Almost every loudspeaker in the world features a tweeter for the highs, but which are the best? Soft dome, hard dome, diamond, etc. Senior loudspeaker designer Chris Brunhaver of PS Audio gives us the lowdown.
So tweeters are the hardest to build because they are "high" frequency and directional because of that. The diaphragm can't weight anything or you will get distortion. Subwoofers are the hardest because the waves are so long and bounce around and require so much power. The midrange is also the hardest because we actually hear midrange good and care about phase and frequency response. It's all a mess but we can't get enough of it.
Not really. Tweeters are the easiest transducer to make. Mid range is harder. Bass is incredibly hard. Consequently the cost of a good tweeter can be $25, a good mid range woofer $250 and a good bass woofer $2500. Ultra-lf bass is 100 times more difficult than a tweeter
Well, the flat panel, ribbed diaphragm tweeters now available bear little resemblance to an actual AMT driver. They have nearly zero in common with the Oskar Heil patent, which is an interesting read.
@Fat Rat In the "Hood" car HiFi is a set of 100 Motorola piezo tweeters and a clod who bangs the rear bumper with a sledge to attain that just right thud and vibration of the license plate. Bumph/tseets down the motorway ;-)
Glad to hear a vote for AMT. Anything which isn't fatiguing gets my interest. But many soft domes are boring and lifeless. That's also not what I'm looking for.
I tried alot of small speakers using different material for tweeters and mid drivers. I am currently using an ML 15i with an Al driver, stepping down from larger Focals. Nothing bad about the Focals but big and wanted smaller. The 15i's remind me of a smoother sounding Monitor Audio Silver 100 in a smaller package albeit with alot less bass. A little lacking in the low mids but still a good listen especially with a sub and for movies. Good with most music I listen to as well. Tough to get a fully satisfying do it all product in a small speaker. As to soft domes being boring, those that do extend have tended to be too fatiguing and hard and those that sound more "boring" such as the Dali Opticon 1s I have sound great on a desk in the nearfield, like a few feet from the listener. At greater distance, you lose the magic but it works ok for podcasts if you want to move into the room. So. IMO, small speakers are more a surgical tool that can't do everything as well as a larger speaker overall can in a living room. But it can do some things better. Tradeoffs. @@thunderpooch
Silky dome tweeters are probably the best all rounder without spending up big ... they are lossy and non resonant ( not in their operating range anyway ) My personal favourite is the highly expensive Dynaudio Esotar which is an elliptical pressurised dome in which the pressure is modulated by the audio signal ... they cost over $9000 each
I love the mentioning of the plasma tweeter. I remember this from the 80's when Magnat came out with it. It sounded fantastic but the demo room smelled of ozone. It that the reason why plasma tweeters have all but disappeared? Other than that, I have never seen a bad video with Chris, thumbs up on this one as well.
I love german tweeters, dull sounding tweeters from many expensive speaker builders don't give you the real experience. cymbal's sound bright in real so they should also sound bright over speakers and not dull.....sit for 30 minutes in front of a guy playing a drum kit without amplification and try to find that same sound back over your speakers ....concentrate only on the sound of the drum kit you hear, especially the cymbal's...there is not one tweeter what come even close
It is very hard to reproduce actual cymbals accurately. The sound from these large polywobbling non-harmonic metal discs varies in all directions. Generally overhead mic’s at about 8-12 feet are a pretty good representation of what you hear at a distance. That said, try the Sheffield labs drum track for pretty authentic sounding drums. Anyway - don’t blame the tweeters - it is the recording of drums that presents such a huge challenge.
There are enough high-end tweeters that can achieve the same. Beryllium tweeters with a good motor structure can achieve the same with probably even more durability
My first speaker and favorite tweeter from the early 1970s was the ESS Heil AMT1 which defined the company (still in production as the classic in limited edition). The sound of female vocals were crystal clear, very musical and emotional for the listener. Today, so many manufacturers in designs are now using ribbon or AMT tweeters including PS Audio in their future offering?
The uni-q driver in the Kef Blades is the most stunning tweeter I've ever heard - it also a single apparent sound sound which somehow has stereo imaging and a single point source...I don't get it but it sounds phenomenal
Ribbon (and electrostatic) tweeters are not merely about having a low-mass moving element. Another significant advantage is the fact that the entire radiating surface is driven with consistent force, rather than just the perimeter. This largely avoids time delay or phase shift across the radiator, reducing distortion, improving transient response and avoiding perturbations in frequency response. The video title should have been "a few brief comments on tweeters" as it omitted some important classes, and hardly qualifies as even an introduction to a vast discipline.
