I've always been a soft dome kinda guy. I'm old skool and my listening appreciation started in the early 70's. My first boxes were from Acoustic Research and featured a paper dome (soft). From that point on, I had a predisposition to loving the smooth highs that soft domes produced. Sure, I had friends who had speakers with horn loaded tweeters and mids but I wasn't a fan of that unrefined assault on my ears. They were more efficient but that volume came at the price of quality sound and ear fatigue. Even when I got into doing a custom car audio job on my old camaro, I sought out a pair of Philips soft dome tweeters...they looked like hockey pucks but sounded amazingly clear and clean without hurting my hears when the volume was pushed hard. On my current home system (non-home theatre) pure stereo, I'm still listening to and enjoying soft domes in my speaker set-up. For my ears and music tastes, I just can't beat 'em.
Will go with soft dome after reading your comment.i like pure stereo sound.just restoring some rare speakers.also got a pair of pioneer cs997 all paper drivers and sounds natural.
I've have had several Set's of AR3a over the years. Yes! their soft dome tweeters were great. They invented the dome tweeter. It was the first to ever exist. All things considered, I think they did a good job. That tech has been copied for at least 60 years, so I guess it caught on.
Not really I actually don't like Ribbon or air motion transformers way too soft to me not my tonality. Beryllium or diamond are simply best to my ears. They have everything I wanted cheers
@@MaximusOpus Considering most Be tweeter in Madisound go for about $600-700 a pair, which in my case that means blowing 70-80% of all the budget on tweeters alone. I wonder if Peerless by Tymphany's corundum dome tweeters for about $107 a pair may be the next best thing.
I love beryllium tweeters. I've got them in my Revel Ultima Studio 2's, and the Super Tweeter in my JBL K2's. I also recently fell in love with the Magnesium compression driver in the K2's. It's fantastic. I've got aluminum tweets in my Totem's at my desk, and 11 soft domes around my theater. That said, I'm designing a speaker now and I didn't even question it, it's going to have a very good soft dome in it. I just love their non-fatiguing response and vocal response as they near the crossover point. It's not always about the diaphragm material used, but about its implementation both in the driver's motor and chambering, but also in the speaker designer's baffle and crossover design. I get customers who come into our store (I sell audio for a living), and they'll say something like "Well I know I don't want a metal dome tweeter". My next response is, you've probably never heard beryllium am I right? Usually, people with prejudice against a driver material, have likely never heard it done very well. That said, I do love a paper cone midbass driver, haha. You can keep your woven cones, lol.
I have titanium and aluminum from two high end manufacturers. My Morel soft dome is a perfect match for my Hivi F5 woofer. I replaced the domes in my older Canton pedestal mount with one pair using titanium (difficult to manufacture and sound good). The other pair has aluminum tweeters from model that has been around for a long time. With medal tweeters you have a long break in time (one manufacture says 100 hours). My two came around in 50 hours, and all are smooth. The advantage of metal is their ability to play louder without distortion.
For many years I had Polk tri-laminate tweeters in their RT line, CS400, RT55, FX500. Recently after some listening tests I moved to the Motion Tweeter in Martin Logan Motion 40. Both sound pleasing, but after breaking in, the Motion 40 sounds clearer.
I love working with the ScanSpeak Discovery D2608/9130 1" Textile Dome HDS Tweeter, formerly known as the Peerless HDS 810921 tweeter, although you do have to pad the tweeter's rising response, but the results are golden and it is only ~$75.00
This topic has been on my mind for ages. Thanks for bringing it up guys :) I have worked in the sound business for over 40 years. I had the chance to listen to just about all models of Thiel, Mirage, Meridian, ProAc, Mission, 3a, Cambers and PSBs first equipped with soft and later metal dome tweeters. Designers like Jim Thiel and Paul Barton thought metal domes measured better but to my ears, soft domes simply sound softer, not as hard, pardon the puns. My one and only reference when comparing audio products is live sound, metal domes sound more like hifi sound effects, sibilant and over cooked where soft domes remind me more of music. In the end, it's all about the tweeter, woofer, mids, crossover and enclosure working well together, not just highs, lows and specs, there must be synergy, seamless integration from top to bottom, soft to loud. Harbeth is one speaker company who's product I listened to recently that seems to embrace that concept. I'd like to know what's in their secret sauce.
Christian Bouchard great comments Christian. Awesome to hear about your experiences. If you have an interest in writing about audio, please contact me at: info@audioholics.com and put "Audioholics Writing Opportunity" in the subject line. WE are always looking for seasoned audio veterans that are in the business to share their experiences.
This is exactly how I feel. While I've never worked in a shop, I tend to go out every once and a while to hear the newest offerings. This Spring came around (listen to me trying to sound humane ) or rather income tax season lol and I ended up spending my most adventurous day of the year mainly being thrashed around by metal domes in the morning. While I absolutely hate auditioning speakers in near field like I was forced to do with most of the speakers, I believe there's still plenty of the speakers dna available to nitpick. I can't say I had heard much excess energy at the top end with most of them but by lunch time my ears were ringing due to them seemingly shouting at my ears at the beginning of every transient attack. Another thing I noticed was traces of a metallic quality to them that was always present. I tried to keep an open mind and sorted through all the speakers and it wasn't until I got to the soft dome tweeters of the sonus Faber veneres and Olympica series that I felt I was listening to music. I'm also a semi fan of panel speakers. I respect them but I absolutely hate being able to localize the sound bouncing off the rear walls.
Very accurate and exactly true about tweeters. Canton from germany makes great tweeters. I've had a silk dome and an aluminum/magnesium tweeters from this company and they have been very high quaility. Canton manufactures it's drivers. Just goes to show ya. Thanks for the great video.
Hi Guys, I'm a fan of your site. Many years back, we had a B&W Floorstanding speaker with a metal dome tweeter, that was crisp and clear...however, I could never sit through a long listening session. Later on, I bought a beautiful pair of RUARK EQUINOX speakers with a silk dome tweeter....and wow....what a difference, I could really enjoy an eight hours weekend music session listening to my records. Initially I ran my speakers the usual way, but when I Bi-Wired them....wow again....I was really pleased with the overall sound improvement. After all these years, my Equinoxes still sound great even with CD's....and more recently Blu-Ray's. I do have a worry though, the dome tweeter seems to attract a fair bit of dust, and I'm not sure how you'd clean it, as the dome has a sticky coating. Hope to hear from you please. Cheers, Jeff
I have to say I tend to prefer soft domes over metal. Though I have heard the Scan speak beryllium tweeter and I was impressed with it. I also have no complaints from the diamond tweeter used in the B&W 804D. I can only compare these since I have had a chance to listen to both of these for more than a casual listen. And I think I remember a Vandersteen metal dome that was really nice. Most of the time, especially in the mass market, metal domes sound harsh.
when i eventually do a 'room tour' (lord knows whenever that'll be) i gotta show off this philips/sharp/infinity/parts express speaker i put together, it sounds fabulous. yes it has a silk dome.
