with no effort.I love them!
![If you can't hear this then you're not an audiophile [See description for link to followup video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/48PxwspDvrE/mqdefault.jpg)
I can't comment on technicalities, but I can say they are magical little things that just happen to attract kids finger tips when exposed.
mrpositronia, Hahahaha! How true!!!
Agreed! I remember there was a time that I couldn't walk into a big box store that DIDN'T have at least a couple pushed in.
Apparently the hose from a vacuum will pop them back out. Luckily, I can only say "apparently" because I've never had to find out first hand lol.
I’ve been able to take a sewing needle and prick the edge (not penetrating the dome) to pop it out.
That's risky. I would imagine a plunger would do just fine?
mrpositronia Yep, nothing I’d try with a $10k speaker; I’ve never tried a vacuum hose.
I'm just going to design a speaker with 2 dome tweeters, 1 horn, 2 ribbon tweeters two mids and 2 10 inch woofers!!! Take that harmonics!
You can't compare Maggie's tweeters to compression drivers or other tweeters because of the their overall frequency design, it's part of the "speaker" itself.
I know I'm a bit late to the conversation... but you commented about the validity of a 1in tweeter reproduction of all that sound. Remember the holes in the sides of your head are only about a 1/2 in. Just food for thought
If a "small" 15-inch subwoofer can replicate the sounds of an earthquake, or a jet engine or an explosion, then I don't find it hard to believe that a 1" dome tweeter can produce the sounds of a cymbal or flute.
If you consider it, a 2-inch driver in a headphone can reproduce 10hz-20khz depending on the headphone! That's even more amazing.
I think it comes down to the distance from your ears. Headphones don't have to be large, because they only have to pressurize a small area around your ears. Speakers have to only pressurize your room. An earthquake has to produce sub frequencies outdoors in an open space. Take your largest speakers and take them outside and I bet a jet engine will out-perfom it in bass. ;-)
I think it's amazing, but I don't think there's a rat.
Of course a tweeter can produce a wide range of frequencies, there's nothing hard to believe here. I assume all of this is part of the (sorry for the abbreviated swearing) BS theory common among audiophiles that in order to sound like let's say a piano, a speaker has to have the shape of a piano, or to sound like a cimbal, a tweeter has to have the same shape and size.
Yes. TW does not play music, almost, it only adds some "spikes and needles". Theres not much sound material to play in hi freq range.
Usually that 15" is loaded into a cabinet that makes it perform larger either with porting or a kind of acoustic suspension. Having dealt with building multi tweeter full speaker systems I can honestly say it really does matter that the surface area of a 1" dome is lacking if it is given too much to do. In full range speakers with a 15" woofer usually there is at least a compression horn driver. In the past sometimes there were four way speakers. To my old ears they always sounded best.
Isn't it more about the directionality more than what frequencies it can reproduce?
Joe N Tell i
Steve, the more I look at your videos, the more I confirm that my long held belief the journalist/critics really don’t know what they are writing or talking about is spot on. You remind of the guys that came over to listen to our beta test loudspeakers as we were designing them in the late 1980s. They argued back and forth if they were hearing gold or silver solder at the speaker wire terminals. Well, the solder was standard lead/rosin.
An interesting question and topic to be sure. I would add that it's helpful to think in terms of octaves when discussing bandwidth and frequency ranges. While 3 kHz - 20 kHz sounds like a huge range, it actually represents only about two and three quarters (2.75) octaves of the ten-octave bandwidth (20 Hz - 20 kHz) that a full-range loudspeaker aims to reproduce. This is still no small feat, but the other drivers are reproducing the lower ~7.25 octaves, which require the vast majority of the acoustic energy.
Consider this: 3kHz to 20KHz is only three octaves. The woofer has to produce something more like six or seven octaves. To me this is why so much more effort goes into the woofer.
may be just 3 octaves, but PHYSICAL demands of energy transfer to the different kinds of transducers G mentioned cannot be thought through with just "octaves". Imagine, that little piece of metal or silk is actually physically moving, vibrating, resonating, etc. Octaves is just a word that helps us imagine abstractions of sound and music, but various heat and stress effects on silk, aluminum, carbon, and etc. are physical events. One can be "fudged" a bit, but the other cannot, without damage to the tweet :)
No, the reason is the ear becomes less sensitive to lower frequencies meaning you need to push much larger volumes of air to hear or feel it. More effort?, subwoofer design is pretty simplistic for speaker manufacturers; the difficult part is manufacturing high excursion drivers that stay linear along their travel whilst having adequate cooling of the voice coil.
everything above 12khz is superfluous because it adds nothing to the musical appreciation.
Dream Diction: That depends what age you are, there is plenty of high frequency content in music; though if you above 50 you wont hear a lot of it.
Suzy Siviter Read what I said . . . "everything about 12khz is superfluous because it adds nothing the musical appreciation."
Little dome tweeters have been Great for years upon years. Steve's sudden attack on previously loved domes originates in some unexplained influence.
I've built many DIY speakers and over the years I realized that I got noticeably better piano sounds from the builds with higher 2way crossovers. ( 6k and up) I came to the conclusion that this was happening due to the woofer being able to better recreate the sounds of the piano than the tweeter. When I lowered the crossover frequency in the same speaker (2.5K) I would lose something. So now I raise my crossover frequencies higher if the woofer can accurately handle it.
The tweeter must be smaller and lighter to replicate higher frequencies. If you want a driver to replicate mid to very high frequencies, typically it must be small and light enough to vibrate at 10 thousand cycles per second under control. Being voice coil based, a tweeter has electrical and physical limitations that limit it to 3kish on the low end. Planar speakers are a one driver attempt for speaker design, so you don't have any crossover issues and a smoother spectrum. It's more or less comparing apples to oranges because a tweeter is inherently designed to be in a multidriver system whereas planars are just coupled with a subwoofer. Large high end multidriver systems use more complicated crossover systems and better drivers to better isolate frequencies for each individual driver, reducing work load for each driver and allowing the whole spectrum to be covered. Other system variables like baffle topology and cabinet design account for added harmonizing of the tweeters with the other drivers. Is it as perfect as a theoretical single point source that produces all frequencies? No, of course not. But it gets the job done quite well and I wouldn't call it anything close to a scam or physical impossibility.