I have a pair of large floor standing full range electrostatics. Single driver, no crossover, incredibly low mass diaphragm, no box, very low distortion and fast transient response. Not perfect but in a different league to any conventional box speaker.
Dome tweeters are the gold standard when you love to hear distortion levels above 10%. I guess it is exceptionally satisfying for electronic manufacturers when they try to have a nice K2 distortion pattern and then the dome tweeter kills it completely. But yes the 1 grand beryllium or diamond membranes help to make the tweeters 2 cent surround sound a lot better. In the 60s we had paper cone tweeters that costs about 5 bucks, these guys sound seriously better than 95% of modern dome tweeters.
The waterfall plots are the most important measurements for a tweeter imo... this is where you can see if it is ringing or not.. I'd take a tweeter that does not even go up to 20k over a BE driver that goes to 30k and rings like a bell.
Not all tweeters are stiff silk Dome plastic type rubber gel retweeters are not stiff and to say ribbon tweeters have less mass I don't believe so I think there's more mess more material has to be more mass not less in a ribbon tweeter plasma tweeter is the most accurate. That's what you should have put in yours with the ribbon mid-range around it centre horn would work very well
Hi Paul . wish all the best to you guys. I am from Hong Kong and PS audio power planet is popular here. I guess you guys talking abt X&X brand. I definitely agree that is for AV amp and movie. I cannot withstand that for over 15mins of listening even i have mcintosh amp that is treble rolloff. Excuses for my poor English. I even found Found out a budget wharfdale Evo4.2 sounds AMT tweeter in more reasonable with half price of X&X in sort of similar quality price ratio. Keep safe!
I just installed a morel soft dome tweeter to replace a horn loaded compression tweeter and it is night and day as far as harshness. The soft dome sounds like a high frequecy midrange. I think anthony faucci uses a face diaper to keep all the noise out of his system. According to many self-sponsored studies, wearing a face diaper proves to keep all noise out of sound systems even though there has never been any proof of it.
I was looking for information on phase shields. I ruined a couple of $200 tweeters playing my guitar ( big mistake) And replaced with $ 20 with phase shield. Seem to be a bit quieter.
@@thunderpooch Respectfully, no. Original Advents were 2-way designs, so the tweeters operated into the upper midrange, but tweeters they most definitely were. The AR-3a dome midrange was sometimes referred to as "fried egg". Maybe that's what you are thinking of. And I agree with you about RU-vid!
For me, once you hear planar tweeters, there is no turning back, especially for the types of music that are demanding in terms of timbre accuracy, such as classical or jazz. For mid-highs, under 2K, I prefer horns.
The title is tongue in cheek and a blatant and obvious over sell. The accurate title would be "a little info about tweeters." T that isn't exactly fun or exciting. "Everything you need to know about..." titles are also jerking people's chains in good fun. Developing a sense of humor clears up most things in life. The alternative is continuing to be an autistic literalist with everything, and never understanding nuance and context. Annoying AF.
would that british company be KEF? why has nobody done a full review of the kef hometheater series. How does it compare to a jbl sythesis and martin logan inwalls with the ribbon tweeters? is it possible to get the same surround imaging they claim from a far less expensive product?
Chris touches on a prime product motivation, "... a marketing one, to be different...." If all speakers sounded about the same, buyers would just choose the cheapest -- a disaster for the manufacturers and brands. A marketers' worst nightmare: *the race to the bottom.*
What I appreciate about Chris is that he explains in the general case, not specifically within the ever changing, seemingly never arriving PSAudio speaker system. I have never heard anyone in the audio business speak with a more comprehensive knowledge and understanding -- except Nelson Pass, about amplifiers. (And Floyd Toole, about rooms and psychoacoustics (as opposed to *"psychoaudiophiles." ;)* ))
@@ThinkingBetter If you started saving $1000 per month since Paul first started planning them, you'd just about be there. Then, that'll be the Mark II version. HiFi, the usurper of kid's inheritances.
What actually dictates the speed of a woofer or sub woofer. The magnet or magnets. Thickness of the wire in the voice coil. Or how it is wound. Cone material??????