As a budget speaker hound I'm often eyeing high end speakers from the last decade, but finding data on them is difficult, but I've got a hot tip ;) using google's "way back machine, internet archive" you can pull up old websites from when these speakers were top of the line, and download their marketing materials, data sheets, diagrams, and all sorts of useful stuff. You can also use google's reverse image search to find higher resolution versions of images you may find. I've even found old speaker adds from hifi/audiophile magazines for sale on ebay which make for a fabulous accompaniment framed in the listening room. I found an add for my fantastically over-engineered KEF Q7's which have a cool uni-Q design with the tweeter in the center of the midrange, and a racetrack shaped oval woofer lol. The add is for the reference series which appears to have the same uni-Q array, it shows a frequency response graph of their 250mm racetrack driver against a "standard" {brand X} 250mm driver in distortion terms of the second and third harmonic. "The titanium dome Hypertweeter in it's chromed steel pod hints at the massively extended performance designed to deliver every last detail encoded in modern wideband formats. Radical new Uni-Q point source arrays ensure unrivaled dispersion. Faraday rings in the motor systems and independently-loaded bass drivers minimise distortion, and the use of thick section cast aluminum accounts for exceptionally inert enclosures." But it wasn't until I actually found the brochure on their old website from the mid 2000's that I discovered that my beloved Kef-Q7 had an Aluminum tweeter, "The new Uni-Q array on every model pushes the performance advantage even further. With its powerful lightweight neodymium magnet system developed from the Reference Series, the new 19mm aluminium dome tweeter reproduces vocals with total clarity. With a first resonance over 30kHz, it makes New Q fully compatible with the latest wideband formats." Which goes to show that even if you find a sweet add for framing on ebay, with what looks exactly like your speaker, it may not actually be the add to have framed up on the wall touting sonic virtues, and that google's "way back machine" is awesome for researching and comparing speakers.
I have those same RBH aluminum dome tweeters installed in my custom reference towers modeled after the RBH-MC-6T. In my case I have 2 of those tweeters per speaker. In comparing them to my shielded Dayton audio soft dome "silkies" mounted in my HT fronts I'd say that the aluminum domes sounded a little cold compared to the warm sounding Dayton's. I'm used to those aluminum domes now but can;t really say in all honestly which I like more. They're both excellent dome tweeters in IMO.
Totally love Morel soft domes. Perfect detail and no listener fatigue. Great power handling, and great pricing. There are few better in sound quality, but none in their price range. Lucky find for me. They always get great reviews too.
The dome tweeter and midrange drivers were invented by Edgar Villchur of Acoustic Research. Introduced as the famous one inch fried egg tweeter in AR2a and AR3 it was later replaced by a 3/4 inch version. It's purpose was the best possible dispersion. Paper was an excellent choice. Paper pulp fibers efficiently damp energy between each other while metal does not. The wide dispersion of the AR tweeter is due to its geometry. It is small 3/4 inch instead of one inch, it is a full half sphere dome, and it is not recessed. As a result it was down only 5 db at 15 khz 60 degrees off axis. No dome tweeter you can but today comes remotely close. But that wasn't good enough for Roy Allison who designed it for the AR3a. In AR LST, a souped up AR3A he used 4 tweeters and 4 dome midrange . All 4 midrange and 2 of the tweeters were mounted on 45 degree side panels making lateral dispersion even greater. That speaker was also marketed by Saul Marantz as the Cello Amati. In a later design on speakers bearing his own name brand he devised an even wider dispersion tweeter using a principle not too dissimilar from MBLs where the sound radiating from the equator is opposite in phase from sound radiating from the poles.
@davidstevens7809 Paper is surprisingly good material for speaker domes and cones. Among its virtues is that energy in the cone or dome dissipates rather quickly due to friction between the cellulose fibers. At the opposite end are metal domes and cones. They often have resonant peaks that ring at specific frequencies. Look at Atkinsons measurement for the recently introduced KLH model 5. Its metal dome tweeter has hesonances jut below and above 20 khz.
Have a set of Infinity rs525s with img woofers,passive radiators with Polycell tweeters. Found a nice pair of Emit r's I installed today and I'm blown away with the smoothness and incredible detail. Arnie Nudell and Cary Christie wrote the book on hi fidelity.
Keep up the good work. People fail to realise that the best perspective of sound reproduction is from the ears of the elders, i am 35 so I heard the transition, yes things are not as good as before but new ears will never know the difference either unless using old equipment with old music and new music for a full range test...
Another vote for folded ribbon tweeters like that are used by Martin Logan Motions and GoldenEar. But if I am limited to domes, I think I prefer aluminum domes, as long as they are high quality like in SVS prime and ultra, and B&W CM series. I have a pair of budget bookshelf with the cheap-o Ti tweeters which tend to 'ring' in their breakup mode. Very fatiguing after just a few minutes at high volume. The Folded Ribbon guys say their tweeters breakup mode is well above the range of hearing, so they sound smooth.
***** Yes Marton Logan makes a few lines of electrostatic speakers. However their more "budget oriented" Motion brand line of speakers use folded ribbon tweeters.www.martinlogan.com/motionSeries/
They actually have poor break up character and narrow dispersion. They operate fairly well at low volumes but at high SPLs they're like ear drills, especially those used by Golden Ear - worse than cheap metal domes by a country mile.
The C30-6-024 by Accuton is a 1.2 inch tweeter with a ceramic dome and I love the sound they produce nice very nice 3d space. but like with evry thing there are so many flavors out there in the wild. Some Tweeter can sound harsh brain piercing with a aircoils but smooth as a angel with foilcoils its the sum of the parts and disign.
The tweeters in my Paradigm Cinema 70 V2's sound epic. Their made out of a polymer material and it's a dome and it sounds super crisp and clean and the highs don't get sharp or fatiguing. I love these tweeters.
Love your engineering-centric approach! No alchemic mysteries or hip-hopper hype for me! My best sounding tweeters are aluminum diaphragm Japanese (TOA, probably by Fostex or Coral) ring/slot compression drivers similar to the legendary JBL L65 077 used in their high end studio monitors and home systems. Uber efficient, high MOL, and sweet. They are in experimental hybrid TOA/Mitchell/University triamped mains, with a B&C 18" pro cinema sub driver in a DIY cab. Vintage PA gear components (mostly) that sound at least as good in combination as anything I have ever encountered in my 64 years. The midrange richness and imaging are simply stunning at 100db+.
I like soft domes. Whatever happened to the great plastic soft dome tweeters B&W made in the 1980s? They were really fluid and natural sounding. I have never heard diamond tweeters. Maybe they are better, but how many people can afford them? I heard one beryllium tweeter and found it difficult to listen to. It was impressive, but not musical.
ScanSpeak Classic D2905/9500 1" Tweeter Textile Dome this is the best tweeter,,i beg to differ my friend..for the price its good but for 40 more bucks you can have the one with the cool phase plug..
I know, old video. I typically like the presentation of silk/soft dome tweeters. Metal domes seem to sound great with classic recordings for some reason, but soft all day long for modern recordings
I never really bother what kind of material the speakers are made of. I do bother how they sound, that is for me much more important. And also the looks are important: WAF is an important part of selecting speakers, especially when you like them big. My first speakers used horns both for the mids and highs; my next speakers I guess used a soft dome. I never really cared, so I'm just guessing because the dome was black. My current speakers are Magnepan 1.7s, these have quasi-ribbon speakers. A complete different approach compared to 'normal' speakers. I do like these 1.7s mostly for their realistic sound stage: the width and height they present. And, as a bonus, you can place the speakers with the tweeters on the inside or on the outside. I tried both and preferred the outside.
You made a commitment about car audio midbass and tweeter in a car door Boom and sizzle. I beg to differ on that thought becuse I had a set of infinity beta and beta tweeters that were silk dome in a 1994 toyota celica that blended very well. Its as you say some metal dome tweeters if done right can sound good. Same with the desine of speakers in a car. Now I got this perfect match just out of dumb luck. But that car you could put an 8" mid bass driver in the door and right by the door handel mount a tweeters mine were 1 1/8" silk domes that played down to 2500 hz JL audi makes a high end coax with metal dome and a rubber souround that helps with the harshness B&W s dimond series speakers should ver very good. But I still like the old Bob Carver amazing loud speaker and magnpans ribbons are your next step up from silk domes. But who are we fooling how old are you 40s 50s you cant hear 20k anymore your best hearing at you age is 15k Infact if your older then say 20s you cant hear above 15 to 17k hz a 12 year old hears 20k unless you have dog ears you cant. So buy what ever sounds best for you giving advice on speakers is the dumbest thing you can do. Taking advice from somone is even dumber. Use your own ears I cant tell you what you can hear I dont have your ears. I can show you what sounds good to me But thats about it. You have to be your own judge. Were all exposed to differnt sounds and life styles we all hear things differently. I doubt I'd get an offer to write but ive also got a vast amount of experience over the last 50 years. Im more like a metal dome tweeter talking about it. HARSH.
soft, because it sounds smoother in most cases. Although i have old Infinity's with Emit-R Ribbon tweeters which sound nice and airy/open, and very clear but soft on your ear.