Thank goodness there's no case against a 1inch inverted dome tweeter :D
Straight no! The others 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
My sweet sweet Genesis tweeters! Leave them alone!
WHY HELLO THERE MR. FOCAL!
It's possible that a 1" diameter tweeter will cause the high frequency sound waves to issue concentrically from the tweeter dome minimizing phase cancellation providing uniform frequency response and better imaging. A tweeter having a large area could cause phase cancellations and reinforcements when you moved relative to the radiating surface -- what we used to call the "picket fence" effect.
"Audiophiles don't use their equipment to listen to your music. They use your music to listen to their equipment." --Alan Parsons.
Some of us make better equipment than they make music.
@@Rights4Life Too funny. I don't care who you are, you don't make better equipment than Alan Parsons makes music.
well imo this discussion boils down to "point source" and its polar pattern vs "line source" and its polar pattern. Different polar patterns sound different in different rooms, so (again) the question is "what sounds best *in your room*?"
Well, one difference is that 1" is the wavelength of roughly 14,000 hz, which as you approach wavelength size frequencies shorter than it tend to beam much, much more narrowly. This isn't the case with AMT tweeters, and ribbons and electrostatic tweeters, although planar tweeters I imagine the size matters, larger ones inevitably beam a ton, but they also don't roll off quite as drastically towards 20khz like dynamic tweeters.
@@jaredlapierre1304 i do not understand what you mean. The polar pattern depends on the wavelength and the width of the source (and a waveguide, if present). It's pure physics! The kind of tweeter does not matter in regard of the width. That AMTs are able to produce a higher output with a smaller surface (compared to a dome-tweeter) does not matter as long as the width is the same. Same goes for planar tweeters: they may have a comparable width and therefore have a similar *horizontal* polar pattern, but in general they are higher than a dome tweeter and therefore have a significantly different *vertical* polar pattern. And again it boils down to "what polar pattern sounds best *in your room*?"
Is there any way you could point me to a source that explains or elaborates on this? I’m not familiar with “point source” or “line source” and their relation to polar patterns. I realize that this post is 2 years old, and I’ve probably missed the boat on this one, but I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
@@robertgipson3153 this is such a deep field, i don't know any specific sources, just googled "speaker polar pattern". These look promising: www.doctorproaudio.com/doctor/cajondesastre/pdfs/brusi_understanding_directivity_game_numbers_doctorproaudio.pdf
www.klippel.de/training/attachments/training8/Training_8_Measurement_of_Loudspeaker_Directivity_en.pdf
1" tweeters are able to work due to the level of energy required in the high-frequency range of audio is very low compared to lower frequencies. However, all of the diaphram materials flex (buckle) and generate resonances. Combined this with the rather small radiating surface limits them in cleanly reproducing a drum cymbal at a realistic SPL for example. It is more complex than that though. A drum cymbal sound would be split between the midrange and tweeter. Both drivers will be active for a portion of the band at the speaker's crossover frequency. The two devices are rarely in perfect phase even in high-quality speakers and up to 180 degrees out of phase. This causes distortion and/or cancellations and imaging problems. The more severe the phase mismatch the worse the issue is. This cannot be totally eliminated no matter what the cost of a conventional multi-driver speaker is, just minimized through better speaker design.
There is tools being used right now to minimize cone breakup and new materials as well. I have read of a BMR that exhibited no break up up to 50,000hz using this tool to measure.
www.polytec.com/us/vibrometry/areas-of-application/acoustics-and-ultrasonics/$loudspeakers-and-musical-instruments/
I'm not an expert, but as I understand it with point source speakers, the size of the tweeter dome has to do with the shorter/higher frequency of sound waves the driver is being asked to produce. A small 1" driver is sufficient to produce these higher frequencies, whereas a bass driver produces lower frequencies which requires a much larger driver area in order to move more air. The challenge is trying to optimize power handling, frequency response (esp; in relation to the breakup point), and speed. I own Magico S5 Mk2's which use a Diamond-coated beryllium 1" tweeter designed to achieve an ideal balance of damping, stiffness and weight. I can attest that they sound fast, smooth & natural, have excellent off-axis response, high power handling & seamless integration with the midrange driver. To my ears, many textile dome tweeters don't have comparable resolution or dynamics to Magico's latest gen tweeters.
"Hell yeah" at the beginning. Thumbs up for that. lol made me smile.
I have some 4" white speakers from a 1965 Sony reel to reel tape recorder and they sound absolutely incredible. They may be small, but they sound HUGE and the detail in the bass is so clean and detailed. The mids are silky smooth and the imaging is superb. The highs are also perfect. These things sound absolutely incredible for the entire frequency range, and despite their size, they sound genuinely HUGE.
Size is not everything.
What's your thoughts on small Air Motion Transformers like the Dayton Air speakers use, mostly the tower since the bookshelf is kind of bottom-budget whatever.
A well engineered 1" dome tweeter with an excellent crossover and time alinement is an excellent compromise. You can get life like dynamics with excellent clarity with good transients with such a driver. With excellent cooling amazing output. Most dome tweeters are very easy to drive by even the most pedestrian amplifiers.
Magneplanar speakers sound very life like but lack dynamics and do not play very loud. Even when you stack them.
Electrostatics are the best sounding tweeters and can easily outperform the best conventional tweeters in every way when painstakingly engineered. The biggest problem with electrostatics is there are only a few on the market that will sound exceptional with inexpensive amplifiers ( IE they are a difficult load to drive consistently over their audio spectrum).
Compression drivers for the most part have life like dynamics and play very loud. Most do not sound anywhere close to a live performance. Many bargain compression drivers are painful to listen to above moderate levels.
So.......dome tweeters are an excellent compromise.
My ideal tweeter is a 1-1/8 inch Beryllium dome. It’s so sparking crisp with zero harshness.