Soft dome tweeters dominate in home audio (great sound, very affordable but delicate). Horns dominate in PA (robust loud)The fundamental engineering issue in a tweeter diaphragm is balancing weight, stiffness and internal intrinsic damping. Fabric domes are my favourite - they sacrifice a little in high frequency extension but are intrinsically damped and sound much better in the range that I actually care about 3000-12,000Hz (with nice clean waterfall plot on SEAS Millennium for example ). AMT or ribbon style tweeters aren’t robust or powerful enough for far field work and end up creating comb filtering when aligned in a multiple transducer array. Comb filtering can be pleasant enough but adding that to everything you are listening too doesn’t work for me (same issue with panel speakers). Ferro-fluid is the biggest issue with standard tweeters - the sound quality doesn’t last more than a year or two as the ferrofluid dries out. Building a tweeter without ferry-fluid is possible but it is very expensive as tolerances need to be very tight and a double spider is the only way to prevent rocking without the VC centring effect of ferrofluid (ferrofluid is such a cheap way to make a good sounding tweeter it dominates) Tweeters suffer from the age old engineering piston problem (a piston length should be more than 1.5 times its diameter in order to not suffer from rocking).
@@bilguana11 It is rare because most AMT are used in bookshelf sizes for near field applications (Adam use them and make excellent near fields). Infinity built some really big (famous) speakers which could play loud and had an array of AMT. It is a limitation of technology.
@@jeremyhughes6485 Infinity never used AMT drivers. Adam once made a mid-range AMT driver when they made consumer speakers, but never multiple AMT tweeters.
@@bilguana11 I stand corrected. I should have used the term Ribbon tweeter instead of AMT which is just one type of ribbon. I think Infinity called their design EMIT. My point was that planar magnetic or ribbon drivers don’t generally perform well at lower frequencies and require arrays or much larger surfaces than a dynamic dome tweeter to achieve similar SPL at the low end of their range.
Loved this talk on tweeters. The last set of speakers that I designed and built are using Focal inverted dome tweeters with phase plug. I was a little hesitant about the inverted dome as I had heard that they tend to be beamy. I don’t find them noticeably beamy. Their off axis response doesn’t seem to be any worse than the dome tweeter. Not sure what advantages are claimed for the phase plug but overall I am pleased with the performance of these tweeters. My speakers are two way TL’s with Focal “W” cone 5 1/4” woofers with solid aluminium posts (I believe they also serve as phase plugs? I would be interested in hearing opinions on phase plugs.
I have Focal 807Ws and they are a great general purpose speaker for everyting. Much preferred over Quad S2 (had more detail and resolution, but flat stage, wall of sound that was boring for music), MA Silver 100 (more bass and midbass, but congested in the upper mids and too in your face at even moderate volume levels). The Focals do most everything well and I only want to replace with smaller speakers. Trying the ML 15i on a sub which works well enough but doesn't have the detail and overall fidelity but perhaps close enough as trying to find small performance in a moderate sized room at a reasonable price has been difficult. Some options over a grand but one is still looking at a larger enclosure, most over 14 inches so the difference in downsizing may not be justified. Heco Ceylon 3 seems to be a contender that matches or is slightly preferred to the Aria 906 and can be had for under a grand when on sale, but the older Focal tweeter (non-Poron) extends better IMO if you like a light, airy and extended high frequency. I just didn't care for the new Poron tweeter being a bit too refined for me. The 807W just sounds right and especially with a sub but I am downsizing, its that point in my life I guess. So soon to be listed. That inverted tweeter though is better than most unless one likes a more refined, less accented tweeter. Does well with sibilants too.
David, I have DIY speakers with ring/slot tweeters similar to the 077... they are TOA-branded, but probably made by Fostex or Coral back in the '80s. They are superb sounding, and have about 110db sensitivity! They are avidly sought after in Europe.
Thanks for the video guys. I would be interesred to know a little more about your thoughts on beryllium tweeters. Also, is it just me or is Chris a little bit camera shy? As an after thought, don't be shy man. Enter the belly of the beast and own it. You can do it. I know you can. Cheers
Lirpa Labs is pleased to announce our newest Tweety Bird tweeter: an organically sourced soft dome composed of cartoon canary feathers reinforced with puddy-tat whiskers in a proprietary geometrical array, devised by the genius of Professor I. Lirpa after a night of over-indulging on 42-year-old golden absinthe, that provides unprecedented stiffness, damping, and linearity. Available in any color you want as long as it's yellow. Disclaimer: no cartoon characters were harmed in the making of this announcement.
i though planar is one of the best teknologies now, scalable to midrange down to 100hz and up to tweeter range, durable design, dipole design options. can be made cheaply,