I have Ei-Nis, 30 years old soft dome tweeter made in Yugoslavia, and to this day I havent heard something more soft and precise than that! But, now I gave only one. Any sugestions for me which tweeters to by. Thanks.
I have Focal electra 1008Be and I'm amazed with it's sound, beryllium is the best tweeter ever!!! You guys have to experience it, now I won't go to anything else:)
I've heard both types that sound great, and both types that sound bad. My opinion is the same as these guys: tolerances, build consistency/alignment of parts/QC is the difference between good and bad. That's why the Danish and Italian companies tend to manufacture the very best drive units, as thier quality control/assembly is on point.
I am usually a soft dome guy but I am pleased with the svs ultra hard domes. I also like the ribbons had a hard time choosing the Martin Logan motion 60xt with ribbons or the svs ultra towers. I picked svs being that it's movies 80% of the time.
I agree that QC and overall design decisions are more important than the material used. That said I have heard some really good polyester tweeters. Again QC and how it is used are very important.
The best tweeter sounding i ever heard was mixin a beated up polk dome that i found on a flea market and a cheap titanium jbl- like, music becames real when i put those next to a 8" fullrange speaker, and some home made crossover
I am wondering how well the break-up is controlled in full-range or wide range drivers. The BMR driver covering 250Hz to 20kHz in Cambridge Audio Aeromax 2 and Aeromax 6. The full-range driver in Bose 901 VI. The driver covering 200Hz to 18kHz in Bose Acoustimass 5.
I wonder about compression horn drivers for tweeters I have the Peavey RX22 in my car they don't sound bad at all and keep up with a pair of 15's at 3000w rms from 1500 hz to 20K hz they sound good I like the solid compression drivers.
I once played with some metal dome tweeters for a Thiel CS3.6 speaker and they sounded really good as long as you stay within its designed parameters. They sounded awful beyond that. But you know all these tweeters sound colored compared to electrostatic tweeters.
Not only do my ears prefer silk domed tweeters the only speakers I can enjoy anymore are McIntosh line arrays ,I have pics of my 2 pairs of XRT-22s and my single pair of XRT-28s on your site under username Highfihoney ,I had the chance to audition my silk domed tweeters XRT-28s directly against McIntosh 110 driver XRT-2k flagship line arrays in a side by side audition ,I went in planning on dropping $80,000 for the Titanium domed XRT-2k line arrays and wound up preferring the XRT-28 silk domed line arrays much more for Jazz Rock & Heavy Metal ,paying $16,000 for the XRT-28s & getting a better sound over the new $120,000 msrp XRT-2ks was a huge savings with better sound .
Was looking at some tweeter to my kitchen speaker project. I wanted it to be simple with 6 db crossovers, so the tweeter had to be good. There were many that had those aluminium cooler attached to it, that looked really fancy. But I wanted some that had a back champer, I knew from a pair of Esotec how beneficial it had to the sound. I found one, same price as those fancy ones. It was the tweeter that is used on Buchard S300, that is so revered now. SB26STCN-C000-4 My instinct was right......... Those fancy ones is a scam, If they need cooling, they are fundamentally wrong build. AND that they have no champer means there are compression issues in the dome.
Soft vs hard dome tweeter.. in the end it dosen't matter what really matters is your ears. Do a blindfolded A/B test where you can switch between the speakers with music playing without knowing wich speaker is A or B. Tell your friend which you liked most liked A or B? and then your friend can reveal which one is A and wich one is B.
I've been a soft dome (Dynaudio) guy my entire life but I gotta say the UniQ driver in the Kef LS50"s is pretty good. There is nothing worse than a metal dome that rings except a horn loaded ringing metal dome tweeter. Make it STOP!
I build my own speakers for my main audio system and all my speakers have fabric dome tweeters. In my outdoor speakers and in my boat, I run metal dome tweeters as I "feel" that the metal will be more water resistant, plus in a boat, I am not concerned about audiophile sound -- just load :-)
My Vandersteen 2CE signatures (version 1) have an "alloy" dome... I wonder which alloy? I've never had a problem with them sounding harsh, but they also aren't the most detailed tweeters I've heard. The speakers more than make up for the HF detail in midrange clarity, taught, deep bass and spaciousness. I'm curious if anyone at Audioholics has any experience with Vandersteen. I don't recall seeing them get a mention...
Vifa aluminum dome. Vandersteen 2CE have a sculpted front panel for the mid and tweeters that gives them a spacious quality and time align the drivers for a simplified crossover design with good transient response. The bass uses a passive radiator rather than a port which gives them a nice rich quality without being too boomy. Lots of good old fashioned engineering, high quality Scandinavian drivers and no voodoo magic at all.
Any insight on the folded motion tweeters typically found in Martin Logan speakers? I have a pair, and wondered how they compare to the soft and hard dome.
I forgot to mention the fact that many also don't undetstand the best ways of input source wiring to whatever the output amp wiring is so in most cases many people use inadequate input sources for full quality which nowadays does require us to use the manual or auto dsp settings mixed in with fast/slow attack settings to boost/smooth sound output.. With the ever increasing of so called music lovers converting low bitrate files to mp3 and never using wav files ir alike to begin with they will always find themselves looking for more methods of power to boost dead signals that always have hidden digital silenced hum meaning the audio of interest signal will never occupy even 70% of the input feed the output amp see's..
Is there some kind of paint or rubber that could be used to soften the oil-can resonances of a metal tweeter, I imagine a dobb of silicon on the tip of the dome, or a thin layer of paint could help. Maybe even some spray adhesive with tennis ball fuzz sprinkled on it, or some down.
Wouldn't that affect the other parameters which might be just fine. Rarely can you fix one problem on a speaker driver without screwing up another. If the driver doesn't perform well as a .75 in tweeter then it's probably a low quality .75 in tweeter. Same could be said for a 1 inch tweeter or a 5 inch mid.
Just curious where does MartinLogan's folded motion tweeter and ribbon tweeters fall in this game just one aspect i'ld like you to cover is the claim by ML that the surface area of the folded motion is 10 to 12 x the size of these other tweeters
The focal inverted dome tioxid used in (my kit speakers) and the wilson-watt puppy 5 was ass. Went off like a fire alarm with resonance. UGH. Beryllium does not resonate like other metals. When in doubt? Scan speak revelator. The $350 Vifa silk is amazing.
I realize this video is two years old. Bob Crites ( The Klipsch guru) recommends replacing the OEM soft domes with Titanium. I subscribed to his thoughts and was very impressed with the change. We ain't talking Beryllium in a 50k speaker. According to you guys, Titanium is cheap crap. I beg to differ.
I have two 3/4 inch soft dome tweeters and 3, 1 inch plastic tweeters and I have 2, 2 inch paper tweeters and 2 1/2 inch metal tweeters from back in the day
I have yet to hear a metal dome tweeter I could stand to listen to. I heard one beryllium dome tweeter in a two way 5.25" woofer bookshelf design by Paradigm ($1,500) and it was impressive but cold and not musical. It was like listening to medical equipment. I have heard that even the big Andrew Jones designed beryllium TAD speakers that cost as much as a house are cold and analytical. I like to enjoy music, not examine it, so I only buy soft domes. I have not heard diamond domes or the Infinity ceramic covered domes. Maybe they are better. I suspect it is more than just break-up modes involved and there is some difference in the way the sound propagates from a soft dome that makes it sound more natural. I also like air mounted tweeters. When you put tweeters in cabinets, it destroys the imaging.