I like Steve's opinions conjectures and enthusiasm. This is hi fi and fun. Steve has lots of experience and is obviously a nice guy. Thanks Steve! Your Pal, Sky.
Well, I think it is small. I'm an audio engineer of over a decade. I also build speakers. I've been building speakers since 3rd grade. Getting those effortless, loud, transients is all about efficiency when it comes to a home stereo. A dome tweeter is what, 90dB at 1w/m usually? A horn loaded or comp driver horn is usualy 100dB at 1w/m once crossed over properly. So, you get over 3x the acoustical power right there. I have never cared for dome tweeters in a home theater setup where loud, highly dynamic sound is needed. Dome tweeters are better suited to nearfield listening. When I listen to speakers like the B&W, the Martin Logan, etc., I always miss the Klipsch horn tweeters for the highs. Sure, their mids might be better with their great woven kevlar driver or whatnot, but then, the highs and lows are lacking. I have stuck with Klipsch because of the effortless, transparent, output of their horn tweeters. It just works better when listening at 15+ ft away with movie transients blasting through the speakers. The dome tweeter are very accurate in frequency response at lower volumes, but can they handle the transients and make the music sound deep and three dimentional? At high volume I would say a horn loaded driver does a better job, although much harder to design and sound good.
Steve was not saying dome tweeters can not produce high frequencies as some here misunderstood. He was saying they can not produce the sound of certain instruments with a sense of "the ease" that say a Maggie can. One of my complaints about being a drummer and listening to various speakers with tweeters, is that they lack the sense of "ease" that real music provides. Steve just confirmed something for me. For someone has been recommending that good quality ribbon tweeters as having a more musical sound. I am always wondering where the "ease" went when I hear certain cymbals and overtones to instruments are being played. Many years ago I heard a pair of Maggies being demoed in a shop. And,now after listening to this video, know why they have left an impression on me to this day. Thanks, Steve.
And what's the diameter of a microphone membrane? You're biased against those kind of tweeter, besides, the smaller the diameter of the tweeter, the better its direccionality.
@ uh, last time I checked most sounds have harmonics, many instruments harmonics occur in the 10khz - 25khz region, where a 1" tweeter will have poor off axis performance at 14khz+ as opposed to a smaller tweeter. AMT offers the best of both technologies, IMO
J Austin off axis response is very important. Think phantom center / soundstage etc.
@ LOL Off axis response is extremely important! The way we hear it isn't just the on axis response that we hear. You might want to read on power response, dispersion and directivity!
I enjoy your videos. Keep up the good work. Coming from a long time recording engineer (not an audiophile), I could speculate that the meat (volume) of big transients are usually not above 2k or 3k so a large driver may not be necessary to cover those frequencies. I use Pro Ac 100s that use this type of tweeter and the high frequency response is excellent and pleasing to my clients' ears. So many things are going on with speakers inside and out which is why I see them a musical instruments with a very wide range of possible outcomes even using the same components.
I think this applies to all speakers not just tweeters, I've always been amazed at getting the sound we do get, from what is
relatively small pieces of cone material being whacked around by an electromagnet.
I'm still stumped about the fact that all of our cone drivers have the INSIDE of the cone facing the listeners. Wouldn't it work better to have the magnets and coils on the inside and turn the outside of the cone toward the listening area?!
I love my A2s which are my primary speakers I use along with a Yamaha sub woofer. I never questioned the tweeters in the speakers and I don't have a means or the space for a larger pair of speakers at this time. I just enjoy listening to music from my PC on my A2s and Sub. They are way loud enough, tons of bass and sound great to my ears. Nice imaging since they are on my desk at ear level 3 feet apart.
Steve, ever since I was a young boy I have used sound or noise protection around uncomfortable noises. Not just loud but annoying frequencies as would come from a mother in law. I did this because the entire generation of men before me went DEAF because they thought it was a manly or macho thing to handle loud noises. My hearing is great!, People are amazed when I am the only person in the room who runs out when we test the high frequencies of loudspeakers. They hear nothing and I am the dog in the room. That said, I have never heard a ribbon tweeter that I like. My closet has 10 different pairs but I never warmed up to them except the speakers from Legacy. I love Seas, Scanspeak and Dynaudio soft dome tweeters. In my home system I use a Cabasse polycarbonate dome which is also an excellent performer thanks to Geffery Dillon of Dillon audio but I love the dome.
It seems to me that ribbon tweeters are definitley "love em or hate em" designs. Steve's Maggies have a quasi-ribbon tweeter that is quite a bit more tolerable to my ears. A pattern I've noticed with ribbons is they're often liked by older audiophiles - which makes me ponder whether that's tied to hearing loss.
nicholascremato
"That said, I have never heard a ribbon tweeter that I like. "
What is it you don't like about them? I'm curious because I never heard one but I read some conflicting opinions (and comparing with silk dome), and new designs that are well regarded come with those.
Steve you are right on with this one. It is the surface area exposed to the air, and because air compresses, the more electrical energy you feed it the less efficient it is transferring the sonic energy wave they compress the high frequecies.To couple to the air better you need more square area or a transforming device like a horn. ESS Hiel made an air motion transformer (tweeter) that had a membrane that was folded back and forth like and air or oil filter element in a car. This squeezed the air out the front and rear of the device since it is a bi-polar driver.
Ever wonder why heavy rock fans loved speakers like RTR , JBL Century 100's, and Pioneer HPM-100? These used paper tweeters which were veiled and lacked tactile nuance that domes have. So what gives? Square area of the tweeter is what it is, less compression at loud volumes which is why they sound good loud. Loud sound is more lifelike when it is uncompressed. I have 1 inch silk domes on my critical listening system, but my other two systems are Altec Valencia 846A with tube mono blocks, and Sansui intergrated amp pusing Speakerlab 4's for my rockin out system which uses the EV HT-35 compression horns, same as the old Klipsch tweeter. The Altecs are better for vocal, acoustic, or soft music, they get too wiggy if you try to play them too loud.
Point sources provide far better imaging-I’m sure that’s a consideration these manufacturers have.
