Tweeter comparaison

[Goodman]

Genelec crosses the 19 mm dome ... to a 6.5" woofer ... in model 8040B (6.5" woofer is the most common "large" size in a 2-way audiophile loudspeakers).
But what do they know ... they are only known to make the world's most accurate speakers.

A couple of thing for you to ponder upon.
In the enjoyment of playing music through a Hifi system, accuracy is not the end all criteria.
Trying to reproduce a live concert event thru a 6.5" woofer is futile.
The intended purpose of the Genelec is monitoring from a studio control room.
Open the door of the control room and step into the the actual studio.

 

[airborne]

well monitors are different ...

i actually only have monitors, PA speakers and my own DIY speakers ... i got rid of so-called "hi-fi" speakers and everything that isn't professional or made by me ...

monitors have a very bright, sharp sound to them with the focus on being able to hear every detail even when it is unpleasant ...

audiophile speakers have a warm, rich sound that is midbass heavy ...

the advantage of 19 mm dome in a monitor is it is more analytical because it has a flatter off-axis response ...

you want to make sure you catch all the noise and sibilance and such in the material you're recording ...

but for an "audiophile" speaker that doesn't matter - it's more important to be able to turn it up a little when you are in the mood ...

you don't turn up nearfield studio monitors to do some headbanging - that's not what they are for - they're for sitting in a chair for 8 hours and listening for mistakes ... they actually have separate larger main monitors for less critical listening when you want to listen to the music rather than the sound ...

an audiophile speaker is somewhere between a main monitor and a PA speaker ... with the twist that 90% of the cost is in cabinet finish and other styling touches ...

i find that for me PA speakers are most enjoyable dollar for dollar - with PA speakers you neither pay for cabinet finish nor for analytical ability - just for the enjoyment of music. with a PA speaker you can have comparable fun to a monitor or "audiophile" speaker 10 times the cost.

with a monitor you can enjoy the fact that it is very "accurate" ... but who cares ? monitors are only good as a reference to know what accurate sounds like. but it doesn't sound very good. sounds flat, thin, brittle and harsh for the most part.

a good PA speaker can be equalized to sound good for a particular type of content you enjoy and your particular taste. other types of speakers may not have enough output to give you the room to equalize them much.

basically i feel that ...

if you want accuracy > get monitors

if you want speakers that rock / jam > get PA speakers

if you want mahogany finish and bragging rights > get "audiophile" speakers

i don't have any "audiophile" speakers and never will have any of them regardless of size, cost or brand ...

also will not be getting any new monitors but going to keep the ones i do have ... they can sometimes be useful

all new speakers will be either active commercial PA speakers or active ( DSP ) DIY speakers with focus on SPL ...

my only issue with active commercial PA speakers is they usually don't have digital input except Dante, which, i imagine, would be somewhat painful to setup. by going the DIY route i can avoid extra AD / DA conversions which i know are almost certainly inaudible but my OCD doesn't care about things like logic ...

 

[Goodman]

basically i feel that ...

if you want accuracy > get monitors

if you want speakers that rock / jam > get PA speakers

if you want mahogany finish and bragging rights > get "audiophile" speakers

i don't have any "audiophile" speakers and never will have any of them regardless of size, cost or brand ...

also will not be getting any new monitors but going to keep the ones i do have ... they can sometimes be useful

all new speakers will be either active commercial PA speakers or active ( DSP ) DIY speakers with focus on SPL ...

I agree with your generalization, but I think we are on the wrong forum for this kind of conclusion. Most people on this forum should be listening on headphone, not speakers.

 

[airborne]

I agree with your generalization, but I think we are on the wrong forum for this kind of conclusion. Most people on this forum should be listening on headphone, not speakers.

there are no perfect forums.

they keep deleting all my threads at prosoundweb because i'm not in their industry. they don't care that all my threads are about prosound gear - they know i will be using it at home and delete them. they only want discussions of using gear in prosound settings.

their discussions look like this " stupid powersoft why are the amps so long ? i don't have any boxes that long to send them in for service " ...

unless the discussion you want to start is along these lines they delete it ...

over at speakerplans they told me that nobody needs more bass than two 15" subwoofers ...

over at AVS they told me i need at least four 24" subwoofers, preferably more ... one guy over there who is actually cool has 29 subwoofers and about 50 kilowatts of amps ...

meanwhile at DIYaudio a guy was telling me his system is perfect ... it was a 3" fullrange.

everywhere you go you will be told you are wrong because you are not doing it the way they are doing it over there ...

everybody wants you to convert to their religion ...

i gave up trying to find people with common sense ...

