Soft vs Hard Dome Tweeters: Which do you prefer?

What type of tweeter do you prefer?

  • Soft dome (ie. Fabric, Silk)

    Votes: 8 17.4%
  • Hard dome (ie. Aluminum, Titanium, Beryllium, etc

    Votes: 12 26.1%
  • No preference, design execusion is more important than the material used

    Votes: 25 54.3%
  • I'm still rolling with paper

    Votes: 1 2.2%

  • Total voters
    46
Irvrobinson

Irvrobinson

Audioholic Spartan
Yeah, the RBH SX-T2/R's soft dome will blow away any $30K TM or MTM speaker with metal dome tweeter in terms of DYNAMICS & EXTENSION because the T2/R has the Dispersion Averaging Array drivers.

It's NOT the Tweeter; it is DESIGN of the speaker.
This sounds like unsupported dealer bravado, Andy. While I agree with the second clause of your last statement, that the overall design is most important, you need great components to make a great speaker, and a great tweeter is one of them. I'm trying to imagine, say, Dennis Murphy, getting on this thread and arguing that the RAAL tweeters are superior to any dome tweeters so we're having a dumb discussion, and he might be correct if he made that argument, but I can't imagine for even a second Dennis being so unprofessional. I could say the same about folks from Funk or SVS. You might want to reconsider your positioning here.
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
This sounds like unsupported dealer bravado, Andy. While I agree with the second clause of your last statement, that the overall design is most important, you need great components to make a great speaker, and a great tweeter is one of them. I'm trying to imagine, say, Dennis Murphy, getting on this thread and arguing that the RAAL tweeters are superior to any dome tweeters so we're having a dumb discussion, and he might be correct if he made that argument, but I can't imagine for even a second Dennis being so unprofessional. I could say the same about folks from Funk or SVS. You might want to reconsider your positioning here.
I might have to just cancel my hobby-driven "dealership" status just so I can have your MUCH NEEDED PERMISSION to speak FREELY again. :eek:

Get off my case already. I repeat, it's a freaking hobby. Lighten up.

It's called making my SUBJECTIVE OPINION like EVERYONE else or maybe even FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Geez.

No need to drag Denis Murphy or Nathan Funk into your quibble.

But speaking of Funk Audio, IMO (that really means just my OPINION) Line Array speakers offer the best extension and dynamics potential of any design.
 
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KEW

KEW

Audioholic Overlord
Yeah, IMO the RBH SX-T2/R's soft dome will blow away any $30K TM speaker with metal dome tweeter in terms of DYNAMICS & EXTENSION because the T2/R has the Dispersion Averaging Array drivers.
I, for one, an very glad to see you went back and edited your original post (as captured by Irv's quote of it) to include IMO! You are indeed entitled to your subjective opinion, and if you had stated it as your opinion in the first place, you would not set off so many audioholics' BS meters (and saved yourself from having to be defensive and attempt to reframe your statements from a "freedom of speech" platform).

But to the content of your post, I agree that using multiple tweeters has the potential to increase dynamics, but am not so sure about multiple drivers improving extension - can you point me to a link?

Also, this doesn't really have so much to do with your dealership status. Your original statement of this as if fact was unprofessional. Dealer or not, it would still be a baseless claim.

I am curious what caused you to delete MTM speakers from your statement. Can you elaborate?
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
I, for one, an very glad to see you went back and edited your original post (as captured by Irv's quote of it) to include IMO! You are indeed entitled to your subjective opinion, and if you had stated it as your opinion in the first place, you would not set off so many audioholics' BS meters (and saved yourself from having to be defensive and attempt to reframe your statements from a "freedom of speech" platform).

But to the content of your post, I agree that using multiple tweeters has the potential to increase dynamics, but am not so sure about multiple drivers improving extension - can you point me to a link?

Also, this doesn't really have so much to do with your dealership status. Your original statement of this as if fact was unprofessional. Dealer or not, it would still be a baseless claim.

I am curious what caused you to delete MTM speakers from your statement. Can you elaborate?
No, adding multiple drivers does not add to extension. The lower limit will be just that.

However a tweeter is a slightly different case. Generally they operate above 2 KHz. However in music, power demands rapidly decrease with increasing frequency.

So a single tweeter may be power limited below 2.5 kHz for instance. Now if you add more tweeters the power handling is increased and you could then achieve your power demands with a crossover at 1.8 KHz for instance that you could not do with one. That is not added extension but at a cursory glance could seem like it.

When it comes to woofers you can use all the drivers you want and Fs and therefore F3 obtainable will not change.

When it comes to multiple drivers, there are as usual there are swings and roundabouts.

The ideal is a full range point source. As you add drivers in a vertical array, you do get comb filtering, that is undeniable, the spacing has to cause reinforcement and cancellation which is frequency and driver spacing dependent.

Now the advantage is obviously increased power handing and lowered distortion and increased horizontal dispersion and limited vertical dispersion.

