The case against 1 inch dome tweeters 

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.

Little dome tweeters have been Great for years upon years. Steve's sudden attack on previously loved domes originates in some unexplained influence.

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.

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.

Thank goodness there's no case against a 1inch inverted dome tweeter :D

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.

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.

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.

thanks, always happy, when someone mentions the transparency of quad speakers. i never missed the "more"bass.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Is that triangle shaped thing up in the corner for sound treatment? Can you hear any difference with or without it?

"Hell yeah" at the beginning. Thumbs up for that. lol made me smile.

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.

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?

steve i love your videos what you think about the old ess amt speakers

Excellent Point Steve good to question the obvious which we start to take for granted.

All I'm gonna say is that I've always loved Maggies. You have it dead right Steve: the scale, the sweetness, the ease.

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'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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Please tell which speakers you have designed?

Hello Steve, do you know if a speaker with crossover set at 5 or 6 kHz exist ? This will let all the human voices frequency (200 to 6000 Hz) be reproduce only by the midrange speaker without be cutting in 2 parts between the Twitter and midrange.

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.

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.

What do you think of ribbon tweeters?

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*?"

"Audiophiles don't use their equipment to listen to your music. They use your music to listen to their equipment." --Alan Parsons.

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.

Soft dome tweeters have to be able to "float like a butterfly, and sting like a bee".

I share your exact concern Steve. I’m a long time speaker builder who’s almost completely lived in the realm of traditional drivers. I getting tired of their over enthusiasm (per say) . Thinking more about the bass and mids ( probably the easier fix) I’ll be focusing on Big surface area and ease of Dynamics, with little movement; my next build. (Efficient drivers). I’m undecided on dispersion. Any thoughts on having too much? seems silly going tons of dispersion vs room treatments.. do Maggie’s have wide dispersion?

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.

Hey Steve is that a silent sweep clock up there on the wall cos y'know a clunking quartz clock would drive me nuts ;-)

Great thoughts.. Thx.. Personally I love a good horn tweeter. Sweet sound. Grew up on Old school Klipsch

Can the Maggies be used for home theater

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.

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.

What's up with my JBL titanium compression driver, Steve?

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.

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.

Steve, First time on your channel and I'm a long time audiophile myself, so I don't want to pass myself off as an expert. However I know what I like in the reproduced sounds and it is an personal experience. My question for you is don't most speakers of any notoriety have crossover or low pass filter caps to keep the range where it belongs? I have had Magnaplaners and many other self proclaimed high end speakers over the years, but I finally came across the Sony SSU -4400. And to my ear they still give me the best fidelity when compared to the others. I'm curious to know, but I would agree that it seems likely that a 1 inch anything would have to be sprinkled with fair dust to rate that kind of price per pair. Robert

I’ve thought this as well, but the issue with Magnepan is lack of bass. That’s why I love my apogees😎 STEVE what do you think of apogees?

Anyone, I'm trying to find the truth about tweeter phase shields. I replaced a couple after damaged. The new has phase shield . The old doesn't.

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.

Funny! After you said "All out of one little circle? you paused just like the Church Lady from SNL

Hello Steve. I'm graduallly trying to get familiar with the physics involved with loudspeakers. I have a question I hope you're willing to answer. It seems that the diameter of dome tweeters varies from 19mm to 38mm. Why aren't there any dome speakers with a larger diameter, is it because of (deconstructive) interference, comb filtering or something like that? If so, why can ribbon tweeters have a larger surface area without this disadvantage? Maybe this question is to complicated to answer in the comment section, in that case, do you have a suggestion on books I should read to get to know more about tweeters (speakers in general)? That is, apart from watching this informative channel of course!

I'm amazed at all of the dome tweeter fanatics who have never really and truly given a serious electrostatic or horn loaded speaker design a thorough review in their own listening environment.

I bought a used pair of Maggies last week, and they are great. I also have some high end boxed speakers that cost double the price, but i tend to like the Magnepans more. They don't have that punch in the bass. But a piano now sound more like a piano than ever. They are transparent and the imaging is a lot better in my room with the Magnepans. And they look weird... and i like weird things :) Mine has the Quasi Ribbon tweeter, has anyone compared them with the true ribbon? Is it a huge upgrade in sound, im really hooked right now!

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.

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.

Interesting objectives on a topic wider than the seas. For my taste and budget, I couldn't be happier with my Magnepan 3.7i's.

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.

Sounds like a good reason to look at line arrays that have a dozen or more tweeters.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Steve's got a point here. Many dome tweeters does sound on the edge of their limits..

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.

It's just physics. Lower frequencies produce longer wavelengths, which require larger diameter pistons. Higher frequencies produce shorter wavelengths which require smaller diameter pistons. The smaller the diameter, the better the high frequency off-axis response. A ribbon, for example, might be good on the decay but no so much on the attack, and their vertical off-axis response, unless augmented by a well designed wave guide, isn't as good as a well spaced dome. A small diameter, concentric radiator such as dome tweeter is an excellent choice in most applications. There is a reason that they are so prevalent.

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.

Point sources provide far better imaging-I’m sure that’s a consideration these manufacturers have.

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?

Your answer: read some books on acoustics, acoustic design and speaker design. Why not get the facts before having an opinion.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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’.

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 wish you had mentioned the planar and ribbon tweeters.

Forgive my audio ignorance but why can't you have several tweeters that transmit different range of frequencies.

It seems to me the title of this video could have been a bit more honest. "I'm just asking questions" is not the same as a "case against" something.

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.

1 inch soft dome tweeters are everywhere because they sound great and have wide dispersion.

good information... i totally agree with you !!! two thumbs up !!!

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).

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 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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

If the inner ear can perceive these sounds, why wouldn't a much larger membrane be able to create them?

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.

no matter how big musical instrument is. because all of it's sound at the end comes to a 1" sized microphone capsule. (and ideal sound source is a point)

The “rat” is charging 50k+ for speakers!!

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.