 

[airborne]

there are no perfect forums.

the last time i ran my own forum about 15 years ago it kept getting hacked by some morons from Turkey who thought they are part of some resistance and were waging Jihad on my forum for whatever reason ...

it was a pain in the ass so i gave up ...

i have a lot more to say these days, mainly about politics ... the 29 subwoofers guy was begging me to teach him what the future of humanity is the whole time but i couldn't because i knew i would get banned ... i got banned anyway ...

actually was surprised by the amount of interest in conspiracy stuff ... nobody cared back when i was researching it 15 years when you could still talk about these things without getting banned ... now that the banhammer came down and everybody is cancelled left and right suddenly they want to know WTF is going on ... when it's too late ... typical

maybe all these hosting services are more secure these days ... i just don't have the energy to mess with all that BS like i did when i was a kid ... making the mental space for all the crap that goes with running a website ...

but yeah that's the only way there will ever be a forum where people have brains is if i run my own again ...

i won't even need to ban anybody - i will just insult them so bad they will leave on their own ...

 

[dasdoing]

At 99dB(A) concert level, the tweeter, when playing music, must provide an average of about 94dB(A) SPL or less, because the sound pressure level of PN decreases about -3dB per octave (and music on average too or more).

music is actualy not like pink noise. on average it kind of is, but music has a rising crest factor the higher you go.

 

[airborne]

music is actually not like pink noise. on average it kind of is, but music has a rising crest factor the higher you go.

yes and also advanced array systems and so on can actually create a fairly even SPL across the arena so it's not like it's 99db in front row and then 10% of that further back

it will be fairly close to that 99db for much of the audience

music can probably be modelled as a sort of very high crest factor pink noise that is high passed at about 30 hz and compressed the living sh1t out of, but because of the rise towards the bass the compression mostly affects the bass which turns into almost continuous sinewaves at around 40 hz but still highly dynamic in the treble ...

i think peak levels are probably fairly flat from about 40 hz to 10 khz but average energy rises towards the bass and peaks around 40-60 hz ...

which is why if you listen to sub alone with speakers off it sounds like this monotonous drone ... and why subwoofer amps need to be rated for a more continuous load while amps for other frequencies only need to be rated for peak power ...

 

[dasdoing]

yes and also advanced array systems and so on can actually create a fairly even SPL across the arena so it's not like it's 99db in front row and then 10% of that further back

afaik staying in between 6dB is the general goal.

music can probably be modelled as a sort of very high crest factor pink noise that is high passed at about 30 hz and compressed the living sh1t out of, but because of the rise towards the bass the compression mostly affects the bass which turns into almost continuous sinewaves at around 40 hz but still highly dynamic in the treble ...

there is a test signal created to simulate music crest factor: https://meyersound.com/news/m-noise-test-signal/
and as you probably know Meyer Sound is a big name in PA

 

[Gorgonzola]

I can't really comprehend the debates here. Personally I'll admit to being an "audiophile" and I want to listen to my music in my living rooms at moderate levels -- measured average 72-75 dB for Classical music with peaks at maybe +16 dB; Rock music at 80-82 dB with +6 dB peaks.

I'm NOT interested in playing music at concert levels, certainly not Rock concert levels -- ever. (Sorry, airborne.)

However I do want accuracy: why? Because the best recordings sound best played with the most accurate amplification and the very accurate speakers. Granted, I roll off the highs a bit with equalization.

When I looked for a DIY design, I tended to avoid 3/4" tweeters in favor of 1" tweeters because the latter permit a lower crossover, ~2000 Hz. Optimum performance and dispersion above 10 kHz is irrelevant to me because I can't hear those frequencies anymore. The design I choose uses the 1" ScanSpeak Illuminator D3004/6600 and the 7" ScanSpeak Revelator 18W/8531G-00. These are pricey drivers but perform really well.

 

[dasdoing]

I want to listen to my music in my living rooms at moderate levels -- measured average 72-75 dB for Classical music with peaks at maybe +16 dB; Rock music at 80-82 dB with +6 dB peaks.

bookshelf speakers will allready compress at these peaks,
anyways, after switching to PA speakers myself, there seams to be more than just peak compression going on. even at quiet levels home speakers are not able to produce acurate transients. it has probably something to do with rise-time. the time it takes for a driver to reproduce the requested tone.

 

[airborne]

there is a test signal created to simulate music crest factor: https://meyersound.com/news/m-noise-test-signal/
and as you probably know Meyer Sound is a big name in PA

that's cool.

not sure how useful it would be.

pink noise is very useful but maybe not the best tool for measuring power.

 

[airborne]

measured average 72-75 dB for Classical music with peaks at maybe +16 dB; Rock music at 80-82 dB with +6 dB peaks.

what's the cheapest way to measure SPL that i'm currently listening at ? my phone is Samsung.

or should i just invest in a proper speaker measurement setup ? do those setups measure absolute SPL level or only relative response ?

i don't actually know what level i'm listening at i think it would help A LOT to have that information ...

