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

[RexrothPigeon]

It's like how ancient people thought that eating the meat of a fierce animal would make them fierce. We're just prone to that kind of dumb thinking.

 

[Flaesh]

Has anyone ever eaten chicken hearts? But few would dare to eat chicken brains!
Back in the 90s, a local magazine wrote: "silk tweeters produce a soft, silky sound, metal tweeters produce a hard, metallic sound" (that was sarcasm, of course).

 

[IPunchCholla]

Is listening fatigue real? By that I mean is it a unique phenomenon related to audio? Is it different than reading fatigue? Or watching fatigue? Or running fatigue? Is it just that people get tired of doing the same thing for extended periods of time and that time is variable depending on both internal and external factors that often cannot be separated?

Are their particular elements of audio that tire listeners out faster? For me, I know listening to something repeatedly trying to hear small differences is exhausting, but I always assumed it was the activity (small snippets, repetition) that was tiring, not a quality of the audio. Are there any studies that show a relationship to earlier fatigue correlated with frequency response or other elements of the sound itself?

To be honest, I’ve always thought listening fatigue was a person getting bored/irritated by a perceived quality and blaming that perception on the thing, rather than themselves, but I could be wrong.

 

[vintologi]

Honestly i fan listen to music for hours without issue. I have huge playlists that are hours long and sometimes i still loop through the entire thing. I have over 2 TB of music (i like 24-192 for the placebo benefits).

Was the case with my old tweeters and it remains the case with my current ones.

I do like the look of my TW29BN tweeters. Kinda looks better IRL than in photos.

 

[Flaesh]

Is it different than reading fatigue? Or watching fatigue? Or running fatigue?

It's like scratching fatigue or eating fatigue . Disclaimer: This is a purely speculative opinion and not my practical experience.

 

[Chaconne]

I've heard metal domes that sound like silk. I've heard silk domes that sound like metal. The trick is to find ones that sounds like music.

 

[vintologi]

I've heard metal domes that sound like silk. I've heard silk domes that sound like metal. The trick is to find ones that sounds like music.

That's the goal. Simply hearing the music and nothing else.

I was curious to hear what TW29BN would sound like and turns out it simply reproduced the music and honestly it wasn't even that radically different from the cheap ribbon tweeters the dynavoice DM5 has (besides a massive sensitivity gain and being able to cross them much lower). I think i noticed bigger improvements in the midrange area (distortion should be a lot lower there now).

 

[Bob from Florida]

The problem is the metal used is too light. If it was “Heavy Metal”, all would be well!

 

[Chrispy]

I have not been harmed by metallic domes.

 

[Penelinfi]

I've heard plenty of soft domes I didn't necessarily like. There probably have been some metal tweeters with issues or implementation. The good ones I like a lot. For some reason I don't really have upmarket soft domes. Only one I can think of

 

[Kyle_PL]

I think problem with metal dome tweeters is only when they are incorrectly applied (bad project, unfiltered resonance, overload when cutted very low, with high-pass mild filtering).

 

[SigbergAudio]

Is listening fatigue real? By that I mean is it a unique phenomenon related to audio? Is it different than reading fatigue? Or watching fatigue? Or running fatigue? Is it just that people get tired of doing the same thing for extended periods of time and that time is variable depending on both internal and external factors that often cannot be separated?

Are their particular elements of audio that tire listeners out faster? For me, I know listening to something repeatedly trying to hear small differences is exhausting, but I always assumed it was the activity (small snippets, repetition) that was tiring, not a quality of the audio. Are there any studies that show a relationship to earlier fatigue correlated with frequency response or other elements of the sound itself?

To be honest, I’ve always thought listening fatigue was a person getting bored/irritated by a perceived quality and blaming that perception on the thing, rather than themselves, but I could be wrong.

It is real and can be a result of distortion and/or excessive energy in frequencies we are the most sensitive to. The 1-4khz area is often mentioned in this context.

 

[Pareto Pragmatic]

Is listening fatigue real? By that I mean is it a unique phenomenon related to audio? Is it different than reading fatigue? Or watching fatigue? Or running fatigue? Is it just that people get tired of doing the same thing for extended periods of time and that time is variable depending on both internal and external factors that often cannot be separated?

Personally, too much treble will make my head pulse. With lower volumes, that's not very noticeable, but it does add up over time. I can't speak to what others experience, but there's something about my head/ears/sinuses that causes an issue. This is very much as pulsing, pressure thing, not what I would call a "bright sound" thing per se.

As for materials, I think it is marketing. Those who like bright (or have old ears), are going to hear "soft dome" and "titanium", and the connotations will come along for the ride.

I don't think metal is automatically bright, but I do think that speakers that are voiced bright tend to use metal.

 

[Mnyb]

Many of the older implementations have jarring dispersion issues , for example a large quite soft woofer who has quite narrow dispersion at the xover who crosses to a metal dome where the baffle is the practical limit and a little to high level just to boost that you have the new shiny metal dome the wide almost perfect dispersion of a hard dome demands a speaker designer that know his trade and can figure the room acoustic consequences. There is ofcourse no wave guide in these old speakers .

Today all my KEF speakers have all metal or metal skinned drivers not a problem , especially my LSXii are quite silky smooth

 

[Mart68]

In the UK 1980s early 90s Monitor Audio were probably the most famous for using metal tweeters. They painted them gold and 'Gold domes matey!' was the owner's catchphrase.

Some had a mid-forward balance and some didn't, dividing opinion on whether MA speakers were 'bright' or not, since it depended on the model. The incorrect assumption that every manufacturer has the same 'house sound' across their whole range confused matters too.

With a bad two-way design the break up of the mid-bass can be a bit harsh and that also gets mistaken for 'bright tweeter' as again the assumption is that the tweeter is doing a lot more of the FR than it really is

This is the sort of junk speaker popular in UK in the 80s. If you chose your pickup cartridge to cancel out the worst of it with it's own ups and downs then you might just live with it, but CD takes no prisoners on FR so it's no wonder a lot of people didn't rate CD back then:



In todays money that's an £800 speaker so not bargain basement.

 

[Digital_Thor]

Today all my KEF speakers have all metal or metal skinned drivers

Fully agree... This is why I jumped the KEF wagon too. I'd choose better dispersion and smoothness over any talk about exotic materials.

 

[Chr1]

As mentioned previously, some of the best speakers made use metal domes.

(Might be wrong here, but I don't think tweeters made of anything else are capable of decent SPL.)

 

[Cwopete5]

A few years back, I purchased a set of vintage Klipsch KG4’s. The first thing I did was upgrade the crossovers with ones from Crites Speaker. I also changed the tweeters from beryllium to titanium, which seemed to be all the rage. I really tried to “like” the sound but those titanium tweeters were killing my old ears; they physically hurt. So I bought some NOS beryllium replacement tweeters and no more ear pain. Metal tweeters just aren’t for me.

 

[Mart68]

beryllium is a metal.

 

[vintologi]

beryllium is a metal.

Seems to be the overall best for tweeters but the improvements over cheaper metals is a lot smaller than what the marketing wants you to think.

Lately we have seen some tweeters use "textreme" which is a textile that performs similar to beryllium but for less cost (might not be as good though).