Thanks fellows , I always wondered that, and find the metal dome tweeters to be a bit nails on a chalkboard on certain notes. I have a pair of watt puppy 5's and they have soft dome tweeters. I find them to integrate better with the mid and sub.., a softer and gentler sound to the ear..I think I will stick with the soft dome tweeter. Could it be some people are just more sensitive to the metal sound than the silk or soft tweeters? I find myself to be one of those people affected by the metal sounding tweeter.
Polk Audio use to make a titanium tweeter that was the best I have ever heard but for reasons unknown they stopped making the tweeters. Someone stole mines and it was like they took the brilliance of my sound system away. I went to buy another set and was told they didn't make them anymore and I ended up getting some Polk Audio silk dome tweeters and it just wasn't the same 🥺 😢.
Beryllium is a game changer, But I think composite materials are going to see a resurgence with nanotechnology. Perhaps the age of the "paper" tweeter has only just begun? ha ha ha. Graphene, and gorilla-glass hold promising potential as well. I think the whole field is going to get blurry with proprietary combinations of materials.
Gentlemen I have to say that having owned many different speakers in my 57 years unless price is no problem I'd stick with the silk dome tweeter, imho much smoother response better overall sound . I love my Source Technologies 277 SEs John Solecito really knows his stuff . Of course these are in the 4K a pair range . But unless you buy hard domes in the 10k and above range they tend to be to bright at least for my taste .
AudioholicsLIVE I'm fairly familiar with soft and metal tweeters. But I am very curious about the other types of tweeters available, such as electrostatic vs. Piezo vs. Plasma/ion vs. Ribbon/Planar ribbon vs. Air motion transformer (AMT). Are any of these types significantly better than another?
I always thought Titanium dome tweeters were really good and used mainly in high end speakers. JBL designed some outstanding titanium tweeters in the early 80s, like the 044TiA (used in their famed 250ti speaker). Aluminum is obviously cheaper then titanium, so it's a no-brainer that if it sounds better to use aluminum, then you're going to use aluminum, unless you are selling to a group of people who just REALLY love titanium.
Correct. Dollar for dollar, titanium is the superior tweeter material. The problem is some manufacturers don't implement it correctly as in the Infinity example. I've long suspected that some brands are coating aluminum drivers to look similar to titanium for marketing.
I was looking at RBH but their MC series of in-walls are not enclosed, what model in particular do you consider is as good or better than Totem kin in-wall? How about Definitive Technologies model RLS II?
I wander if JBL 580 -590 has an soft or a metal tweeter / horn? (1″) compression driver with neodymium magnet and one-piece Teonex® diaphragm on a glass-filled ABS Bi-Radial horn, magnetically shielded
I've never had the luxury of listening to a beryllium tweets but in the case of silk vs alluminum I favor the silk. I'm probably in the minority here but I'm extremely sensitive to sibilance and silk domes aren't as fatiguing to me. Not say that I haven't heard aluminum tweets that sounded pretty damn excellent, it just hurts after a while.
Quick question for you guys, what are your thoughts on the tweeter use by Totem Acoustics in the kin in wall speakers and to what Tower speaker of any other company will compare sound wise? Thank you for your help and all your awesome reviews..
armando calvo Totem makes some nice product but they have many competitors that are as good or better in their price ranges. Check out in-walls from RBH, Monitor Audio, Revel, to name a few.
I was blown away by a totem demo I head at THE Show a few years ago. I'm not sure about the model you're talking about, but the pair I heard apparently didn't have a crossover. It relied on the mechanical strength of the drivers, or something. All I know is they sounded amazing.
I'm curious to find out your thoughts on the B&W diamond tweeter vs the beryllium tweeter. I noticed you don't do a lot of reviewing of B&W but wanted to see if there was a reason for it. thanks
Derek Dastrup B&W makes some good stuff. I personally prefer some of their older matrix stuff over the newer surroundless midrange. B&W doesn't do a lot of push to get their products covered in the USA like some of the other brands do.
I bet klipsch tweeters and woofers have to be really good. Needlessly good. Honestly, I don't really get klipsch speakers. They're a PA speaker in a home theatre cabinet. And PA speakers, as we all know, sound god awful. A 2-way with a horn tweeter setup seems most appropriate when you want to throw a backyard party and you really only care about volume and not quality. 3-way or go home. Or 2-way for near field monitoring. 2-way with a horn tweeter...PA LEEZ. Nobody does what klipsch does that I can think of, and for good reason. Unless of course Klipsch have truly worked some magic that I'm overlooking. Doubt it. Attempt to make a 2-way floor standing model that is high fidelity across the 60hz-20khz spectrum using just two 8 inch or two 10 inch woofers and pair it with with one horn tweeter. Something is compromised. Think: the entire mid range. A line array with smaller woofers can theoretically round out the bottom 120hz-60hz because the smaller mid woofers act as a larger cone. And having the smaller drivers makes the mids excel. Unfortunately, line arrays are pretty pointless for homes. 10+ drivers makes intelligibility difficult. So just go with a 3-way that has 3, maybe 4 drivers at most. The more I look to design and or purchase speakers, the more 2-way speakers and line arrays show their abounding weaknesses for mid-field home listening.
I only heard one beryllium tweeter in a two way design with a 5" woofer that retails for $1,500. It was impressive, but I would not like to listen to it for long. With metal speakers people say it is like looking at an X-ray of the music, or even a MRI of the music. It is impressive but NOT musical in the sense of being organic and living. All the life is sucked out of the sound. A good fabric or silk dome works very well. The best speakers I have heard, however, have been Magnepans, which is a whole other world of speaker design. The problem with that technology is the size and the need for very good room acoustics and speaker positioning.
I've always been a soft dome kinda guy. I'm old skool and my listening appreciation started in the early 70's. My first boxes were from Acoustic Research and featured a paper dome (soft). From that point on, I had a predisposition to loving the smooth highs that soft domes produced. Sure, I had friends who had speakers with horn loaded tweeters and mids but I wasn't a fan of that unrefined assault on my ears. They were more efficient but that volume came at the price of quality sound and ear fatigue.
Even when I got into doing a custom car audio job on my old camaro, I sought out a pair of Philips soft dome tweeters...they looked like hockey pucks but sounded amazingly clear and clean without hurting my hears when the volume was pushed hard.
On my current home system (non-home theatre) pure stereo, I'm still listening to and enjoying soft domes in my speaker set-up. For my ears and music tastes, I just can't beat 'em.
Will go with soft dome after reading your comment.i like pure stereo sound.just restoring some rare speakers.also got a pair of pioneer cs997 all paper drivers and sounds natural.
I've have had several Set's of AR3a over the years. Yes! their soft dome tweeters were great. They invented the dome tweeter. It was the first to ever exist. All things considered, I think they did a good job. That tech has been copied for at least 60 years, so I guess it caught on.
I go back to the 70s too. My favorites were the ADS.
Ribbon or air motion transformers are the best tweeters. Extremely smooth, detailed but not fatiguing. Love my Emotiva Airmotiv 5S.
Not really I actually don't like Ribbon or air motion transformers way too soft to me not my tonality. Beryllium or diamond are simply best to my ears. They have everything I wanted cheers
@@MaximusOpus Considering most Be tweeter in Madisound go for about $600-700 a pair, which in my case that means blowing 70-80% of all the budget on tweeters alone. I wonder if Peerless by Tymphany's corundum dome tweeters for about $107 a pair may be the next best thing.
If it comes into a toxic form, you wanna run away from that.
“Nice!”
