Floyd Toole chimed in to a similar discussion on AVS forum years ago and mentioned a blind study he conducted decades ago with a ribbon and dome with people making the same claims about ribbons, no differences were noted that couldn't be explained by the frequency response. Also that a heavier moving mass requires a heavier motor, it's just F=Ma where a higher mass requires a higher force to achieve the same acceleration. Here are a few of his quotes on the subject:
The time domain differences I see are correlated with frequency response irregularities, as is expected. Transducers are minimum-phase devices and the time domain performance can be calculated from the amplitude vs. frequency response. Waterfalls and the like add no new information, just different perspectives on the same information. Note that prolonged ringing in waterfalls always starts at a peak in the frequency response. Note also that the waterfall does not start declining at t=0. It should if properly windowed.
Further, there is persuasive evidence that humans do not hear the ringing. Our perceptions are dominated by spectral cues.
Toole, F. E. and Olive, S.E. (1988). “The modification of timbre by resonances: perception and measurement”, J. Audio Eng. Soc., 36, pp. 122-142.
This is not saying that the speaker at issue is inferior, just that the portrayal of performance is not balanced. There are much better dome tweeters.
and another later response:
The "quick decay" you speak of is totally predictable from amplitude vs. frequency responses because transducers are minimum-phase devices. Impulse response plots are impressive, but the reality is that humans do not respond to phase shift so these time-domain plots are misleading. We humans do not hear waveforms. I am an engineer and had to learn this myself, fortunately at an early stage.
It is interesting that one of the first loudspeakers I tested in the anechoic chamber at the NRCC in 1967 (52 years ago!!!!) was a ribbon tweeter, the Kelly Ribbon from the UK. I just looked at the measurements in my personal archive. At the time it was promoted for the same reasons that ribbons and electrostatic loudspeakers are today: "massless" diaphragms, "Instant" transient response, etc. etc. It was a learning experience for me, and only definitively provable in double-blind listening tests. Of course, nothing back then was as good as things are now, but the implied superiority simply was not heard. As time passed and measurements and knowledge improved, nothing has changed. There are good loudspeakers and not-so-good loudspeakers, and the method of moving the air has not revealed itself as being the dominant factor. If any one method was obviously superior, it would dominate the products we can buy.
As far as the "massless" consideration is concerned, I have a Tesla S P90D in my garage that accelerates from 0-60 mph in 3.2 s. It is a heavy four door, potentially 7-passenger, sedan that is much quicker than most two seat sports cars - and I have owned a few. The secret is in the motor, and that is also the relevant factor in loudspeaker transducers. Ribbons and electrostatic speakers typically have relatively weak motors compared to what can be put behind a cone or dome. In the end, frequency response is king.
