Are Super tweeters worth it?

[LewisWaddo]

Hi!
Jumping on this old thread to chime in after being given a pair of Townshend super tweeters. I didn’t ask or pay for these. I just had a very generous mate that no longer used them after he upgraded his speakers.

Now… I last read this thread before I got the super tweeters, and came to the conclusion that they were useless. I wasn’t out for purchasing any.

I thought this was a perfect opportunity to see if they were a load of nonsense for myself, and put them to the test.

Myself and two friend in my listening room, myself in the listening position and my two mates at each speaker. My friends would direct the super tweeters away and towards me at certain points whilst listening to test tones and tracks I know well. We all took turns in the listening chair, and could all tell when the super tweeters were facing us with a high accuracy.

So… there is a difference, I don’t know if that is a positive or a negative. I could just tell when they were adding to the experience when facing me. The super tweeters I have start at 6khz and allegedly go up to something daft like 90khz. I’ve just left them on, as it does sound a little clearer in the high end when they are on. I mostly listen to analogue, but I do have a lovely chord DAC that I stream to occasionally through my router and samba setup. It makes a noticeable difference using any of these formats. I guess I’m hearing anything from 6-17khz that the tweeter is adding.

I would love to see some solid analysis of super tweeters, but the swap and change aspect and the infinite combination of speakers you could have with it would make any definitive analysis a little pointless to most users out there. Anyone know the effective distances on certain frequencies that produce combing artefacts in listening situations? Has there been any studies. I’ve aligned the super tweeter with my speakers drivers using digital callipers in a hope to eliminate this, but even when I just chucked them on the top of my speakers without measuring, I couldn’t hear any combing or degrading of the higher frequencies.

 

[Mnyb]

Due to very high crossover the physical distance to the normal tweeter would need to be impossible small for any reasonable integration to work ?

In your normal 3 way speakers there is a reason for the tweeter to be close to midrange but distance to bass driver can be more relaxed

 

[LewisWaddo]

Wish I had the kit to perform some proper measurements. I went in expecting it to not add much, but it did manage to add that little bit extra to the high end. I would explain it as ‘resolution’, but I’m a moron.

Are there any measurements of these things in action? Could I have added this with EQ? Was my mate a moron for purchasing them?!

 

[TurtlePaul]

I suspect that super tweeters made a little bit of sense in the 1970s and 80s when most speakers were using soft domes which broke up well below 20 khz. With modern metal alloy domes I would this they detract much more than add.

 

[voodooless]

Could I have added this with EQ?

The frequency response changes: yes. The interference due to too large center to center distance: no.

 

[mlsstl]

I think you'll find "supertweeters" still have significant output below their stated crossover frequency, so to my way of thinking, if you hear an improvement, it has little to do with frequencies above the range of human hearing and a lot to do with adding extra output well below what they claim as the crossover point.

 

[DonH56]

Hi!
Jumping on this old thread to chime in after being given a pair of Townshend super tweeters. I didn’t ask or pay for these. I just had a very generous mate that no longer used them after he upgraded his speakers.

Now… I last read this thread before I got the super tweeters, and came to the conclusion that they were useless. I wasn’t out for purchasing any.

I thought this was a perfect opportunity to see if they were a load of nonsense for myself, and put them to the test.

Myself and two friend in my listening room, myself in the listening position and my two mates at each speaker. My friends would direct the super tweeters away and towards me at certain points whilst listening to test tones and tracks I know well. We all took turns in the listening chair, and could all tell when the super tweeters were facing us with a high accuracy.

So… there is a difference, I don’t know if that is a positive or a negative. I could just tell when they were adding to the experience when facing me. The super tweeters I have start at 6khz and allegedly go up to something daft like 90khz. I’ve just left them on, as it does sound a little clearer in the high end when they are on. I mostly listen to analogue, but I do have a lovely chord DAC that I stream to occasionally through my router and samba setup. It makes a noticeable difference using any of these formats. I guess I’m hearing anything from 6-17khz that the tweeter is adding.