Except there is no such thing as a point source. At high frequencies dome tweeters are quite directional. Above ka = 1, for 1" dome tweeter becomes directional at 4,35 kHz. At ka=3 (13 kHz) it is very directional level drops significantly at angle 25deg it is -3dB
@@brk932 Point source in the sweet spot... Not omni-directional point source. Like a coincident driver.
It's always a trade off between imaging and loudness. People who prefer quiet music are easier to design speakers for by far.
Point sources do not necessarily provide better imaging than line sources. Each just has to be addressed differently.
How does this hypothesis explain high quality ribbons sounding so exceptional?
The sound pressure produced by the driver is proportional to the sound frequency squared and is proportional to the volume of air it moves. What this means is that the driver has to move 10000 more air back and forth to produce the same sound pressure for 30Hz when compare to 3kHz. So a 10" driver playing 30Hz is still require to have 100x more linear movement than a 1" tweater playing at 3kHz.
My compression drivers have 1.75" diaphragms with 1" throat apertures. I use Karlson couplers, rather than horns to provide loading and dispersion. They seem effortless to me. The area of a 1" diaphragm is 0.785 sq. in. and a 1.75" diaphragm is 2.405 sq. in. Both of these are significantly smaller than the 63 sq. in. of Steve's Magnepans. It leads me to believe that excursion, area and geometry are all important.
A speaker cone or dome needs to move as one piston, compressing and decompressing the air. The more surface area this piston has, the more air it will move. A woofer moves at a low frequency, which is why we can make them rather big, and still have the whole thing move as one piston. However, tweeters move at high frequencies, which means that in order to make them act like one piston, they either have to be extemely rigid (making them too heavy) or very small, like, say 1 inch. A tweeter simply has to be small to work properly. Horns are able to increase the effective surface area of a small tweeter, which is why a horn loaded tweeter produces more sound than a standalone dome tweeter.
Take a look at "bending wave " types.
One of the majors just reviewed one.
TAS or Stereophile. Begins with a Z, me thinks.
Highly reviewed.
I totally hear you. A big speaker is a big speaker. You're absolutely right. Dome tweeters are ok, but will never do what a good compression driver will do. A dome tweeter generally has a common ringing which I'm not a fan. Dome tweeters are mainly used due to marketing reasons as they were the in thing many years ago and these days are a must as people wouldn't buy the tweeter. Just like paper cone woofer to me are still the best sounding drivers, however due to marketing they are no longer in. You cannot beat a well designed large diaphragm compression driver as it sounds very natural due to no unnecessary diaphragm movement.
thanks, always happy, when someone mentions the transparency of quad speakers.
i never missed the "more"bass.
Steve I'm giving my home system to my son later this year. The replacement speakers will have 1" silk dome tweeters. Why because they sound right to me on the material I listen to. Part of the reason a 1" tweeter can work is the length of a full wavelength at 2,000 kHz is 6.75 inches and at 10,000 kHz 1.35 inches.
Should there be a similarity between the size of the instrument and the transducer (speaker) .. hmmm if so, then how about the mike!!!! After all, we are talking about energy transfer from and to air and to your ear. Just an idea that popped into my head.
Thanks Steve, your talks are very thought provoking.
The amount of volume displaced to reproduce a given frequency is quickly reduced as the frequency goes up. 4x per octave I believe (have to check my notes). But I don't entirely disagree that a lot of dome tweeters are overwhelmed when the volume is turned up and the music gets dense.
All I'm gonna say is that I've always loved Maggies. You have it dead right Steve: the scale, the sweetness, the ease.
I'm not an expert either but when I think about it, the ear is much more sensitive to high frequencies in that you need less power and less air movement compared to lower frequencies. It doesn't take much surface area. The higher the frequency the more directional the sound. The spatial cues are in the high frequency range. When you use a large surface cancellations may happen and due to the larger mass you need more power to drive them. I'm not sure how that physically works out with Magnepans tweeters though.
Then the crossover is also important and speaker placement, room treatment etc. With my diy speakers I use them in quad stereo setup and find the sound stage similar to headphones while retaining the detailed bass punching in the gut :)
And time of arrival is also important for impulse sounds like the crashing cymbals. So the drivers should be at the same distance from the listener so cone alignment can be important. Crossovers can shift the phase to that's also important (commercial speakers often have sub par phase implementation in the cross overs if I can believe GR-Research).
Absolutely agree with you. I think speaker manufacturers have hypnotized us into thinking two way speakers with shrill top ends are desirable," just look at our frequency response graph". Damn your graph it hurts my ears! I am building some 3 way speakers now with a 4" mid-range, I am going to be using an electronic signal processor / crossover to see how high it will go, to take the load off that poor overworked little dome.
It is absolutely true that the area of diaphram is the governing factor of a cone loudspeaker's efficiency however, the efficiency factor is always divided by the moving mass of the loudspeaker. Tiny dome tweeter's lightness (a dome is just another variant of a cone) compensates for the smallness of the area.
Then there is another interesting factor literally in the air. The higher in frequency a solid object vibrates, the more efficiently the vibration energy transfers to the adjacent air. Less electrical power and smaller area are just enough to reproduce useful sound pressure at high frequency region.
It is all about the power distribution. Only about 15% of the power goes to the tweeter when it is crossed over at 3kHz and 35% when cross at 1.2kHz. That is the reason why for most cases a 1” tweeter is more than enough to handle the music. More importantly, higher frequencies then to start beaming when the diameter of the cone is greater than the wavelength of the frequency. That is why bass is omnidirectional cause u don’t have a driver greater than 3’.
I sure shit wouldn't want an 8" playing >3 KHz. That is like ka=5,5 ... -3dB at angle ~15 deg. At 6 kHz it is beaming like hell. I don't want my head in vise to enjoy music. Tell that to the full range crowd.
Sr. you know what? you are good.
thanks so much for your valuables apreciations about audio.
not anything that shine is gold.
greetings from Colombia.