So now we get down to what sort of sound stage you favor, and the presentation in the room you want to convey. This is where science meets experience and art. For me this makes speakers eternally fascinating.

So where do I stand. I have only found vertical arrays acceptable in very large spaces never domestically.

For many years I just used single 4" JW full range drivers TL loaded. As you added drivers the power went up, but the sound was much less defined and accurate in fact. The single drivers were fine in student digs and resident quarters. I still have the speakers I built for my resident room.

When I moved to North America and larger spaces, a pair of 4" full range drivers did not have the power. Adding drivers was never entirely satisfactory. The speakers now my rear backs used four JWs per side as a mid array and a vertical tweeter array, as there was no ferrofluid then. The sound was powerful but somewhat over full and lacking refinement and detail, with poor depth of focus.

So in 1984 I changed to the current arrangement.



That improved matters greatly after a lot of work getting the crossovers right.

Now the MTM arrangement is a design, that IF designed correctly, can work.

The trick is to skillfully design the lobing patterns, so you have what is close to a point source. However, unlike a point source, horizontal dispersion is increased and vertical dispersion is reduced. At the same time power handling in the all important mid range is doubled.

Would I have made the design choices that RBH have, no. I personally prefer to use less, more expensive drivers with greater power handing and less thermal compression. In my room here I have no trouble achieving all the spl I need without distress from the speakers. In fact the rig can produce a massive wallop when required.

I understand why RBH could make the choices they did. There are some, may be many who like the presentation of that type of speaker layout, I'm just not one of them.

Changing gears a little, it so happened I watched a program last night that is apropos this tweeter discussion and a lot else besides.

The "amateur" university of Waseda, Tokyo, symphony orchestra performed at the Philharmonie Berlin recently. Now these are all unpaid university students. It is not a youth orchestra which are have students training as professional musicians. However DO NOT let the amateur status of this vast number of enthusiastic youngsters put you off.

The concert is up free on the BPO Digital concert hall site. You do have to register for free.

Go to the work at the bottom, Mono-Prism by Maki Ishii.

This is the most wild extravaganza I have ever seen. I just can't begin to describe it. It has the largest percussion section I have ever seen, with some of the strangest instruments besides. It will really give your tweeters are work out, and everything else besides. There is a huge array of Japanese drums beaten senseless by a large collection of very muscular young men.

I should mention that you will have to advance the volume more than usual. The engineers wisely reduced the average spl in order to deliver the enormous dynamic range of this program.

It goes without saying that the video is stunning and the audio spectacular.

After watching that I have no desire to spend 3K on diamond tweeters.

I do encourage all to watch this and comment. There are also some encores following this work. The normally somewhat staid German audience went wild. They just could not get enough of these youngsters.
 
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ematthews

ematthews

Audioholic General
This is just a first of several videos to come on the topic. We try to keep the videos short for easier digestibility on YouTube. I do like a few AMT's and Ribbons but most don't have the dynamic capability, sensitivity or low end extension of the best domes.
Really... How do you feel about the RAAL ribbon on the Ascend Acoustics tower. I have them and they blow away my RBH Sound SX6300/R....Magical Ribbons
 
gene

gene

Audioholics Master Chief
Administrator
Really... How do you feel about the RAAL ribbon on the Ascend Acoustics tower. I have them and they blow away my RBH Sound SX6300/R....Magical Ribbons
I heard RAAL on a couple of pairs of Salks at our 2012 GTG and really liked them a lot. Very airy and open sounding. I need to get a set of speakers in my own theater room to get a full perspective however.
 
fuzz092888

fuzz092888

Audioholic Warlord
I heard RAAL on a couple of pairs of Salks at our 2012 GTG and really liked them a lot. Very airy and open sounding. I need to get a set of speakers in my own theater room to get a full perspective however.
I do love the RAAL tweeters. I have a pair of the Philharmonic 3 tower speakers with the RAAL 70-10D and liked them so much, I ended up buying a speaker kit that utilizes the RAAL 70-20XR. I'm curious to see how they compare.
 
L

Lazzer408

Audiophyte
Those two graphs need to be on the same scale for anyone to make an "at a glance" comparison or judgement.

The second graph is actually worse with deviation being >5db between peaks and dips. The first graph is less deviation until the higher end of the spectrum.
 
Phase 2

Phase 2

Audioholic Chief
Those two graphs need to be on the same scale for anyone to make an "at a glance" comparison or judgement.

The second graph is actually worse with deviation being >5db between peaks and dips. The first graph is less deviation until the higher end of the spectrum.
4 year old Thread, nice find man.. I'm gonna start at the beginning.
 
Phase 2

Phase 2

Audioholic Chief
Have any of you guys been to a manufacturing site that actually build the speakers? Like do they have people making the fabrics that cover the tweeters like the dome tweeters silk? I'm almost sure it's a very tedious job putting one together.
 
L

Lazzer408

Audiophyte
Phase 2 - We better burn our history books since information has an expiration date. "Internet people" Geesh...
 
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