LMAO
Nice to see your shirt sleeves come in 2 lengths
I love beryllium tweeters. I've got them in my Revel Ultima Studio 2's, and the Super Tweeter in my JBL K2's. I also recently fell in love with the Magnesium compression driver in the K2's. It's fantastic. I've got aluminum tweets in my Totem's at my desk, and 11 soft domes around my theater. That said, I'm designing a speaker now and I didn't even question it, it's going to have a very good soft dome in it. I just love their non-fatiguing response and vocal response as they near the crossover point. It's not always about the diaphragm material used, but about its implementation both in the driver's motor and chambering, but also in the speaker designer's baffle and crossover design. I get customers who come into our store (I sell audio for a living), and they'll say something like "Well I know I don't want a metal dome tweeter". My next response is, you've probably never heard beryllium am I right? Usually, people with prejudice against a driver material, have likely never heard it done very well. That said, I do love a paper cone midbass driver, haha. You can keep your woven cones, lol.
I have titanium and aluminum from two high end manufacturers. My Morel soft dome is a perfect match for my Hivi F5 woofer. I replaced the domes in my older Canton pedestal mount with one pair using titanium (difficult to manufacture and sound good). The other pair has aluminum tweeters from model that has been around for a long time. With medal tweeters you have a long break in time (one manufacture says 100 hours). My two came around in 50 hours, and all are smooth. The advantage of metal is their ability to play louder without distortion.
For many years I had Polk tri-laminate tweeters in their RT line, CS400, RT55, FX500. Recently after some listening tests I moved to the Motion Tweeter in Martin Logan Motion 40. Both sound pleasing, but after breaking in, the Motion 40 sounds clearer.
I love working with the ScanSpeak Discovery D2608/9130 1" Textile Dome HDS Tweeter, formerly known as the Peerless HDS 810921 tweeter, although you do have to pad the tweeter's rising response, but the results are golden and it is only ~$75.00
This topic has been on my mind for ages. Thanks for bringing it up guys :) I have worked in the sound business for over 40 years. I had the chance to listen to just about all models of Thiel, Mirage, Meridian, ProAc, Mission, 3a, Cambers and PSBs first equipped with soft and later metal dome tweeters. Designers like Jim Thiel and Paul Barton thought metal domes measured better but to my ears, soft domes simply sound softer, not as hard, pardon the puns. My one and only reference when comparing audio products is live sound, metal domes sound more like hifi sound effects, sibilant and over cooked where soft domes remind me more of music. In the end, it's all about the tweeter, woofer, mids, crossover and enclosure working well together, not just highs, lows and specs, there must be synergy, seamless integration from top to bottom, soft to loud. Harbeth is one speaker company who's product I listened to recently that seems to embrace that concept. I'd like to know what's in their secret sauce.
Christian Bouchard great comments Christian. Awesome to hear about your experiences. If you have an interest in writing about audio, please contact me at: info@audioholics.com and put "Audioholics Writing Opportunity" in the subject line. WE are always looking for seasoned audio veterans that are in the business to share their experiences.
This is exactly how I feel. While I've never worked in a shop, I tend to go out every once and a while to hear the newest offerings. This Spring came around (listen to me trying to sound humane ) or rather income tax season lol and I ended up spending my most adventurous day of the year mainly being thrashed around by metal domes in the morning. While I absolutely hate auditioning speakers in near field like I was forced to do with most of the speakers, I believe there's still plenty of the speakers dna available to nitpick. I can't say I had heard much excess energy at the top end with most of them but by lunch time my ears were ringing due to them seemingly shouting at my ears at the beginning of every transient attack. Another thing I noticed was traces of a metallic quality to them that was always present. I tried to keep an open mind and sorted through all the speakers and it wasn't until I got to the soft dome tweeters of the sonus Faber veneres and Olympica series that I felt I was listening to music. I'm also a semi fan of panel speakers. I respect them but I absolutely hate being able to localize the sound bouncing off the rear walls.
Very accurate and exactly true about tweeters. Canton from germany makes great tweeters. I've had a silk dome and an aluminum/magnesium tweeters from this company and they have been very high quaility. Canton manufactures it's drivers. Just goes to show ya. Thanks for the great video.
Hi Guys,
I'm a fan of your site.
Many years back, we had a B&W Floorstanding speaker with a metal dome tweeter, that was crisp and clear...however, I could never sit through a long listening session. Later on, I bought a beautiful pair of RUARK EQUINOX speakers with a silk dome tweeter....and wow....what a difference, I could really enjoy an eight hours weekend music session listening to my records.
Initially I ran my speakers the usual way, but when I Bi-Wired them....wow again....I was really pleased with the overall sound improvement.
After all these years, my Equinoxes still sound great even with CD's....and more recently Blu-Ray's.
I do have a worry though, the dome tweeter seems to attract a fair bit of dust, and I'm not sure how you'd clean it, as the dome has a sticky coating. Hope to hear from you please.
Cheers, Jeff
electric parts cleaner..somehow?
One's shirt is too big while the other's too small lol
Youre too busy checking them out. Im here for the info.
Bass 4Days yeah I installed my shit already
I can't help but think Lou Ferrigno
@@MrMegatron85 Bruce Banner bigger than the Hulk.
Gayboi?
I have to say I tend to prefer soft domes over metal. Though I have heard the Scan speak beryllium tweeter and I was impressed with it. I also have no complaints from the diamond tweeter used in the B&W 804D. I can only compare these since I have had a chance to listen to both of these for more than a casual listen. And I think I remember a Vandersteen metal dome that was really nice. Most of the time, especially in the mass market, metal domes sound harsh.
I loved soft dome for home stereo and metal dome for car stereo. I have Dynaudio speakers for home and focal (beryllium dome) for my car.
when i eventually do a 'room tour' (lord knows whenever that'll be) i gotta show off this philips/sharp/infinity/parts express speaker i put together, it sounds fabulous.
yes it has a silk dome.
As a budget speaker hound I'm often eyeing high end speakers from the last decade, but finding data on them is difficult, but I've got a hot tip ;) using google's "way back machine, internet archive" you can pull up old websites from when these speakers were top of the line, and download their marketing materials, data sheets, diagrams, and all sorts of useful stuff. You can also use google's reverse image search to find higher resolution versions of images you may find. I've even found old speaker adds from hifi/audiophile magazines for sale on ebay which make for a fabulous accompaniment framed in the listening room. I found an add for my fantastically over-engineered KEF Q7's which have a cool uni-Q design with the tweeter in the center of the midrange, and a racetrack shaped oval woofer lol. The add is for the reference series which appears to have the same uni-Q array, it shows a frequency response graph of their 250mm racetrack driver against a "standard" {brand X} 250mm driver in distortion terms of the second and third harmonic. "The titanium dome Hypertweeter in it's chromed steel pod hints at the massively extended performance designed to deliver every last detail encoded in modern wideband formats. Radical new Uni-Q point source arrays ensure unrivaled dispersion. Faraday rings in the motor systems and independently-loaded bass drivers minimise distortion, and the use of thick section cast aluminum accounts for exceptionally inert enclosures." But it wasn't until I actually found the brochure on their old website from the mid 2000's that I discovered that my beloved Kef-Q7 had an Aluminum tweeter, "The new Uni-Q array on every model pushes the performance advantage even further. With its powerful lightweight neodymium magnet system developed from the Reference Series, the new 19mm aluminium dome tweeter reproduces vocals with total clarity. With a first resonance over 30kHz, it makes New Q fully compatible with the latest wideband formats." Which goes to show that even if you find a sweet add for framing on ebay, with what looks exactly like your speaker, it may not actually be the add to have framed up on the wall touting sonic virtues, and that google's "way back machine" is awesome for researching and comparing speakers.
I have those same RBH aluminum dome tweeters installed in my custom reference towers modeled after the RBH-MC-6T. In my case I have 2 of those tweeters per speaker. In comparing them to my shielded Dayton audio soft dome "silkies" mounted in my HT fronts I'd say that the aluminum domes sounded a little cold compared to the warm sounding Dayton's. I'm used to those aluminum domes now but can;t really say in all honestly which I like more. They're both excellent dome tweeters in IMO.
