It's great to hear from the actual designer why he made the design choice he did. I feel more confident about the product. As an aside, I'm very impressed to hear about your fully active flagship speaker. Any chance you'll be developing active versions of the smaller omni models, or of the direct radiators? My listening room is smaller, and my budget!
Thank you, although there are currently no plans for other active models, I'm sure it's something we'll be investigating in the future! Glad you enjoyed the video.
Very clear explanation on the reasons why Axiom uses Titanium tweeters by pointing out, articulating and summarizing at the end of the video: consistency, performance, and power handling.
Many thanks. The one thing I would have liked to hear about is phase shields on some tweeters. I have replaced some soft with Titanium after damaging with guitar.
Properly designed soft dome tweeters can sound quite amazing. They are inherently darker sounding than hard dome tweeters which is subjective to a listener’s preference. Beryllium dome tweeters have highly competitive performance when compared to ribbon or air motion tweeters.
And it sort of makes sense. It just stands to reason that a soft dome tweeter would not have the same transient response as a metal dome tweeter, and they physically distort at high volumes and I have never had a silk or fabric dome tweeter that reproduced the attack of a cymbal correctly. when I do A/B comparisons I have always felt that the aluminum/titanium tweeters have a presence and liveliness to percussion and the pluck of an acoustic guitar that silk/fabric cannot. Even though metal dome can have ringing artifacts and sibilance, this usually comes down to poor recordings than the actual tweeter itself.
Beryllium is a great material, but it’s hard to work with and so expensive that once you factor in any QC rejects it might not be worth the additional cost. Thanks for a great question and for watching.
The main reasons are the rigidity which is very important for woofers in particular and power handling. The aluminum cones act as heat sinks and help wick away heat from the voice coil. Thanks for a great question and for watching.
@AxiomAudio I agree that Metal Dome Tweeters in general have received a bad reputation throughout the years as "always" being harsh and fatiguing. Pure Rubbish! It's just a notion that is unnecessarily regurgitated over and over by ill-informed "audiophiles." With ANY type of transducer and the materials that are used, it's all about the proper design and implementation. I've used quite a few metal dome tweeters very successfully throughout the years in my own DIY speaker designs, from manufacturers such as SEAS, LPG, Vifa, Scanspeak, SB Acoustics, and others I'm forgetting at the moment. But I do agree for the most part that the inherent properties of Titanium diaphragms are easier to work with, in addition to some of the Magnesium domes (and now Beryllium diaphragms) compared to the majority of Aluminum-based HF diaphragms. The finest "metal" Dome Tweeters that I've used to date are the BlieSMa T25B & T34B Beryllium domes. But they also produce the same dome tweeters with Silk, Aluminum, and even Diamond diaphragms. So, you can directly compare the characteristics of each type and choose which one works and sounds best to your ears. The Diamond diaphragm tweeters are simply too rich for my blood, so I haven't heard them myself. But others that I know and respect who have directly compared them say they are even better than the beryllium version. I'm also very interested to hear and use the new metal dome tweeters that are being developed by Purifi Audio of Denmark!
If that’s the case then why do Wilson use silk? I think it’s all about implementation, the crossover, the cabinet, the bracing, the damping or not behind the driver.
Absolutely, like I said, it's all about choosing between trade-offs. As for why Wilson uses silk, you'd have to ask them. Thanks for a great comment and for watching.
Yes metal domes are rigid but fabric or silk domes possess one virtue rarely if ever mentioned. They are fundamentally much lower in mass than metal domes. This translates into superior resolution of low level detail. The kind of detail that reveals the fine harmonic structure of musical instruments especially continuous tone instruments such as massed strings and pipe organs which in my opinion metal domes struggle to reproduce. While metal domes reproduce the "snap" and precise transients of percussive sounds they are less good at rendering the inner detail of a good silk dome due to the later's inherently lower mass.
Interesting. My experience does not follow yours. Most soft dome materials are significantly doped or treated, and the moving mass of the diaphragm/voice coil former/voice coil is rarely much different than a typical metal dome. In some cases soft domes will actually weigh more. You can take any series of tweeter from a specific manufacturer and compare the sensitivity and moving mass numbers of their soft and metal dome variants.
@@AxiomHomeTheaters I suggest you weigh a silk dome and a titanium dome. This was dome in an English audio journal (IHIFI news I think) in the 90s. They compared the mass of several cone and dome materials and the synthetic silk dome won for the lowest mass in moving coil drivers. The electrostatic of course eclipsed them all.
I share your view. Silk somes are more forgiving and reproduce finer details that are non-fatiguing. They posses these natural sounding transients that metal domes can never reproduce. Because their company uses Titanium, he probably won't admit the unmatched quality of silk domes. More established audio companies like Polk & Wharfedale would not prefer silk domes on their top of the lines for nothing. While most audio experts would rate Klipsch floorstanders as the best in sound reproduction, they would still critique the harsh metal horn tweeters. Polk in my opinion have best tweeters in floorstanders, as they stick to silk, even though their midrange & midbass cones sound quality do not match Klipsch floorstanders. I think he should admit they are sticking to Titanium as a measure of containing costs. Sound quality is definately not the main motivation.... When asked about opinion on Berrilium tweeters, he mentioned costs of production as too high, while admitting it is a great material. That summed it up for me....
They can perform extremely well, but there are questions on the risk of handling in a production environment and potential environmental impact…it’s a pretty toxic material.
There is all kinds of draw backs to both metal and soft domes. Titanium tweeters will break up soon in the high freq than a soft dome. Comes down to engineering vs material used.
I have measured soft dome tweeters with breakup modes that occur much earlier than metal domes. The soft dome modes also tend to be more destructive within our hearing range. That being said, they can be very good if well designed…again, it’s all about trade-offs. Thanks for sharing your experiences and for watching.
@@AxiomHomeTheaters Andrew - nice video. I appreciate the insight. Can you comment on ringing and sibilance with titanium tweeters? I had a nice pair of tower speakers years ago that had metal dome tweeters. They sounded great but I found that I didn't enjoy listening to them for extended periods. I now have silk dome tweeters. They don't sound as impressive but I can listen to them all day. If memory serves the metal tweeters were aluminum so perhaps titanium would be an improvement? Also, I'm very sensitive to sibilance so I would like to know if you find that titanium dome tweeters are more or less sibilant than other materials.
@@waynelandry1601 I have found that the breakup modes of titanium domes tend to be less severe and further outside of the audible range. In your comparison of aluminum versus soft dome tweeters, I suspect it was more due to the overall loudspeaker design than the speakers themselves. Glad to hear you enjoyed the video, and thanks for some great questions.
