Which type of tweeter is the best, and why are there so many types of them?

[MaxBuck]

I'm not sure if I should read this as criticism against ScanSpeak, Peerless, etc.

To be honest, I have much more respect for loudspeaker manufacturers who design and build their own drivers in house, like Dynaudio does.

Sourcing off the shelf parts to put inside a monkey box coffin and then charge $10k+ for it is bullshit. You're basically just paying for furniture at that point. That's not to disparage driver companies like ScanSpeak and such, but I'm not much of a fan of loudspeaker manufacturers who don't do everything all in house.

Whereas my interest in speakers is entirely about their sound. I couldn't care less whether their manufacturers make their own components or purchase them from others.

Would a Bentley be a better car if their tires were molded in-house?

 

[Digital_Thor]

a Seas DXT, SB26ADC in a waveguide or a Bliesma T25B in a waveguide:
https://www.somasonus.net/bliesma-t25b

Is the extra work with oval waveguides and expensive beryllium really that much better?

Maybe I might hope for a bit lower crossover, so that I might use a 4 ohm textreme midrange, SB17CAC or something along those lines - so that a smooth and even dispersion is maintained, while getting as much headroom and sensitivity as possible.

 

[richard12511]

It should be about moving the "oil can" resonance further up into the ultrasonics and away from the audible range:

Weird that they seem to emphasize accuracy so much.

 

[richard12511]

Whereas my interest in speakers is entirely about their sound. I couldn't care less whether their manufacturers make their own components or purchase them from others.

Would a Bentley be a better car if their tires were molded in-house?

Agreed. I mostly see the "we make all our own drivers" thing as a marketing tool. There are definitely exceptions, but I think many of those manufacturers would have a sounding better speaker if they utilized components from the worlds best driver designers.

 

[dfuller]

Agreed. I mostly see the "we make all our own drivers" thing as a marketing tool. There are definitely exceptions, but I think many of those manufacturers would have a sounding better speaker if they utilized components from the worlds best driver designers.

For some companies where they started out making drivers and then moved into whole loudspeaker assemblies, I get it. For others... Not so much.

 

[tuga]

Weird that they seem to emphasize accuracy so much.

There are other aspects to speaker performance aside frequency response. It looks like they are happy with their tailored house sound but that isn’t stopping them from improving those other things.

 

[AlexanderM]

Copper & beryllium alloy dome tweeter, price is for a pair. An option for budget DIY speakers?

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32808784945.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.548c152fdD9nbx&algo_pvid=43feff64-a735-4856-a1f7-0f6b5d80dc82&algo_exp_id=43feff64-a735-4856-a1f7-0f6b5d80dc82-21&pdp_ext_f={"sku_id":"64480806216"}

This is for a pair of pure beryllium.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/328...t_f={"sceneId":"3339","sku_id":"64383554476"}

 

[dfuller]

Copper & beryllium alloy dome tweeter, price is for a pair. An option for budget DIY speakers?

This misses most of the benefits of Beryllium which is its stiffness to weight ratio. Copper is nowhere near as stiff (poisson's ratio for copper is about 0.33, beryllium between 0.07 and 0.18 depending on measurement) nor as light (it's about 9 g/cm3 vs Be's 1.8-ish g/cm3). Better off with aluminum tweeters if you want metal domes for cheap.

This is for a pair of pure beryllium.

Doubt it. It's commonly faked.

 

[hmt]

I was always wondering of the quadratic shape of planar tweeters like AMT would not show some irregularities when it comes to diagonal dispersion (not only h and v).

 

[witwald]

This misses most of the benefits of Beryllium which is its stiffness to weight ratio. Copper is nowhere near as stiff (Poisson's ratio for copper is about 0.33, beryllium between 0.07 and 0.18 depending on measurement) nor as light (it's about 9 g/cm3 vs Be's 1.8-ish g/cm3). Better off with aluminum tweeters if you want metal domes for cheap.

