Experience with separate super-tweeters?

[kenshone]

I came across these standalone tweeters from Aperion, which appear to have positive reviews from audiophile publications: https://www.aperionaudio.com/collec...-motion-ribbon-super-tweeter-speaker-amt-pair. Does anyone here have hands on experience with them, or the ability to explain the theoretical benefits of adding such a unit to decent bookshelves/towers?

 

[tomtoo]

I not know any decent speaker that goes up less then 20khz. So at least for me i see not the sense. And the integration with another tweeter is imo not trivial. What gives me the feeling, there can go a lot wrong,

 

[kthulhutu]

If you want your pets to enjoy the music as well then perhaps.

 

[mansr]

Does anyone here have hands on experience with them, or the ability to explain the theoretical benefits of adding such a unit to decent bookshelves/towers?

I can help you with the second part. There are none. A decent speaker by definition goes above the audible frequency range. Any improvement to the reproduction of inaudible frequencies is, again by definition, inaudible. Therefore, super-tweeters cannot be of benefit when paired with decent speakers. Moreover, any ultrasonic content in a recording mostly noise and distortion anyway. Even if you could hear it, you wouldn't want to.

 

[PatentLawyer]

I would also worry about phase issues in the crossover range (i.e., in the likely audible range) interfering with the tweeter in your existing loudspeakers. Adding another driver to a speaker system is no trivial affair, IMO.

 

[DVDdoug]

"Technically" it's a bad idea to add a tweeter (or any driver) without a proper crossover and/or careful design & measurement. You can get phase cancelation or strange directivity interaction with the existing tweeters, etc.

And contrary to popular audiophile myth, it doesn't help to go beyond your hearing range, if that's the idea. There's nothing "hidden" in the ultrasonic range that shows-up in the audible range, unless there is some kind of intermodulation distortion or something "bad". In fact, even if you hear to 20kHz in a hearing test, the highest-frequencies in music are weak, our hearing sensitivity drops-off as frequency goes-up, and the highest frequencies are normally masked (drowned-out) by stronger and slightly-lower frequencies. I'm not saying your speakers shouldn't go to 20kHz, but it's not as important as you might think.

Of course if you like the sound it's OK to do things that are not "technically correct".

audiophile publications

Never trust those guys! They usually use lots of flowery words that seem to mean something but they don't relate to scientific-engineering concepts like noise, distortion, or frequency response. They rarely do measurements or blind listening tests. And, you almost never read a negative review. And, they tend to LOVE anything with a high price!

 

[AdamG]

I came across these standalone tweeters from Aperion, which appear to have positive reviews from audiophile publications: https://www.aperionaudio.com/collec...-motion-ribbon-super-tweeter-speaker-amt-pair. Does anyone here have hands on experience with them, or the ability to explain the theoretical benefits of adding such a unit to decent bookshelves/towers?

It does not matter what we can hear. Only what you can. To find out where your ability to hear certain frequencies you need to take a simple hearing test. As we age we lose the ability to hear higher frequencies. So to truly determine if a Super Tweeter are going to do anything you can hear. We know from experience and scientific studies that humans typically have a hearing range of 20hz to 20,000hz. Your profile says your 34 years old. Betting you can’t hear above 18,000hz and possibly lower than that.

Here is a link to a simple hearing test app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mimi-hearing-test/id932496645

 

[mhardy6647]

I'd opine there's a place for add-on super-tweeters -- but it is a niche market.





I'd say: ask oneself what problem(s) one is (are) trying to solve, and what tool(s) would be best.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

I'd opine there's a place for add-on super-tweeters -- but it is a niche market.

-- but it is in the closet where discarded ideas are sequestered.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

I use an added tweeter (a JBL 2405H supertweeter) on my mains pointed back to the front wall to add ambience. It doesn't really add all that much to an already good recording so I rarely use them.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

I am actually looking into super tweeters too, but nothing more than £150 for a pair.
My need is that my speaker tweeters are fine to about 10kHz then roll off fast.
I don't need to hear supersonics (I couldn't even when I was younger), what I need is a secondary efficient tweeter to fill in the 10kHz to 15kHz max.
Any ideas? perhaps a ribbon one with wide dispersion.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

I am actually looking into super tweeters too, but nothing more than £150 for a pair.
My need is that my speaker tweeters are fine to about 10kHz then roll off fast.
I don't need to hear supersonics (I couldn't even when I was younger), what I need is a secondary efficient tweeter to fill in the 10kHz to 15kHz max.
Any ideas? perhaps a ribbon one with wide dispersion.