I would love to see some solid analysis of super tweeters, but the swap and change aspect and the infinite combination of speakers you could have with it would make any definitive analysis a little pointless to most users out there. Anyone know the effective distances on certain frequencies that produce combing artefacts in listening situations? Has there been any studies. I’ve aligned the super tweeter with my speakers drivers using digital callipers in a hope to eliminate this, but even when I just chucked them on the top of my speakers without measuring, I couldn’t hear any combing or degrading of the higher frequencies.View attachment 341936

6 kHz is fairly low for a "supertweeter" crossover so I am not surprised you are hearing a difference. It is augmenting the upper treble of you main speakers, both constructively and destructively as others have said since they are physically and electrically in different phase at various frequencies. It is also contributing down to perhaps 3 kHz or below depending on the crossover slope (some had a single-pole, 6 dB/octave, rolloff using a single series capacitor).

You could try turning off the supertweeter and boosting the treble to see if you get the same effect (and without interference effects so should be cleaner).

 

[Deleted member 48726]

Hi!
Jumping on this old thread to chime in after being given a pair of Townshend super tweeters. I didn’t ask or pay for these. I just had a very generous mate that no longer used them after he upgraded his speakers.

Now… I last read this thread before I got the super tweeters, and came to the conclusion that they were useless. I wasn’t out for purchasing any.

I thought this was a perfect opportunity to see if they were a load of nonsense for myself, and put them to the test.

Myself and two friend in my listening room, myself in the listening position and my two mates at each speaker. My friends would direct the super tweeters away and towards me at certain points whilst listening to test tones and tracks I know well. We all took turns in the listening chair, and could all tell when the super tweeters were facing us with a high accuracy.

So… there is a difference, I don’t know if that is a positive or a negative. I could just tell when they were adding to the experience when facing me. The super tweeters I have start at 6khz and allegedly go up to something daft like 90khz. I’ve just left them on, as it does sound a little clearer in the high end when they are on. I mostly listen to analogue, but I do have a lovely chord DAC that I stream to occasionally through my router and samba setup. It makes a noticeable difference using any of these formats. I guess I’m hearing anything from 6-17khz that the tweeter is adding.

I would love to see some solid analysis of super tweeters, but the swap and change aspect and the infinite combination of speakers you could have with it would make any definitive analysis a little pointless to most users out there. Anyone know the effective distances on certain frequencies that produce combing artefacts in listening situations? Has there been any studies. I’ve aligned the super tweeter with my speakers drivers using digital callipers in a hope to eliminate this, but even when I just chucked them on the top of my speakers without measuring, I couldn’t hear any combing or degrading of the higher frequencies.View attachment 341936

Of course you would hear a difference. You add more tweet when adding tweeters which results in more power in the tweet frequencies.
If you want that you should play with EQ to get what you want from your perfectly designed speakers that should be able to tweet themselves if something's not broken in the tweeter department.

 

[LewisWaddo]

Of course you would hear a difference. You add more tweet when adding tweeters which results in more power in the tweet frequencies.
If you want that you should play with EQ to get what you want from your perfectly designed speakers that should be able to tweet themselves if something's not broken in the tweeter department.

I wish there were such a thing as a perfectly designed speaker. your take is pretty much where I stand on this. I’m treating them like expensive speaker ornaments for now. I do prefer the sound with. That’s entirely objective.

The very idea of them is a bit ridiculous.

Mr Townshend - Here you go, whack these on top of your speaker for a better sound!

Customer - Err… what speaker?

Mr Townshend - Oh, just your speaker at home…

No calibration, testing, whatever…

I also have Mr Townshend’s speaker isolation platforms, as gifted with these. My £1.8k Dali Oberon 9 speakers are sandwiched between about £2k of Townshend accessories. It makes no sense, and I would never have paid good money for them myself…

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

People tend to overestimate the frequency of high frequencies. 3k is a really really high tone, well into upper harmonics of most instruments. 12k is two octaves above that.

In my opinion, good airy treble comes from wide dispersion and late reflections up to say 7k. Tweeters become incredibly directional above that.