Totally love Morel soft domes. Perfect detail and no listener fatigue. Great power handling, and great pricing. There are few better in sound quality, but none in their price range. Lucky find for me. They always get great reviews too.
I have some Nola Boxers and the soft tweeter on these things is transcendant. Zero fatigue.
The dome tweeter and midrange drivers were invented by Edgar Villchur of Acoustic Research. Introduced as the famous one inch fried egg tweeter in AR2a and AR3 it was later replaced by a 3/4 inch version. It's purpose was the best possible dispersion. Paper was an excellent choice. Paper pulp fibers efficiently damp energy between each other while metal does not. The wide dispersion of the AR tweeter is due to its geometry. It is small 3/4 inch instead of one inch, it is a full half sphere dome, and it is not recessed. As a result it was down only 5 db at 15 khz 60 degrees off axis. No dome tweeter you can but today comes remotely close. But that wasn't good enough for Roy Allison who designed it for the AR3a. In AR LST, a souped up AR3A he used 4 tweeters and 4 dome midrange . All 4 midrange and 2 of the tweeters were mounted on 45 degree side panels making lateral dispersion even greater. That speaker was also marketed by Saul Marantz as the Cello Amati. In a later design on speakers bearing his own name brand he devised an even wider dispersion tweeter using a principle not too dissimilar from MBLs where the sound radiating from the equator is opposite in phase from sound radiating from the poles.
Well roys complex tweeter shape cancels the reconance caused by using a dome with unilateral demensions..
The best tweeter is winslows inverted dome
@davidstevens7809 Paper is surprisingly good material for speaker domes and cones. Among its virtues is that energy in the cone or dome dissipates rather quickly due to friction between the cellulose fibers. At the opposite end are metal domes and cones. They often have resonant peaks that ring at specific frequencies. Look at Atkinsons measurement for the recently introduced KLH model 5. Its metal dome tweeter has hesonances jut below and above 20 khz.
Have a set of Infinity rs525s with img woofers,passive radiators with Polycell tweeters. Found a nice pair of Emit r's I installed today and I'm blown away with the smoothness and incredible detail. Arnie Nudell and Cary Christie wrote the book on hi fidelity.
Keep up the good work. People fail to realise that the best perspective of sound reproduction is from the ears of the elders, i am 35 so I heard the transition, yes things are not as good as before but new ears will never know the difference either unless using old equipment with old music and new music for a full range test...
Another vote for folded ribbon tweeters like that are used by Martin Logan Motions and GoldenEar. But if I am limited to domes, I think I prefer aluminum domes, as long as they are high quality like in SVS prime and ultra, and B&W CM series. I have a pair of budget bookshelf with the cheap-o Ti tweeters which tend to 'ring' in their breakup mode. Very fatiguing after just a few minutes at high volume. The Folded Ribbon guys say their tweeters breakup mode is well above the range of hearing, so they sound smooth.
***** Yes Marton Logan makes a few lines of electrostatic speakers. However their more "budget oriented" Motion brand line of speakers use folded ribbon tweeters.www.martinlogan.com/motionSeries/
They actually have poor break up character and narrow dispersion. They operate fairly well at low volumes but at high SPLs they're like ear drills, especially those used by Golden Ear - worse than cheap metal domes by a country mile.
The C30-6-024 by Accuton is a 1.2 inch tweeter with a ceramic dome and I love the sound they produce nice very nice 3d space.
but like with evry thing there are so many flavors out there in the wild.
Some Tweeter can sound harsh brain piercing with a aircoils but smooth as a angel with foilcoils its the sum of the parts and disign.
I bought my son some Emotiva Pro Powered speakers. That folded ribbon tweeter is pretty impressive.
The tweeters in my Paradigm Cinema 70 V2's sound epic. Their made out of a polymer material and it's a dome and it sounds super crisp and clean and the highs don't get sharp or fatiguing. I love these tweeters.
Lots of both are good and so so. I'm becoming a ribbon fane, seems like a cleaner, more accurate rendition of the high ranges.
Love your engineering-centric approach! No alchemic mysteries or hip-hopper hype for me! My best sounding tweeters are aluminum diaphragm Japanese (TOA, probably by Fostex or Coral) ring/slot compression drivers similar to the legendary JBL L65 077 used in their high end studio monitors and home systems. Uber efficient, high MOL, and sweet. They are in experimental hybrid TOA/Mitchell/University triamped mains, with a B&C 18" pro cinema sub driver in a DIY cab. Vintage PA gear components (mostly) that sound at least as good in combination as anything I have ever encountered in my 64 years. The midrange richness and imaging are simply stunning at 100db+.
I like soft domes. Whatever happened to the great plastic soft dome tweeters B&W made in the 1980s? They were really fluid and natural sounding. I have never heard diamond tweeters. Maybe they are better, but how many people can afford them? I heard one beryllium tweeter and found it difficult to listen to. It was impressive, but not musical.
Horn loaded and/or ribbon tweeters are the best!
guys thanks a lot for another useful video. You put a lot of things straight.
ScanSpeak Classic D2905/9500 1" Tweeter Textile Dome this is the best tweeter,,i beg to differ my friend..for the price its good but for 40 more bucks you can have the one with the cool phase plug..
I love the sound from the jbl l100t titanium domes. Those babies are terrific!
I know, old video. I typically like the presentation of silk/soft dome tweeters. Metal domes seem to sound great with classic recordings for some reason, but soft all day long for modern recordings
I never really bother what kind of material the speakers are made of. I do bother how they sound, that is for me much more important. And also the looks are important: WAF is an important part of selecting speakers, especially when you like them big.
My first speakers used horns both for the mids and highs; my next speakers I guess used a soft dome. I never really cared, so I'm just guessing because the dome was black. My current speakers are Magnepan 1.7s, these have quasi-ribbon speakers. A complete different approach compared to 'normal' speakers. I do like these 1.7s mostly for their realistic sound stage: the width and height they present. And, as a bonus, you can place the speakers with the tweeters on the inside or on the outside. I tried both and preferred the outside.
You made a commitment about car audio midbass and tweeter in a car door
Boom and sizzle. I beg to differ on that thought becuse I had a set of infinity beta and beta tweeters that were silk dome in a 1994 toyota celica that blended very well. Its as you say some metal dome tweeters if done right can sound good.
Same with the desine of speakers in a car. Now I got this perfect match just out of dumb luck.
But that car you could put an 8" mid bass driver in the door and right by the door handel mount a tweeters mine were 1 1/8" silk domes that played down to 2500 hz
JL audi makes a high end coax with metal dome and a rubber souround that helps with the harshness B&W s dimond series speakers should ver very good.
But I still like the old Bob Carver amazing loud speaker and magnpans ribbons are your next step up from silk domes.
But who are we fooling how old are you 40s 50s you cant hear 20k anymore your best hearing at you age is 15k
Infact if your older then say 20s you cant hear above 15 to 17k hz a 12 year old hears 20k unless you have dog ears you cant. So buy what ever sounds best for you giving advice on speakers is the dumbest thing you can do.
Taking advice from somone is even dumber. Use your own ears I cant tell you what you can hear I dont have your ears.
I can show you what sounds good to me
But thats about it. You have to be your own judge. Were all exposed to differnt sounds and life styles we all hear things differently.
I doubt I'd get an offer to write but ive also got a vast amount of experience over the last 50 years. Im more like a metal dome tweeter talking about it.
HARSH.
what about 1-inch silk/polymer composite dynamic balance dome tweeters
soft, because it sounds smoother in most cases.
Although i have old Infinity's with Emit-R Ribbon tweeters which sound nice and airy/open, and very clear but soft on your ear.