Steve, some years back McIntosh made a high-end speaker with 1 inch or thereabouts Dome tweeters that were arranged in a vertical line source manner -- they were awesome. ( if I could have afforded them I would have purchased them :-) )
The multiplicity of drivers enabled them to handle a lot of power, effortlessly and transients were no problem for them at all.
Because of their dispersion characteristics and low frequency performance.
Most domes can reach down 1-3khz, ribbons much higher toward 5k often.
Also, their dispersion is quite wide without a waveguide. 60-80° easily, some more. Making designs using them less needy for placement.
Both of these things combine to make matching up with an average woofer quite possible. Both in terms of mitigating beaming from the woofer, and allowing both to play in an optimal range.
Basically, they are a godsend for simple 2 way designs, and without requiring a waveguide or horn like a compression driver.
Ribbons generally go in 3 way because of the high cross frequency, most woofers are well into beaming and breakup at that point, so they add a small midwoofer or dome to cover everything in between.
Compression drivers aren't generally cost effective, and are a bit different to work with, not to mention the physical mass and size of most compression drivers.
So it all circles back to the nice and easy dome tweeter.
Such a simple design that does so much.
Want more? Go for better designs 🤷♂️
I personally like a 4 way.
Subwoofer taking care of 1~50hz, woofer taking care of 50~450, midwoofer taking 450-3k, 3k to 20+ taken care of by a coaxial compression driver.
It's what I'm working on right now with a b&c triaxial, and jbl cinema subwoofer. Sensitivity will be near 94db, though will probably only go down to ~24hz without issue. After that I'm going to be excursion limited under that at 110db and I plan for much much more. Probably change the box and tuning for the jbl cinema woofer and add a large powered horn loaded ulf section to take care of ~30hz down. Then I can run all the way to 122db before I need a different woofer. Which will probably be fine in my space.
Thank you for providing this insight Steve..I’m in the middle of putting together an audio system in my vehicle and I’m going back and forth between a setting up a 2 way vs a 3 way in each door...and based on this video I think I’m leaning towards a 3 way...
I have always wondered why there are not 5 speakers per side. A woofer, mid woofer, midrange, mid tweeter, and tweeter. It takes all the strain off any 1 speaker and depending on angle or side to side placement, allows a designer to play around with the harmonics of the totality of the speakers. I went into electronics repair and design and not audio but sometime I wish I had learned more about the audio side and speaker design. I used to build award winning Car Sound systems and can design a sub box and setup to rock the street, but never went far enough to build speaker systems.
Must agree. I have Acoustat 2+2 full-range electrostatic speakers that have an effortless, flat high end to die for. A few months ago I listened to $16K Wilson speakers -- don't know which specific Wilsons -- driven by extremely good electronics (i.e., Bolder power amplifier and like quality line amp and DAC). The high end was unnatural, shrill, and with a peak around 4 to 8 k. I'm so glad I don't have to live with those things in spite of the fact that they're very good speakers.
90 percent of the time I listen to classical music with a heavy emphasis on solo piano and chamber music. In my view, this genre of music is best served by electrostats or maggies. On the other hand, if you're principally into rock and other sorts of music with a lot of "slam," then you're probably going to find my speakers anemic and too analytical.
The other disadvantage of my speakers is that the soundstage is not the best. I have excellent resolution from top to bottom and from side to side, but a relative lack of sharply defined instruments sitting on a stage behind my speakers, especially if there's many instruments (solo instruments and voices can be exquisitely imaged). This problem has been significantly improved by my acquiring a tube line amplifier (Asthetix Calypso Signature), an Ayre CD player, and a Bryston 14Bsst2 amplifier, but I've heard better.
One finally observation: I can listen to my system for many hours without a break and suffer no fatigue. Can't say that for my experience with the Wilsons. After about an hour I wanted to get out of the room. Don't know what that was about.
In car audio we normally cut the frequency going to tweeters at no less than 5kHz. I prefer to cut them off at +8kHz. Never had a prob with imaging or sound reproduction from tweeters.
Excellent Point Steve good to question the obvious which we start to take for granted.
Ribbon style tweeters in a line source (many drivers stacked) were-are the way to go. Infinity got that right years ago with some of their speakers. PS Audio is now designing speakers like that to be released next year. Big bucks however.
All PS stuff is mega bucks... way out of my range...
I find this video very intriguing and does go back to the argument of point source vs line source. I have been a fan of line source speaker such as the Infinity IRS and planar speakers such as Magnepans for almost 50 years. Cost , size and space considerations make them impractical for most folks, but what a sound!
Definitely...maybe not the ONLY way to go but solves the problem we speak of.
Steve Roginski.Couldn`t agree more.I have Apogee ribbon planar speakers actively driven which have large single mr/treble ribbons 4 feet long which have much lower distortion than a single dome tweeter and also don`t suffer from thermal dynamic compression due to their large radiating area, 48 square inches which is aquivalent to a 10 inch moving coil driver.
Until you made the statement that there seems to be an overabundance of soft dome tweeters in use from low to high end speakers, I hadn't thought about it. But you are exactly right, and I must say when I started looking at speakers from your question it does make one think that there would be more diverse, and innovative tweeters available and in use. Especially with speakers costing tens of thousands of dollars a pair. And that the public is being laughed at for being "suckers" by the speaker manufacturers. I think you are on to something here.
Radio shack used to sell a dome tweeter that sounded really good to me. Ive tried to find others but they dont sound as good.