 

[airborne]

bookshelf speakers will allready compress at these peaks,
anyways, after switching to PA speakers myself, there seams to be more than just peak compression going on. even at quiet levels home speakers are not able to produce acurate transients. it has probably something to do with rise-time. the time it takes for a driver to reproduce the requested tone.

i think PA speakers are just louder and brighter sounding. maybe we run them louder because they can get louder before the sound begins to change.

 

[dasdoing]

i think PA speakers are just louder and brighter sounding. maybe we run them louder because they can get louder before the sound begins to change.

yea, distorsion will hurt you ears before SPL does. with my 8" studio monitors I couldn't tolerate loud music for more than 2h-ish. with my PA speakers it never sounds "louder over time". hard to explain; you set a level and you are done. I don't experience ear fatigue ever, even after long sessions at the weekend while drinking lol

 

[airborne]

yea, distorsion will hurt you ears before SPL does. with my 8" studio monitors I couldn't tolerate loud music for more than 2h-ish. with my PA speakers it never sounds "louder over time". hard to explain; you set a level and you are done. I don't experience ear fatigue ever, even after long sessions at the weekend while drinking lol

i'm sure it depends on the speaker. there are some very different types of tweeters used in PA speakers from titanium to polyester from dome to "biconic" annular diaphragms ... not to mention from passive to DSP

i would imagine a DSP speaker with an annular diaphragm tweeter would have a fairly smooth top end while a passive speaker with a titanium compression driver would probably have a fairly harsh top end ... but i'm not sure we can even make that generalization ...

but yeah monitors sound bright because music is recorded bright - it is supposed to be played back on warm sounding speakers that undo this brightness

they record it so bright to improve signal to noise ratio - make the record louder

passive PA speakers also sound bright simply due to physics - they don't want to waste energy in resistors so they don't try to EQ them flat but use the naturally rising response of drivers ... on other hand active DSP PA speakers do not have this characteristic ...

again, these are generalizations that may not apply ...

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

Do you know of an example speaker using such a crossover? I have one crossed at 2670 and another at 1800 (waveguides).

Genelec 8040B - 19mm tweeter crossed at 3kHz:
https://www.genelec.com/8040b#section-technical-specifications

 

[dasdoing]

a titanium compression driver would probably have a fairly harsh top end

the top-octave (= above 10Khz) has problems due to the phase plug (causing temporal distorsion). that is the range where music has the least information, but it does give the sonical impression of a bad speaker sometimes. Personaly if I don't focus on it it wont bother me 98% of the times. On certain tracks I do whish I had a super-tweeter for that range, but not too often. the magic happens in the midrange. no design is perfect (though FIR correction can solve compression driver weaknesses). Most audiophiles will first pay special atention on the top octave when avaliating a speaker though, because that is how you best compare domes between each other. that results in not paying atention to the strenght of compression drivers though, which is the midrange/transients

 

[airborne]

the top-octave (= above 10Khz) has problems due to the phase plug (causing temporal distorsion). that is the range where music has the least information, but it does give the sonical impression of a bad speaker sometimes. Personaly if I don't focus on it it wont bother me 98% of the times. On certain tracks I do whish I had a super-tweeter for that range, but not too often. the magic happens in the midrange. no design is perfect (though FIR correction can solve compression driver weaknesses). Most audiophiles will first pay special atention on the top octave when avaliating a speaker though, because that is how you best compare domes between each other. that results in not paying atention to the strenght of compression drivers though, which is the midrange/transients

it's true - large compression drivers make a smart trade off in sacrificing the top octave for better performance in the upper mids.

however if you want to understand the actual design challenges of making them here is a very good video:

this guy designed the most advanced compression driver on the market right now ( Celestion Axiperiodic ) that has a SEVEN inch outer diameter ( 5" Voice Coil ) titanium diaphragm and still goes to 20 khz ... in that video he explains in great detail exactly how it was designed ...

the math was impossible for me to follow but i still understood everything that actually matters ...

anyway i'm out to sleep.

talk to you guys later.

 

[Birdy]

How do modern mid-tweeters compare to the much venerated SEAS HO87 tweeter?

I had great results with this dome mid / high in a two way. One of the better domes i used with a great range of mid - high. My later Dynaudio D28 did not have the same elegance of sound and could not do the mid band as well.

 

[dasdoing]

it's true - large compression drivers make a smart trade off in sacrificing the top octave for better performance in the upper mids.

however if you want to understand the actual design challenges of making them here is a very good video:

this guy designed the most advanced compression driver on the market right now ( Celestion Axiperiodic ) that has a SEVEN inch outer diameter ( 5" Voice Coil ) titanium diaphragm and still goes to 20 khz ... in that video he explains in great detail exactly how it was designed ...

the math was impossible for me to follow but i still understood everything that actually matters ...

anyway i'm out to sleep.

talk to you guys later.

skipped through the video. seams to be the driver used in the new Klipsch Jubilee?
not realy a home solution, and probably not for PA either.
while "less elegant", you can solve the problems digitaly: