What's behind people experiencing fatigue from metal dome tweeters?

[vintologi]

Is it just nocebo or is there some common flaw/characteristics of metal dome that causes that.

Never experienced anything like that with TW29BN and when i checked what other people wrote about that tweeter i didn't see anyone else experiencing that problem (there is no issue with that tweeter to begin with of course).

In terms of actual performance a top tier metal dome tweeter is not actually going to be that different from a top tier ribbon tweeter (both being largely flat to 40Khz+ and low distortion) but there are plenty of sub-par metal domes out there.

The material also doesn't make as big of a difference as a lot of people think. We see that when we for example compare BlieSMa T34B vs BlieSMa T34A (main benefit of the beryllium one is the 1.5 dB efficience advantage).

 

[YouDontHaveEnoughBass]

Nothing wrong with a metal dome, I’ve got a pair of Ascilab F6B/S which has a metal dome in a big waveguide and it’s the warmest, least fatiguing speaker I’ve owned

I think the reputation is from prominent bad implementations where the tweeters are ran too high in level producing a fatiguing sound such as in many B&W speakers; the treble often being several db above the median!

 

[Mart68]

The myth is almost as old as metal dome tweeters, goes back to early 1980s and the many quite crude little 2 way speakers that were available - and popular - back then.

Metal dome was a selling point. But a lot of those speakers had a rise in FR around the 1Khz area which will be initially impressive, but fatiguing over time. Nothing to do with the tweeter itself. But if someone doesn't really understand how a loudspeaker works it's easy to jump to the wrong conclusion.

 

[Cote Dazur]

Is it just nocebo or is there some common flaw/characteristics of metal dome that causes that.

Have you seen a measurements coroborating that they have any flaw due to being metal?
If not, then it is just audiofools echo chamber to be classified in the same category as silver speaker cable have a brighter sound.
Any tweeter badly implimented will display flaws.

 

[vintologi]

Have you seen a measurements coroborating that they have any flaw due to being metal?

Let's compare the BlieSMa T34 tweeters

Soft dome (looks bad because it is):

Beryllium:

Textreme:

So the peak at 30Khz was not caused by them using metal, it was a flaw/tradeoff with the design of the tweeter itself and not specific to a material.

 

[Chr1]

Just EQ your treble to taste.

 

[vintologi]

Just EQ your treble to taste.

Honestly i never had any success with EQ. I went through some trouble getting easyeffects to work on linux only to then disable everthing.

I always reverted to no EQ.

I have had success with tweaking the crossover though.

 

[SigbergAudio]

It's a result of our creative brain. It's made of metal, so our brain concludes it must sound hard.

 

[Chr1]

Indeed. Given that some of the best speakers made, use metal domes...

 

[levimax]

So the peak at 30Khz was not caused by them using metal, it was a flaw/tradeoff with the design of the tweeter itself and not specific to a material.

The 30 Khz peak actually is because of the metal domes. This is cone breakup which is much more defined and higher in frequency with metal domes as compared to soft domes. It is easy to allow for in a well designed crossover. For well designed speakers with metal domes the whole fatigue myth is just a myth. Just like many audiophile myths there is just a grain of truth to in that in a poorly executed design it is theoretically possible that the cone breakup could effect down into the audible range.

 

[kemmler3D]

To be honest I'm not even sure what causes listening fatigue in general. I often see it attributed to excessive high frequency energy, but also all kinds of other implausible subjectivist stuff. I don't experience it myself very much if any (never noticed to myself "my ears are fatigued") so it's hard for me to say.

If there was anything particular to metal tweeters that would contribute to poor listening experience it would probably be breakup modes or dispersion from the shape of the dome vs. those used with other materials but it's hard to say without reference to a specific speaker/ tweeter.

 

[YouDontHaveEnoughBass]

If you've got a decent room with a carpet and a nice amount of soft furniture, fatigue is pretty hard to come by imo unless you're playing very loud

I've had fatiguing systems before and it stemmed from the room I was in which suffered from flutter echo + was generally highly reflective - couple that with speakers with directivity that ballooned out in the 2-6khz range (typical for cheaper cone and dome speakers without waveguides) and it led to a sound that just makes you want to turn the volume down

 

[vintologi]

the TW29BN does not have any significant peak in the frequency response below 40Khz (i didn't find any measurement going higher)

I might be able to do some measurements to check above 40Khz later but there is no particularly great mic laternative for that. I would also be very impressed if someone was able to hear the impact of a 5 dB frequency response bump at 45 Khz (i cannot say for sure that's impossible but..)

 

[vintologi]

SB26CDC-C000-4 (aluminium ceramic)

SB26ADC-C000-4 (aluminium/ceramic):

Here the frequency response looks decent (for the price at least) but the efficiency is significantly worse than more high end tweeters.

 

[ivayvr]

I had three pairs of Focals with metal (AlMg) tweeters, and few others, and never had a problem. I believe that it is implementation only, as others have said.
Some silk dome tweeters are brain piercing and some people see them as "resolving".

 

[a4eaudio]

...I might be able to do some measurements to check above 40Khz later but there is no particularly great mic laternative for that...

A human with good hearing can hear up to 20kHz. The average adult human can hear up to 14-16kHz. Don't spend too much time looking for a mic that measures what we cannot hear. (On the other hand, a bat can typically hear up to 120kHz)

 

[moonlight rainbow dream]

With subjective reviews, people can't even differentiate between the uncontrolled breakup mode of the woofer and the tweeter response when they complain of fatigue/brightness. They have no idea because they haven't measured. I put zero weight on any evaluation of a metal dome tweeter as being fatiguing unsupported by measurements; in particular, frequency response of the tweeter in isolation both native and with crossover filter.

 

[IngMishael]

the human mind is a fascinating deceiver.

 

[Flaesh]

For various accidental reasons unrelated to material sound, I've been using plastic annular diaphragms (D2430K, 4595, DCX464) for a long time. But many people use 3-4" metal dome phragms quite successfully. I had them before, too, from 950PB to a mediocre 3" B&C Chinese clone. I don’t remember it causing any specific fatigue, all other things being equal.

They say it's JBL worker in Mexico (old photo) who selects uncolored PET for uncolored sounding d2430k phragms.

 

[MAB]

I think the reputation is completely unrelated to how metal-dome tweeters actually sound.

Here is a Realistic Minimus 7:

It has a soft-dome tweeter. The peak in the response at 3-4kHz is due to the tweeter, which has a corresponding peak in odd-order Harmonic Distortion.

The Minimus 7 isn't the only speaker that has a tweeter with a resonances and peaks in the response where it sounds bad, hard- and soft-dome tweeters included.

I think it's like lots of things in audio, there are speakers with odd characteristics. Sometimes that characteristic is incorrectly extended to an entire class of devices.