Parts Express?

 

[Ken Tajalli]

Parts Express?

Thanx.
I managed to order a pair of Dayton Audio AMT2-4 ribbon tweeters.
£160 for the pair, my hypocrisy only goes so far.

When they arrive, I am going to just hook them up through a plastic 4.7uF, feeding from the existing tweeter, just to see what happens.
It may sound absolutely crap (eBay!) or may show some promise. If anything, I will report back.

 

[Doodski]

Thanx.
I managed to order a pair of Dayton Audio AMT2-4 ribbon tweeters.

When they arrive, I am going to just hook them up through a plastic 4.7uF, feeding from the existing tweeter, just to see what happens.
It may sound absolutely crap (eBay!) or may show some promise. If anything, I will report back.

I ran a super tweeter sort of arrangement using matched KEF 107.2 tweeters sorta like @mhardy6647 showed pics of in his setup and they sounded fantastic. The high end was live sounding.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

I ran a super tweeter sort of arrangement using matched KEF 107.2 tweeters sorta like @mhardy6647 showed pics of in his setup and they sounded fantastic. The high end was live sounding.

Good to know.
My speakers are re-worked Sonus Faber, 2.5 way with a 25mm tweeter from Vifa.
Speakers sound very good, midrange and treble is very smooth, but I desire a little more top-end crispiness like my planar headphones.
Just fooling around, who knows, it may work.

 

[Doodski]

Good to know.
My speakers are re-worked Sonus Faber, 2.5 way with a 25mm tweeter from Vifa.
Speakers sound very good, midrange and treble is very smooth, but I desire a little more top-end crispiness like my planar headphones.
Just fooling around, who knows, it may work.

You might like horns. From your description of what you like and want a midrange horn with tweeters will give you that and more. Like a 12'-15" wide metal horn with a tweeter on top or below depending on the room and height.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

You might like horns. From your description of what you like and want a midrange horn with tweeters will give you that and more. Like a 12'-15" wide metal horn with a tweeter on top or below depending on the room and height.

Are you trying to get me divorced or murdered?
She ll kick me and my horns into the road! if she feels charitable .

 

[Doodski]

Are you trying to get me divorced or murdered?
She ll kick me and my horns into the road! if she feels charitable .

Yes, there's that. Horns, tweeters and standard boxed woofers go together very well though... lol.

 

[dualazmak]

In my multichannel multi-driver multi-way multi-amplifier stereo project (you can find here the latest system setup), I use Be-tweeter (YAMAHA JA-0513) plus metal horn super-tweeter (FOSTEX T925A) both directly driven by dedicated amplifiers (SONY TA-A1ES driving JA-0513, YAMAHA A-S301 driving T925A) without passive LC XO network.

In my setup, I recently established 0.1 msec precision perfect time alignment among all the SP drivers (summary here).

The gains for JA-0513 and T925A can be flexibly adjusted depending on the high-Fq hearing ability of audience(s) as you can find in latter half of my post here.

After my intensive try-and-error several year ago, I decided placing the super-tweeter T925A at rather unique position (physical alignment), as you can find the details here and here on my project thread.

In my setup, the Fq coverages by JA-0513 and T925A are widely overlapping with each other, but JA-0513 starts to decline over about 13 kHz while T925A is really flat in 10 kHz - 40 kHz as we discussed here and here.

Please note that I intentionally set -48 dB high-cut (low-pass) LR filters at 25 kHz in upstream digital domain (by software XO/EQ "EKIO") for both of JA-0513 and T925A avoiding/eliminating possible UHF (ultra-high frequency) noises (possibly harmful for our gears, for our ears and brain, and/or for our beloved pets) often associating with HiRes music tracks of poor QC quality; please refer to my posts #362-#386 and #518.

 

[dualazmak]

As I shared here, the "Track-20 High Fq Linearity Check" of "Super Audio Check CD" by CBS/Sony released in 1983 is really an extraordinary recording of "Bimmel Bolle Classic Orgel" containing very much powerful, high-energy, high-speed, high frequency bell ring transient sound together with wide range 30 Hz - 20 kHz base sound. I usually use this track to check tweeters and super tweeters, as well as total Fq linearity. I have never heard recorded sound having such a high-energy and high-speed high Fq components.

Please simply PM me if you would be seriously interested in this track and/or "Super Audio Check CD" by CBS/Sony.