Think octaves. Starting with A 440 double the frequency a few times.

 

[ZolaIII]

No, not even with perfect hearing and because in real materials there will be little to nothing so high. However they can be handy and easy to aim especially if you have big flour standers which you can't rotate or for some other reason when you can't aim speakers towards you and with tweeter at ear level or better say as a correction for regular tweeter. Also you can use them combined so that you get wider coverage in highs (let's say on 15° angle to regular tweater where it falls) as companion and to get it back on the track which takes some time tweaking but in the end can get 30~45° coverage and of course it doesn't have to be a super tweater for that but just regular one and preferably same or with similar characteristics as one in speakers.

 

[TurtlePaul]

… My £1.8k Dali Oberon 9 speakers …

As I theory-crafted, super tweeters would be most useful to boost large soft dome tweeter such as this. Still we would love if you could measure a sine sweep.

 

[mlsstl]

One more observation -- back in the mid-1970s I managed a stereo store for a couple of years. We had a lot of nice gear for the time -- Luxman, Marantz, Sequerra tuners, Nakamichi, and other high-end stuff for the 70s as well as Pioneer, Sony, Yamaha and other mid-level gear. This was back when tone controls were standard issue on virtually all preamps, integrated amps and receivers.

When demoing a system we always started with the tone controls flat, but it was quite rare for a customer to not walk over and tweak up both the bass and treble knobs. Usually it was a modest move to the 1 or 2 o'clock position, but there were those who cranked it. These days tone control knobs are a lot less common, but "audiophiles" have found plenty of other ways to tweak the sound, whether fancy cables, crossover mods, buffers, different DACs, and so on.

There is something about certain hobbyists (audio, cars, photograhpy, or whatever) who are convinced that the professional engineers and designers, with all of their facilities and test equipment, can't possibly do as good of a job with a product as they can do from fiddling around at their home. Adding a supertweeter fits right into this way of thinking.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

As I theory-crafted, super tweeters would be most useful to boost large soft dome tweeter such as this. Still we would love if you could measure a sine sweep.

You say soft-dome tweeters don't play as high as metal dome ones. Is that just a fabricated fact or do you have something to back it up? I have never heard of this.

 

[voodooless]

You say soft-dome tweeters don't play as high as metal dome ones. Is that just a fabricated fact or do you have something to back it up?

Is that a pun? “Fabricated”, get it?

But yes, in general soft domes do not get as high up. Simply because they stop being pistonic earlier because the material self resonance is lower than metal domes. The effects of this breakup are also way less severe than for a metal dome, so it will be less audibly egregious. But it will means they fall off. Now the difference isn’t really that large, specially with the 1” and larger metal (and above all aluminum) domes.

 

[Schollaudio]

If a person is using 2" CDs and horns they might be useful crossed 8-12khz.

 

[BitPerfect_]

How about if my speakers are already equipped with

High-frequency transducer: 19mm (3/4") titanium-laminated dome, shielded; EOS waveguide &
Ultrahigh-frequency transducer: 19mm (3/4") polyester film, ring radiator, shielded; EOS waveguide

up to 40kHz, adding a ribbon also able to go up to 40kHz will make any sense or this is not that simple or even useless? Thanks,

 

[voodooless]

Can you hear 40 kHz?

 

[TurtlePaul]

19mm (3/4") titanium-laminated dome, shielded; EOS waveguide

…

up to 40kHz, adding a ribbon also able to go up to 40kHz will make any sense or this is not that simple or even useless? Thanks,

Those JBLs can go well above 20 khz with good directivity. You will only get negative effects.

 

[Anton D]

These are all toys, so the only risk you are taking is spending some money.

Get it and play. You could even try it facing backwards for ambience. Plenty of speakers include a rear firing tweeter, so what the heck.

If you don't dig it, sell it and chalk up the cost as experience.

Or, try a cheap Amazon tweeter for 39 bucks and see if it adds anything at all and then decide on the pricey tweeter.

It's only money, and not a lot of money, either.