Good day,
I am attempting to become educated on tweeters and super tweeters. Please forgive my limited knowledge and thus somewhat dated inquiry. In your opinion what is the best tweeter / super tweeter you have come across and why?I have been told and read articles proclaiming that plasma tweeters are the best, rated up to 150kHz. Example – Lansche. I have also read and been told that ribbon tweeters can reach up to 100kHz and are the most detailed, second only to plasma tweeters. They are much more cost effective than the plasma tweeters. Example RAAL 70/20. I have also read and been told that the two scenarios above do not matter as the human condition cannot process sound above 20kHz. The problem becomes more of how to maximize the sound within those existing measurements rather than attempting to extend them. Example Audiosmile.
I would greatly appreciate your opinions on the subject if you find the time.
Regards,
Gavin Citron
Tweeter bandwidth isn't really about hearing beyond 20kHz but hearing to 20kHz without phase shift. The broader the bandwidth beyond 20kHz, the less phase shift there will be in the audible range. Another factor is dispersion and power response. As sounds descend in frequency, their radiation becomes more omnidirectional. As they ascend, they get more and more focused or beamy. Put plainly, the balance of low and high frequencies within a room tends not to be linear. You will hear the bass at least twice if not more times (direct, first reflection, late reflection). And you'll hear more bass and less treble also as a function of the power response. A way to minimize that is listening in the extreme nearfield (speakers toed in directly at the ears, sitting very close). Once you transition from direct-radiating 1" tweeters to tall ribbons or even folded 'ribbons' like air-motion transformers, you disperse more treble energies at the ear. You literally move more air. Once such tweeters become open-backed dipoles to radiate sound front and back, the power response or in-room balance of hi/lo frequencies becomes more linear. Once you get a true omni tweeter like Elac's omni ribbon; like mbl's 'pulsating' tweeter; or 360° reflected like Duevel & Co, you're closest to how sound behaves live. Compare that now to a 1" dome tweeter firing just forward and there's a big difference in how you perceive the high frequencies. In my experience, the primary advantage of super tweeters is that they can fill in the power response if they're dipole or omni. It's not about going higher per se. It's about matching the radiation pattern of the lower frequencies. A smaller secondary advantage might be that their colossal extension suffers less phase error but of course that super tweeter output overlays (doubles up) on what a traditional tweeter does so isn't pure. Following that line of reasoning, you'd want to start out with a 100kHz ribbon and forget about the add-on fix. As to add-on super tweeters, my favourite was Elac's omni ribbon but successful use depends on the sensitivity of your main speaker and whether that's within the range to which the Elac (or any other super tweeter) can be matched. If you instead go with a true omni speaker like our German Physiks HRS-120, the Elac becomes superfluous. In the end of course, nothing replaces personal experience which in this hobby means listening. The rest is just theory, abstract debate, wishful thinking and endless reading -:)
Srajan