Poisson's ratio ratio, ν, isn't really a measure of stiffness. For example, rubber and other polymeric materials have ν of approximately 0.49, which is higher than that of copper. However, rubber is much more flexible than copper. What I assume you're thinking about is the elastic modulus of the material, the Young's modulus, E. For copper it is E_c = 130 GPa. For beryllium it is E_b = 275 GPa. For beryllium-copper alloy it is E_bc = 125 GPa. For aluminum alloy it is E_a = 70 GPa. When used in creating speaker diaphragms, one of the important material parameters is the specific modulus, E/ρ, which is obtained by dividing the material's Young's modulus by the material's density. The specific modulus of beryllium is much greater than that of aluminum.

 

[dfuller]

Poisson's ratio ratio, ν, isn't really a measure of stiffness. For example, rubber and other polymeric materials have ν of approximately 0.49, which is higher than that of copper. However, rubber is much more flexible than copper. What I assume you're thinking about is the elastic modulus of the material, the Young's modulus, E. For copper it is E_c = 130 GPa. For beryllium it is E_b = 275 GPa. For beryllium-copper alloy it is E_bc = 125 GPa. For aluminum alloy it is E_a = 70 GPa. When used in creating speaker diaphragms, one of the important material parameters is the specific modulus, E/ρ, which is obtained by dividing the material's Young's modulus by the material's density. The specific modulus of beryllium is much greater than that of aluminum.

yes, I was thinking of the wrong thing. Thank you!

 

[AnalogSteph]

Looks like E/ρ of Ti is a hair lower than for Al, and for diamond it could be anywhere from about on par with Be to twice as much. That certainly explains the draw of diamond domes.

Makes you wonder why Ti is such a popular material.

 

[dfuller]

Makes you wonder why Ti is such a popular material.

It's cheap and sounds expensive? I dunno.

 

[Pearljam5000]

I don't know why but focal's beryllium was one of the best I've ever heard

 

[richard12511]

I don't know why but focal's beryllium was one of the best I've ever heard

Could be the inverted orientation and/or that signature ultra wide 2-8kHz dispersion pattern.

 

[Plcamp]

I find it all confusing. Been trying to figure out what will replace a fullrange driver.

Right now it seems to me the best looks to be horn loaded coaxial compression driver as you see with Joseph Crowe’s sub 300 hz biradials, and I think that because it is the only solution I have seen that retains point source and low distortion at same time.

 

[Digital_Thor]

I find it all confusing. Been trying to figure out what will replace a fullrange driver.

Right now it seems to me the best looks to be horn loaded coaxial compression driver as you see with Joseph Crowe’s sub 300 hz biradials, and I think that because it is the only solution I have seen that retains point source and low distortion at same time.

Depending on how loud you want to play.... a waveguided tweeter and 5-6" midrange/woofer can come a long way too. Points source is a bit of fickle to me, because I believe you have to sit rather close to the speaker, to really hear the benefit of it, and not hear the compromise of a coax. Again depending how sensitive you are to the FR deviations

 

[Plcamp]

Depending on how loud you want to play.... a waveguided tweeter and 5-6" midrange/woofer can come a long way too. Points source is a bit of fickle to me, because I believe you have to sit rather close to the speaker, to really hear the benefit of it, and not hear the compromise of a coax. Again depending how sensitive you are to the FR deviations

The other option I was looking at is an Augerpro elliptic waveguide between two Sb 5” ceramic midrangers.

 

[Digital_Thor]

A SB ADC in an elliptic waveguide and two 5" CAC.... could work.
According to Heissmann, an MTM with a small waveguide and two 5".... should give a pretty nice response:
https://heissmann-acoustics.de/en/dxt-wave/

 

[Gorgonzola]

bamboo tweeters just sound more organic to me than the beryllium tweeters

Is this meant to be ironic? To me "organic" is one of those mealy audiophile clichés that, to me, implies mellow but lacking in detail and dynamics.