Like everything else it depends on how loud you like to listen. If you want to listen to a cymbal as loud as a cymbal goes I'd recommend more tweeter. That or add a midrange that goes to 5 or 6 khz. Probably some sort of tractrix compression horn. An eminent apt80 horn tweeter gets very loud for its size above 4k. What helps out is ears are very sensitive up here so it doesn't take a lot of power to get them loud.
it all comes down to 2 things which led to the dome tweeter. assume that we are looking at a hypothetical single driver speaker with a flat response. this means that anywhere within its frequency response +-0db, our woofer's diaphragm will move from peak to peak at the same rate regardless of what frequency you're playing. the rate at which the woofer moves corresponds to the volume of the speaker. so the longer it takes to complete a full cycle of a waveform, the further the woofer will move peak to peak. so lets say we want to play a loud 20 hertz sine wave. the only way we can have both loud and low frequency is by having the woofer move extremely far from peak to peak. but there is a solution. people who developed speakers quickly realized that the larger the surface area is, the louder the speaker can be. so instead of having a crazy large peak to peak excursion value, we can increase the surface area of the woofer so the woofer doesn't have to move back and forth as much. if we are only concerned about higher frequencies, then the peak to peak value of our woofer would be exponentially smaller than when we were playing the low frequencies. in fact, if you were to put your finger on a bluetooth speaker's woofer when it is playing a high frequency, it would not appear to be moving at all. so, there is no need for a large surface area when producing high frequencies at the same volume as a low frequency. we can increase the peak to peak travel distance of our new woofer (which is still incredibly small even after the increase), and decrease the surface area, which explains why the tweeter is so small. it also makes sense to use a small high frequency driver (dome tweeter) because the weight of the silk dome and voice coil together is very low compared to the woofer. as you might know from physics class, mass is the opposite way to get something to move fast. so, the lighter the tweeter is, the better it accepts transients and acceleration, and requires less wattage. the dome tweeter is, to my understanding, the most efficient balance between surface area and peak to peak travel distance for a typical voice coil driven tweeter.
side note: many speakers have more than one driver. this helps because we dont need to make a huge woofer that is incredibly lightweight yet stiff enough to not distort. so by adding a dedicated high frequency driver, we can worry less about the weight of the woofer.
Good discussion. Tweeters have been on my mind lately. My Klipschorns have that "ease" that Steve mentions, but to my ear the K-77 tweeter is a bit dry and lacks the sweetness of many domes. But high marks for excitement. Whew! No better speaker for "Kind of Blue"! Not selling them anytime soon.
But I'm intrigued by Paul McGowan's (of PS audio) plan to use multiple ribbon tweeters in his upcoming speakers, which are based on the old Infinity IRS speakers designed by Arnie Nudell. It seems to me that ribbons have the same advantages as electrostats at the high end: superb transient response. And multiple ribbons might allow for greater ease and detail. But I imagine comb filtering becomes a challenge when you have multiple high-frequency point sources arrayed near each other. Not sure if the physics of ribbons and/or line arrays changes that fact.
The titanium diaphragms are a vast improvement over the K77 phenolic. They won't turn them into polite British speakers but they'll take that edge off. Maybe one day Klispch will discover that an even better approach would be a compression driver with PEI dome.
As for ribbons, they're a love em or hate em design in my opinion. They tend to beam like lasers, or in the case of large ones - have comb-filtering problems as you suggested. The large ones also tend to blur imaging definition so the soundstage is presented as a sort of impressionist canvas.
I believe the Klipsch horns are quite sufficient for my taste! I stick with you
The new(er) tweeters in the Klipsch Heritage line with the titanium diaphragms (as well as the midrange) are to many ears smoother sounding than the older tweeter. It wouldn't be that difficult to upgrade yours.
i can say, with personal building experience for the past 2 years, power handling and ease of integration is the biggest reason for 1 inch dome tweeters. i personally use a subwoofer, midbass, full range that is used to cover the vocal range and into the 4-5k range, and then either an amt or a silk dome and bullet super tweeter. i like splitting the frequency range across drivers well suited to those frequencies, and i like to stay on the large size for all my drivers. a 12 inch servo sub with a pair of passives, 7 inch midbass, 5 inch full range, amt, and a bullet makes for one of the most dynamic and gigantic sound profiles to ever come out of a boring looking set of "towers"
Tweeters need to have low mass (weight) in order to move fast enough to recreate high frequencies without distortion. That’s why larger speakers suck at high frequencies because the mass reduces their speed. So theoretically, the smaller the better (or the smaller the cleaner) except when you go too small you lose output volume. Basically you have to strike a balance, and only a well trained ear can really assess that balance properly regardless of the specs or graphs.
You cannot say one size tweeter is better than another; basically a great tweeter will have extremely low mass and high force so it can respond quickly whilst also having the right shape to radiate sound images effectively. At 20Khz the wavelength of sound is 17mm, so there is good reason to keep tweeter size below this to stop off perpendicular resonance and away from harmonics(fractions of that wavelength) at sizes (17/2,17/3,17,4..)
We're talking about 3 octaves, so how about 3 1" dome tweeters with crossovers that would give each one an octave? I don't know if I'd notice the difference, but it would probably get rid of some Doppler distortion.
I have several speakers in my home. Paradigms, B & W etc. ALL have 1" dome tweeters. They seem to do a good job. BUT...I'm 58 years old and I'm sure my hearing isn't as good on the high end as it USED to be, so I might have to agree with you, Steve! 15" woofer and a 15" dome tweeter should get the job done! LOL!
Hi Steve, have you heard or reviewed the Lance CORONA plasma tweeter. the specs and Internet soundings have put it on my"to listen too" wish list. Love your energy and show.
And that's why I'm a 3 way fanatic! A 4 inch midrange can do marvel for transient and dynamic scale. Also they can support more power whitout distortion, but the crossover must be up to par.
steve i love your videos what you think about the old ess amt speakers
high frequencies are easy to generate and require minimal power to get the same loudness. the transients are to be handled by the mid range twooter
I mean, it really just depends on the wave size and intensity. but, I think the real argument is the woofer going up to 2 or 3k. The dispersion of a woofer at 2kHz is extremely narrow. That kind of messes things up off axis. That's why a horn or using a midrange driver might help the sound quality throughout the room
Legacy doesn't have just one tweeter in their giant boxes. Many companies are moving to ribbon tweeters for a higher output. Saying that my Paradigm speakers have dome tweeters (metal) that sound exceptional with all the music I play. My Canton pedestal mount also has exceptional highs with their dome tweeters. Sometimes "thou dost protest too much!"
The soft dome tweeter is my favorite. My ears tell me that, and I've listened to all varieties. I especially love doped fabric domes.