I have Ei-Nis, 30 years old soft dome tweeter made in Yugoslavia, and to this day I havent heard something more soft and precise than that! But, now I gave only one. Any sugestions for me which tweeters to by. Thanks.
Considering that they're into sound, the audio for this video is quite bad
What, you don't like that bug zapper noise? Haha
I have Focal electra 1008Be and I'm amazed with it's sound, beryllium is the best tweeter ever!!! You guys have to experience it, now I won't go to anything else:)
I've heard both types that sound great, and both types that sound bad. My opinion is the same as these guys: tolerances, build consistency/alignment of parts/QC is the difference between good and bad. That's why the Danish and Italian companies tend to manufacture the very best drive units, as thier quality control/assembly is on point.
I am usually a soft dome guy but I am pleased with the svs ultra hard domes. I also like the ribbons had a hard time choosing the Martin Logan motion 60xt with ribbons or the svs ultra towers. I picked svs being that it's movies 80% of the time.
I agree that QC and overall design decisions are more important than the material used. That said I have heard some really good polyester tweeters. Again QC and how it is used are very important.
The best tweeter sounding i ever heard was mixin a beated up polk dome that i found on a flea market and a cheap titanium jbl- like, music becames real when i put those next to a 8" fullrange speaker, and some home made crossover
I am wondering how well the break-up is controlled in full-range or wide range drivers. The BMR driver covering 250Hz to 20kHz in Cambridge Audio Aeromax 2 and Aeromax 6. The full-range driver in Bose 901 VI. The driver covering 200Hz to 18kHz in Bose Acoustimass 5.
"Beryllium breakup mode at 30 khz!"
Diamond: Laughing in 72 khz
Ribbon: Laughing in 100 khz
Magnesium 50k ✌ Super Tweeters 25k~50k
AMT / Folded diaphragm are my choice. No harshness at all, and incredible "air", spaciousness, and depth.
I wonder about compression horn drivers for tweeters I have the Peavey RX22 in my car they don't sound bad at all and keep up with a pair of 15's at 3000w rms from 1500 hz to 20K hz they sound good I like the solid compression drivers.
What do you think about the ribbon tweeters ? I need help to compare it
I once played with some metal dome tweeters for a Thiel CS3.6 speaker and they sounded really good as long as you stay within its designed parameters. They sounded awful beyond that.
But you know all these tweeters sound colored compared to electrostatic tweeters.
Hey guys which one would be better 1 or .75 inch soft dome tweeter?
I imagine the 1 inch might allow you to cross over at a lower point, but the dispersion will be narrowed.
Not only do my ears prefer silk domed tweeters the only speakers I can enjoy anymore are McIntosh line arrays ,I have pics of my 2 pairs of XRT-22s and my single pair of XRT-28s on your site under username Highfihoney ,I had the chance to audition my silk domed tweeters XRT-28s directly against McIntosh 110 driver XRT-2k flagship line arrays in a side by side audition ,I went in planning on dropping $80,000 for the Titanium domed XRT-2k line arrays and wound up preferring the XRT-28 silk domed line arrays much more for Jazz Rock & Heavy Metal ,paying $16,000 for the XRT-28s & getting a better sound over the new $120,000 msrp XRT-2ks was a huge savings with better sound .
Was looking at some tweeter to my kitchen speaker project.
I wanted it to be simple with 6 db crossovers, so the tweeter had to be good.
There were many that had those aluminium cooler attached to it, that looked really fancy.
But I wanted some that had a back champer, I knew from a pair of Esotec how beneficial it had to the sound.
I found one, same price as those fancy ones.
It was the tweeter that is used on Buchard S300, that is so revered now.
SB26STCN-C000-4
My instinct was right.........
Those fancy ones is a scam,
If they need cooling, they are fundamentally wrong build.
AND that they have no champer means there are compression issues in the dome.
Soft vs hard dome tweeter.. in the end it dosen't matter what really matters is your ears. Do a blindfolded A/B test where you can switch between the speakers with music playing without knowing wich speaker is A or B. Tell your friend which you liked most liked A or B? and then your friend can reveal which one is A and wich one is B.
It's performance application. Plus a soft dome can unpopped cleanly if a kid has poked it.
I tend to favor soft dome, but probably because it's what I seek out.
Fostex t945 was one of the best. Shure miss them.
I've been a soft dome (Dynaudio) guy my entire life but I gotta say the UniQ driver in the Kef LS50"s is pretty good. There is nothing worse than a metal dome that rings except a horn loaded ringing metal dome tweeter. Make it STOP!
Tom Grooms am in your camp as well am running a set of Focus 220's and i just love them very neutral..speaker warm and accurate.
I build my own speakers for my main audio system and all my speakers have fabric dome tweeters. In my outdoor speakers and in my boat, I run metal dome tweeters as I "feel" that the metal will be more water resistant, plus in a boat, I am not concerned about audiophile sound -- just load :-)
My Vandersteen 2CE signatures (version 1) have an "alloy" dome... I wonder which alloy? I've never had a problem with them sounding harsh, but they also aren't the most detailed tweeters I've heard.
The speakers more than make up for the HF detail in midrange clarity, taught, deep bass and spaciousness.
I'm curious if anyone at Audioholics has any experience with Vandersteen. I don't recall seeing them get a mention...
Vifa aluminum dome. Vandersteen 2CE have a sculpted front panel for the mid and tweeters that gives them a spacious quality and time align the drivers for a simplified crossover design with good transient response. The bass uses a passive radiator rather than a port which gives them a nice rich quality without being too boomy. Lots of good old fashioned engineering, high quality Scandinavian drivers and no voodoo magic at all.
Any insight on the folded motion tweeters typically found in Martin Logan speakers? I have a pair, and wondered how they compare to the soft and hard dome.
I forgot to mention the fact that many also don't undetstand the best ways of input source wiring to whatever the output amp wiring is so in most cases many people use inadequate input sources for full quality which nowadays does require us to use the manual or auto dsp settings mixed in with fast/slow attack settings to boost/smooth sound output.. With the ever increasing of so called music lovers converting low bitrate files to mp3 and never using wav files ir alike to begin with they will always find themselves looking for more methods of power to boost dead signals that always have hidden digital silenced hum meaning the audio of interest signal will never occupy even 70% of the input feed the output amp see's..
Is there some kind of paint or rubber that could be used to soften the oil-can resonances of a metal tweeter, I imagine a dobb of silicon on the tip of the dome, or a thin layer of paint could help. Maybe even some spray adhesive with tennis ball fuzz sprinkled on it, or some down.
Wouldn't that affect the other parameters which might be just fine.
Rarely can you fix one problem on a speaker driver without screwing up another.
If the driver doesn't perform well as a .75 in tweeter then it's probably a low quality .75 in tweeter. Same could be said for a 1 inch tweeter or a 5 inch mid.
Just curious where does MartinLogan's folded motion tweeter and ribbon tweeters fall in this game just one aspect i'ld like you to cover is the claim by ML that the surface area of the folded motion is 10 to 12 x the size of these other tweeters
joe vigil they seem average. I still prefer my canton ergo over my Martin Logan
Ceramic
The focal inverted dome tioxid used in (my kit speakers) and the wilson-watt puppy 5 was ass. Went off like a fire alarm with resonance. UGH. Beryllium does not resonate like other metals. When in doubt? Scan speak revelator. The $350 Vifa silk is amazing.
Some people prefer Woden horn tweeters as they do not ring or are as harsh as metal tweeters.
what do you think about cone tweeters? are they any good?
I realize this video is two years old. Bob Crites ( The Klipsch guru) recommends replacing the OEM soft domes with Titanium. I subscribed to his thoughts and was very impressed with the change. We ain't talking Beryllium in a 50k speaker. According to you guys, Titanium is cheap crap. I beg to differ.
