Super Tweeters - Fact or Flights of Fancy?

[The Vinyl Adventure]

I had a mooch about the place yesterday and it would seem 35Khz is about what is obtainable in terms of hf for reasonable money ... Higher reaponse seems to cost more? Is that fair ... What response wil give good effect?

[Stratmangler]

So would barry's coles with one of these lpads satisfy my imediate interest in what these supertweetas do, or would the maplins one do better, or be more worth while as a experiment
crap, I realy do know fuck all sometimes with this hobby,
how much are these coles things worth?

The Coles units are next to impossible to get now - I'd suggest using something else and leaving the Coles for someone needing to replace broken originals.

Just my 2p worth.

Chris

[Rare Bird]

I had a mooch about the place yesterday and it would seem 35Khz is about what is obtainable in terms of hf for reasonable money ... Higher reaponse seems to cost more? Is that fair ... What response wil give good effect?

Well unless you're a bat 35kHz is fine enough

[electric beach]

My understanding is that the effect of supertweeters has more to do with how we process and perceive sound, rather than extending the audible spectrum. It's the same for sub bass, but you notice and feel the inaudible vibration more readily . The processing of real sound (as opposed to reproduced sound) by the human 'DAC' must consider these vibrations which are detected by the body - converting sound vibrations to a perceived 'realistic' sound.

These cheap Piezo horn supertweeters are still available from Maplin; they just need a resistor in line to minimise the output and you can have a play for less than £10. I used them on TDL transmission line floorstanders for years and they did as much for bass texture and tone as they did for creating additonal air and space - I felt they just made the reproduced sound for all frequencies more real!

I'll try to find the Jimmy Hughes article and post it.

Found the article - I'll scan it next week.

The recommendation is to restrict the frequency range with a 0.01uF capacitor in line. Then limit the output to a homeopathic level of a mere 10 Ohms, wired across the speaker rather than in series.

I jumped the feed directly from the speaker posts.

[Clive]

My suspicion is that it's not so much about the frequencies above our audible range that supertweeters assist with, it's more to do with how they are integrated with the existing tweeter. Bringing in a supertweeter at say 12kHz will add air your sound as you're pumping up the volume at frequencies where your hearing is disappearing.

[Primalsea]

Bang On Clive!!

If you measure your tweeter response with and without supertweeters connected you will see a huge difference in the measurements. Done right supertweeters even out the tweeter response, especially at the HF roll off.

[Rare Bird]

Found the article - I'll scan it next week.

The recommendation is to restrict the frequency range with a 0.01uF capacitor in line. Then limit the output to a homeopathic level of a mere 10 Ohms, wired across the speaker rather than in series.

I jumped the feed directly from the speaker posts.

I'd like to see that article be intresting.

btw Hamish speakers will go a lot higher than most upto 25kHz..

[twelvebears]

Having elicited 7 pages of replies, I should probably admit that my original post was a bit of a leading question, but I wanted to get others' views before I said anything.

I actually owned a pair of Townshend super tweeters and even though I was using them with the Sonus Faber Extremas that I had at the time, I found they had a very definite and positive effect. I was very sceptical initially, especially as the Extremas used one of the very best tweeters available, so I managed to get them on home-trial for two weeks.

The very odd thing is that hardly any sound can be heard from them, they really do seem to impact the whole of the music, but particularly spatial clues at acoustics.

Unfortunately they went at the same time as the Extrema's is a frantic cash-gathering period, however I'm very keen to experiment again.

[Rare Bird]

Back in my Russ Andrews worshipping days i used a pair of superb Visitation Ribbon tweeters.i used a simple polyprop capacitor in line with em. They were about £100 a pair back then, i don't know how much they are now but these tweeters explained to me why dome tweeters give out nothing but distortion.

http://www.visaton.de/en/high_end/ht...n/mht12_8.html

[Stratmangler]

Back in my Russ Andrews worshipping days i used a pair of superb Visitation Ribbon tweeters.i used a simple polyprop capacitor in line with em. They were about £100 a pair back then, i don't know how much they are now but these tweeters explained to me why dome tweeters give out nothing but distortion.

http://www.visaton.de/en/high_end/ht...n/mht12_8.html

They're now £135.00 EACH

Chris