I'm using 9 3/4" soft dome silk doped ADS tweeters in my Atmos system. They can't compete with electrostats like Magnepan, but the Magnepans can't compete with the dynamics in the bass. The attack decay and sustain and release of these light little domes are hard to beat.
Thank you for your video. Twice you went through a list of dome materials without mentioning the granddaddy of them all, plutonium dome tweeters. Plutonium dome tweeters really radiate sound, or is it irradiate, I can’t remember.
I agree! Not just in tweeters, but more surface area is better at all frequencies. It's better acoustic coupling to the air mass in the room and a large area requires less excursion to get the same volume displacement. Personally I like Air Motion Transformers for tweeters that are large enough to have significantly more surface area than a 1" dome. My 2-ch system uses the Dayton AMT-Pro4 and in my opinion there isn't a 1" dome anywhere that can match the performance.
For my new home theater I'm building CBT line arrays with fourteen of the AMT-Pro4's in each main line and ten in the center line. These will have dramatically more surface area than a dome tweeter. I expect these to sound very effortless!
It's a 1" diameter point source, that is not dipole that really chokes the treble. Take any box speaker and add a top facing or rear facing tweeter and the speaker will sound much better because it will have much better presence because the highs will be coming from the back wall and/or ceiling as well, and that's before you zero in the crossover slope.
I like ribbon tweeters and Air Motion Transformer (AMT) tweeters, but they have to be dipole for me. Larger radiating surface and bi-directional. I have the 1.7i's and augment them with full range Fostex 168E Sigma's and they sound amazing because I use them in a dipole configuration facing the ceiling. You can try this out by going to Parts Express or Madisound and buying a tweeter, crossover and pot and hooking it up to your existing setup. Then you'll really start to wonder what's up!
I have read some of your articles in the past Steve and thought they were well written. But I was disappointed by this discourse. As an audio journalist or just a journalist in general, if you pose a question you are supposed to go and find the answer instead of forming your own conclusion and making an opinion piece.
I think you need to talk to designers, and a wide variety of them so they can tell you why they used a 1" dome tweeter on a $59,000 pair of speakers or didn't and used some other alternative. If you smell a rat, go and find it.
Well said.
Not sure about that. I watch for some entertainment and I’d say it’s an opinion based forum but that’s just my opinion haha
You must be a nightmare to have a conversation with.
@@tigergallant I generally avoid talking to anyone who labels themselves an audiophile because it devolves into an agument, so that is completely true haha
Funny! After you said "All out of one little circle? you paused just like the Church Lady from SNL
Think about the even littler circle in the microphone that has to handle all those harmonics as well.
I think there are some pretty good soft dome tweeters. However, they must not be smaller than 1 inch. With the exception one companies .75 inch soft dome tweeter, I haven't heard a good soft dome tweeter below 1 inch in diameter. And, yes I think compression drivers outperform the soft dome tweeters a large majority of the time. I cannot comment of the ribbon tweeters, haven't heard them yet.
it depends on the crossover. but the lesser the frequency the lesser the movment. so crossovers make all the difference. what do you prefer 2 or 3 way? 1 or 5 way?
the thing with dome tweeter is the ability to handle power and also radiation pattern issue.
a properly designed dome tweeter(yes, with a horn or waveguide) sounds better than normal dome. the thing is that bigger driver or horn loaded driver has better impedance matching with air. like you have a funnel with steel balls filled and you push the one steel ball from the smaller side of funnel(throat of horn and less air molecule), it moves the many stacked in front(more air volume at mouth of horn), so you get efficient speaker, which can be then reduced in sensitivity by circuit so driver move less.
the issue is more of power handling and those small driver power limit hits quickly and they distort compared to bigger counterpart and about horn loaded, they dont need to powered much to get much loud.
If someone stole that little "pillow" in the corner of your ceiling while you were away, would you notice that the sound is different when you returned?
Alexander Holding of course I would!!!
Hey....he actually replied to someone!!!
Dome tweeters are my favorite. Horn loaded and electrostatics feel like laser beams on my eardrums. And I don't like that.
Is the different the scale? or the type of driver? The implementation of the crossover and any roll-off filters?
I'd be curious how much of that is clearly audible in blind testing, versus what we impose on it based on our expectations.
I'll go along with your assessment between dome vs loaded horn but magnepan's magneplanar diaphragm design, although having some amazing characteristics, has it's own issues. They seem to be doing a lot to overcome some of the challenges of that design, i.e. efficientcy issues and durability, so it may be the best design in the long run. I think people will continue to prefer different type of tweeters. I personaly would love to own a pair but properly powering them is out of my price range currently.
If you referring to the dynamic range of those mid-high to high frequencies, I think multiple dome tweeter combined to be 42" tall would work just as well. Our eardrum is much smaller than an inch yet can detect those sounds you speak about, so a tweeter should be able to reproduce just as well.
They do measure OK regarding frequency response, BUT they definitely dont measure the same when you start measuring THD@high SPL... Yes those large surface area speakers you mentioned definitely have way lower distortion, plus sound dispersion pattern is way different (does not involve room so much because of beaming effect) so yes they do sound different, better (subjective though)...
1. they radiate well. 2. they''re cheap to manufacture relatively speaking (as compared to a good horn or ribbon). 3. They have sensitivities that are fairly easy to match to midrange and bass cone drivers (makes crossover design more straightforward).
I hear what you are sayin' here Steve. Yes. Obviously, you can get a lot of sound out of that small speaker. Goes without question. The question (in my tiny mind, at least) is whether you can really get the full "richness", shall we say, out of that one tiny driver? Would larger tweeters work better? Or would a multitude of tweeters that are each wired (crossovers) to respond to just a smaller part of that 3 to 20+kHz range (acting like a small choir) be a better option?
I would like to try my hand at designing my own speakers in the near(ish) future. I'm thinking that perhaps two or three larger tweeters wired to "sing different parts" would produce a fairly rich sound. Now, all I need to do is figure out how to design the crossovers to do that! (Yep. Just bit off more than I can chew!)
Good lord no...
The only advantage of a larger tweeter would be the ability to play / cross over lower. This would be nice, but in order to obtain this you would be sacrificing top end extension, especially off axis.