What are your thoughts on ribbon tweeters?
i have papper tweeters in my old jvc s 66
I have two 3/4 inch soft dome tweeters and 3, 1 inch plastic tweeters and I have 2, 2 inch paper tweeters and 2 1/2 inch metal tweeters from back in the day
Do you have any video's on Ribbon tweeters?
shrodingersman have a look at impulse audio's vids
I have yet to hear a metal dome tweeter I could stand to listen to. I heard one beryllium dome tweeter in a two way 5.25" woofer bookshelf design by Paradigm ($1,500) and it was impressive but cold and not musical. It was like listening to medical equipment. I have heard that even the big Andrew Jones designed beryllium TAD speakers that cost as much as a house are cold and analytical. I like to enjoy music, not examine it, so I only buy soft domes. I have not heard diamond domes or the Infinity ceramic covered domes. Maybe they are better. I suspect it is more than just break-up modes involved and there is some difference in the way the sound propagates from a soft dome that makes it sound more natural. I also like air mounted tweeters. When you put tweeters in cabinets, it destroys the imaging.
Thanks fellows , I always wondered that, and find the metal dome tweeters to be a bit nails on a chalkboard on certain notes. I have a pair of watt puppy 5's and they have soft dome tweeters. I find them to integrate better with the mid and sub.., a softer and gentler sound to the ear..I think I will stick with the soft dome tweeter. Could it be some people are just more sensitive to the metal sound than the silk or soft tweeters? I find myself to be one of those people affected by the metal sounding tweeter.
2 companies tweeters come to mind that I'd like your opinion on. Goldenear and KEF Uni Q. Any thoughts?
Polk Audio use to make a titanium tweeter that was the best I have ever heard but for reasons unknown they stopped making the tweeters. Someone stole mines and it was like they took the brilliance of my sound system away. I went to buy another set and was told they didn't make them anymore and I ended up getting some Polk Audio silk dome tweeters and it just wasn't the same 🥺 😢.
Soft dome tweeters have been around since 1958 but, very few brands use them back.
True dude. I have B&O from 1968 with soft domes, they used them very early.
Beryllium is a game changer, But I think composite materials are going to see a resurgence with nanotechnology. Perhaps the age of the "paper" tweeter has only just begun? ha ha ha. Graphene, and gorilla-glass hold promising potential as well. I think the whole field is going to get blurry with proprietary combinations of materials.
graphene will be interesting listening to. that efficiency.
FreeDooMusic I have a pair of Anker earphones using graphene diaphragms.
What is the quality of the dayton brand for Titanium Dome Tweeter or , Visaton DT94-8 0.8" Polycarbonate Dome Tweeter , which is better,Thanks
Gentlemen I have to say that having owned many different speakers in my 57 years unless price is no problem I'd stick with the silk dome tweeter, imho much smoother response better overall sound . I love my Source Technologies 277 SEs John Solecito really knows his stuff . Of course these are in the 4K a pair range . But unless you buy hard domes in the 10k and above range they tend to be to bright at least for my taste .
AudioholicsLIVE I'm fairly familiar with soft and metal tweeters. But I am very curious about the other types of tweeters available, such as electrostatic vs. Piezo vs. Plasma/ion vs. Ribbon/Planar ribbon vs. Air motion transformer (AMT). Are any of these types significantly better than another?
I always thought Titanium dome tweeters were really good and used mainly in high end speakers. JBL designed some outstanding titanium tweeters in the early 80s, like the 044TiA (used in their famed 250ti speaker). Aluminum is obviously cheaper then titanium, so it's a no-brainer that if it sounds better to use aluminum, then you're going to use aluminum, unless you are selling to a group of people who just REALLY love titanium.
Correct. Dollar for dollar, titanium is the superior tweeter material. The problem is some manufacturers don't implement it correctly as in the Infinity example. I've long suspected that some brands are coating aluminum drivers to look similar to titanium for marketing.
Where does Infinity's EMIT-R ribbon tweeters fit into this analysis? And what do you think of them?
Thanks
hey, i have a question
material of diaphragm : paper vs plastic vs metal
which one is better????
I was looking at RBH but their MC series of in-walls are not enclosed, what model in particular do you consider is as good or better than Totem kin in-wall? How about Definitive Technologies model RLS II?
I wander if JBL 580 -590 has an soft or a metal tweeter / horn?
(1″) compression driver with neodymium magnet and one-piece Teonex® diaphragm on a glass-filled ABS Bi-Radial horn, magnetically shielded
If you want good damping, go for paper tweeters.
Was that the Scantic 9500 at 9:50 that you mentioned that is so good?
I've never had the luxury of listening to a beryllium tweets but in the case of silk vs alluminum I favor the silk. I'm probably in the minority here but I'm extremely sensitive to sibilance and silk domes aren't as fatiguing to me. Not say that I haven't heard aluminum tweets that sounded pretty damn excellent, it just hurts after a while.
Quick question for you guys, what are your thoughts on the tweeter use by Totem Acoustics in the kin in wall speakers and to what Tower speaker of any other company will compare sound wise? Thank you for your help and all your awesome reviews..
armando calvo Totem makes some nice product but they have many competitors that are as good or better in their price ranges. Check out in-walls from RBH, Monitor Audio, Revel, to name a few.
I was blown away by a totem demo I head at THE Show a few years ago. I'm not sure about the model you're talking about, but the pair I heard apparently didn't have a crossover. It relied on the mechanical strength of the drivers, or something. All I know is they sounded amazing.
I'm curious to find out your thoughts on the B&W diamond tweeter vs the beryllium tweeter. I noticed you don't do a lot of reviewing of B&W but wanted to see if there was a reason for it. thanks
Derek Dastrup B&W makes some good stuff. I personally prefer some of their older matrix stuff over the newer surroundless midrange. B&W doesn't do a lot of push to get their products covered in the USA like some of the other brands do.
Phenolic for the win
Where do ribbon tweeters slot in, on the tweeter subject?
good review!!!!!! , it's a good option Faital pro 3fe25?
What do you guys think of the klipsch titanium tweeters in their reference line? Cheap or did they do a good job?
I bet klipsch tweeters and woofers have to be really good. Needlessly good.
Honestly, I don't really get klipsch speakers. They're a PA speaker in a home theatre cabinet. And PA speakers, as we all know, sound god awful.
A 2-way with a horn tweeter setup seems most appropriate when you want to throw a backyard party and you really only care about volume and not quality.
3-way or go home. Or 2-way for near field monitoring.
2-way with a horn tweeter...PA LEEZ.
Nobody does what klipsch does that I can think of, and for good reason. Unless of course Klipsch have truly worked some magic that I'm overlooking. Doubt it.
Attempt to make a 2-way floor standing model that is high fidelity across the 60hz-20khz spectrum using just two 8 inch or two 10 inch woofers and pair it with with one horn tweeter. Something is compromised. Think: the entire mid range.
A line array with smaller woofers can theoretically round out the bottom 120hz-60hz because the smaller mid woofers act as a larger cone. And having the smaller drivers makes the mids excel. Unfortunately, line arrays are pretty pointless for homes. 10+ drivers makes intelligibility difficult. So just go with a 3-way that has 3, maybe 4 drivers at most.
The more I look to design and or purchase speakers, the more 2-way speakers and line arrays show their abounding weaknesses for mid-field home listening.
what about the polydome Infinity?
What about bose 161 speakers they are full range drivers which don't have tweeters
I only heard one beryllium tweeter in a two way design with a 5" woofer that retails for $1,500. It was impressive, but I would not like to listen to it for long. With metal speakers people say it is like looking at an X-ray of the music, or even a MRI of the music. It is impressive but NOT musical in the sense of being organic and living. All the life is sucked out of the sound. A good fabric or silk dome works very well. The best speakers I have heard, however, have been Magnepans, which is a whole other world of speaker design. The problem with that technology is the size and the need for very good room acoustics and speaker positioning.
Hi there is the Kef R300 has a good tweeters ??? Thanks 🙏