And to use multiple tweeters covering different frequency bands would be an absolute nightmare. The whole concept is to use the minimum numbers of drivers / crossovers you possibly can to achieve your goal. Increasing the number of drivres you have playing different frequency ranges will mean a nightmare crossover and a phase response from hell.
A for "richness" - sound is not food nor does it own assets. Richness is not a characteristic of sound. High frequency extension? Fine detail resolution? Linearity of ampitude response? Because a good 1" dome can achieve all of those things if executed well.
You should go and listen to a 12 inch twitter... in our language is called a subwoofer! :P
Joking aside...dome twitters are my favs :) Maybe ribbon close or surpassing it a bit.
adding: 2 x dome tweeter = +3db, 4x dome tweeter = +6db, 8x dome tweeters=+9db
OR 1 horn loaded compression driver ~= 10 dome tweeters usually at 105 to 110db efficiency.
and waaay lower distortion.
twice as loud = approx. +10db
I get it. Large ribbon tweeters sound true to live in an acoustic set. And the clarity and smoothness of their sound does not clip or distort even at high volume levels. They are clear and have an authentic presence.
I agree with you to some extent, Steve. I think what to are responding to is a combination of distortion and the power that gets into the room. Most tweeters, even those with a short coil in a long gap, struggle to get to -50dB THD. That's 0.3%, and quite often at less than 1W. The Magnepans, while not ideal, need to move perhaps a 100th of the distance for the same level of output so don't get to see excursion or field non-linearity. Nor do they heat up and vary the current in the coil (though I have found it very hard to pin down this supposed compression effect, and just haven't seen a significant change in resistance). The other thing is that the horizontal directionality in the Magnepans is built into the speaker, being determined by the width. Because this is the same for the midrange and tweeter it should be very easy to achieve a seamless transition from mid to treble; in a standard speaker without a tweeter waveguide there is a notable discontinuity in directionality with the tweeter radiating in a forward full hemisphere and, at 3k, the midrange managing perhaps half that angle. The solution to this in a 'standard' speaker is to lower the crossover point to around 2k-2.2k for a (slightly) better match, but this makes the distortion worse. The situation is complicated, but if the designer is maintaining a flat response through the crossover region axially then the sound coming off the walls will have a higher low treble content than the direct sound. The designer may decide to ease off on the treble a touch to make up for the subjective effect of this. If he does, then you can expect to lose that sense of real power. Some of the most popular crossover alignments can suck out power too, giving you that totally domestic sound with pint-sized musicians playing on your mantlepiece. If the designer then decides to compensate for the rise in treble response on axis (tweeters do become directional as well), then you are all the way back to the Spendor BC1. :) A well executed design with the tweeter in a waveguide, or concentrically mounted in a midrange, should get you over these problems and reproducing scale shouldn't be a problem. Because the tweeter is radiating into a narrower solid angle its sensitivity goes up (by 5 or 6dB) and this helps on the distortion side. With a 1" tweeter there will always be a cap on the undistorted peak output (and I would argue for something larger than 1" for this reason, as well as the distortion at lower levels) but you are then talking about a whole different class of speaker if the bass unit excursion is not going to become the limiting factor. For the sort of rooms that ordinary people live in, a 1" tweeter should be more than adequate.
Soft dome tweeters have a maximum design and physical output in terms of loudness which may be less than hard dome tweeters,cone tweeters etc.
I don't think they are inadequate in the way you said you felt, because the answer is simply to use multiples of them to obtain the necessary volume in order to benefit from their sweet tone.
Of course,multiple tweeters of any variety follow the same rules.
For many decades I've enjoyed the Celestion HF1300 tweeter along with a supertweeter. A combination used by the BBC. I run BBC/ Rogers LS3/6 speakers, they use Celestion HF1300 tweeter and Celestion HF2000 as the supertweeter. As for larger panel tweeters, I have Quad ESL57's and ESL63's
I imagine they are easier in terms of avoiding harshness, maybe there's a bit of roll off with the material.
Regarding the "transients of music", Nyquist's Information Theorem still applies. Those transients can't be TOO small in duration or they'd by definition be out of the range of human hearing.
Any transient that can be heard must be wthin the range of hearing. Stating the obvious. If the tweeter, combined with the other drivers, can cover the full range of frequencies you can hear, then they must be able to reproduce any audible signal including audible transients.
Now, the dynamic range and responsiveness of some tweeters will be better than others. Sure, there's a difference between tweeters. But there's nothing at all inadequate about dome tweeters in general and their commonality and widespread acceptance is itself evidence of the sonic integrity and capability of the design. It's the wheel of the speaker world. It doesn't NEED to be reinvented, now that we have a nice round thing that rolls smoothly and easily and can carry a decent load.
I have listened to very high end dome tweeters, but Im afraid this guy's argument doesnt hold water. Planars are ok, but the soundstage is limited, and a dome tweeter seems to do this with ease. It really depends on the materials employed as to how well the tweeter handles the material. Im not a fan of planars, save in headphones where they really shine.
Michael Richter kef went down hill for me when they switched to a one Inch dome tweeter to handle not even just the highs but more of the mids as well. This have them this receded yet bright. Sure it appealed more to the American thump and tizz market but the speakers no longer disappear like they used to with practically everything important coming from the most receded element hidden behind the tangerine waveguide which was supposed to make up for the loss in air.
They even went all boxy and went with 2 dummy radiators vs 2 active LF drivers each with their own tuning which always played way better with a sub.
I have Martin Logan's ESL's. I have loved their sound for years for years before I bought a set. I love their openness if you like . They have to me a realistic sound. Mine are the cheapest but all their speakers use a vibrating plastic films to produce their sound.The go up to 22000Hz I believe with no effort.I love them!
Is that triangle shaped thing up in the corner for sound treatment? Can you hear any difference with or without it?
What's up with my JBL titanium compression driver, Steve?
Of course there were the Dali Icon speakers that had both a ribbon and a dome tweeter, which was perhaps an attempt to get the best of both worlds.