Tweeter Dispersion Question Dome vs RAAL vs AMT Smaller Room

[Cos]

Finalizing my choices for my small 2 channel Room 14x16 and I was talking to one of my audio dealers I have worked with in the past.

Got into a conversation about Ribbon Tweeters vs Dome and dispersion rate. Discussed the fact that RAAL, AMT tend to work better in larger rooms where you are sitting further away from speakers, and that in smaller rooms domes tend to work better with a wider dispersion rate. (Yes I have dumbed it down a lot)

I am sure there are many other variables to consider as well, but is this a fairly accurate statement. I know a bad speaker is a bad speaker, but if you have two speakers that both measure well, should I take the type of tweeter into consideration? I would be sitting about 10-12 feet back from form the speakers.

I am definitely coming from a place of ignorance, lol so will take this as an opportunity learn something.

 

[Verdinut]

Finalizing my choices for my small 2 channel Room 14x16 and I was talking to one of my audio dealers I have worked with in the past.

Got into a conversation about Ribbon Tweeters vs Dome and dispersion rate. Discussed the fact that RAAL, AMT tend to work better in larger rooms where you are sitting further away from speakers, and that in smaller rooms domes tend to work better with a wider dispersion rate. (Yes I have dumbed it down a lot)

I am sure there are many other variables to consider as well, but is this a fairly accurate statement. I know a bad speaker is a bad speaker, but if you have two speakers that both measure well, should I take the type of tweeter into consideration? I would be sitting about 10-12 feet back from form the speakers.

I am definitely coming from a place of ignorance, lol so will take this as an opportunity learn something.

Ribbon and AMT tweeters have a wider dispersion than any dome driver, either in a small or a larger room. IMO, they provide a wide front sound stage with no hole at the center. I use AMT tweeters and I would never replace them by a dome tweeter.

What I also like about the Airborne AMT's is that their impedance is constant from the lowest to the highest frequencies they are required to reproduce.

https://meniscus.lightningbasehosted.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/RT4001-Data-Sheet.pdf

 

[kini]

Finalizing my choices for my small 2 channel Room 14x16 and I was talking to one of my audio dealers I have worked with in the past.

Got into a conversation about Ribbon Tweeters vs Dome and dispersion rate. Discussed the fact that RAAL, AMT tend to work better in larger rooms where you are sitting further away from speakers, and that in smaller rooms domes tend to work better with a wider dispersion rate. (Yes I have dumbed it down a lot)

I am sure there are many other variables to consider as well, but is this a fairly accurate statement. I know a bad speaker is a bad speaker, but if you have two speakers that both measure well, should I take the type of tweeter into consideration? I would be sitting about 10-12 feet back from form the speakers.

I am definitely coming from a place of ignorance, lol so will take this as an opportunity learn something.

Like mentioned above AMT and ribbon tweeters typically have very wide horizontal dispersion but very narrow vertical dispersion. So kind of depends on your room whether they will work. Erin's audio corner had a nice review of the BMRs that have a super wide dispersion and he found it not really to his liking IIRC.

I have Kefs (entry level Q series) that are average in horizontal dispersion but much higher than average in vertical dispersion. My room is 14x13x9. I get a very, very good soundstage both horizontally and vertically creating a 3D like image.

 

[j_garcia]

That tweeter is not just wide, it is super clear while never being harsh. I have this same tweeter on my smaller Phils and I love them. My previous speakers had BG ribbons, and I think it would have to be a pretty great speaker for me to go back to domes.

 

[Cos]

Revel Proforma3 m106 was the speaker I was comparing the BMRs too. I can get a very good deal on the Revels. That being said, I was part of another poster who didn't really like them. I have a few Revel dealers that are close me, will have to demo myself.

 

[TLS Guy]

Finalizing my choices for my small 2 channel Room 14x16 and I was talking to one of my audio dealers I have worked with in the past.

Got into a conversation about Ribbon Tweeters vs Dome and dispersion rate. Discussed the fact that RAAL, AMT tend to work better in larger rooms where you are sitting further away from speakers, and that in smaller rooms domes tend to work better with a wider dispersion rate. (Yes I have dumbed it down a lot)

I am sure there are many other variables to consider as well, but is this a fairly accurate statement. I know a bad speaker is a bad speaker, but if you have two speakers that both measure well, should I take the type of tweeter into consideration? I would be sitting about 10-12 feet back from form the speakers.

I am definitely coming from a place of ignorance, lol so will take this as an opportunity learn something.

I don't think I would make a speaker choice on the basis of tweeter design. There are good and bad tweeters of all stripes.

There are certainly good dome tweeters, like this SEAS Excel soft dome tweeter.

These are my measurements made with omni mic, which has a drooping HF response above 15 KHz. The measurements were made axis, and off axis 30, 45, 60 and 90 degrees, the latter is the black line.

 

[lovinthehd]

Probably just hard to generalize by type of high frequency driver vs design/execution. Let alone a stereo store guy's opinion.....

 

[Eppie]

I was planning to say something similar. I would not rule out a speaker based on tweeter choice alone. There are good and bad on both fronts. Wharfedale and Martin Logan use AMTs in some of their designs but that doesn't guarantee that they would work better than the Revel. Having heard the BMRs, though, I can say that I do like the RAAL in that particular design. I like JBL's compression drivers too. Depends on the implementation.

 

[D Murphy]

I'm not following why people think AMT's have broader dispersion than domes. It depends on the width of the tweeter in either case. Many AMT's are quite wide and don't have particularly broad horizontal dispersion. However, Mundorf makes a 3/4" wide AMT that does have wider dispersion than a typical 1" dome. What we really need is a nice 3/4" Be dome, but no one makes one.

 

[j_garcia]

I don't base my speaker selection on tweeter either, it just so happens that the ones I've liked in recent years all have ribbons. Yes, I have heard speakers with ribbons that didn't sound good. It really comes down to the overall design and the tweeter is only one aspect.

Prior to the current speakers, all my speakers were soft dome and those still sound great to me too. I found metal domes not to my liking in general, then I heard a few really nice speakers that used metal domes. That is why you need to listen to them to really tell if you like a given speaker.

 

[shadyJ]

I'm not following why people think AMT's have broader dispersion than domes. It depends on the width of the tweeter in either case. Many AMT's are quite wide and don't have particularly broad horizontal dispersion. However, Mundorf makes a 3/4" wide AMT that does have wider dispersion than a typical 1" dome. What we really need is a nice 3/4" Be dome, but no one makes one.

What I would like to see is some 1/2" dome tweeters as super tweeters. That would allow a speaker with a larger tweeter which might not play as high, but can meet a larger woofer at the higher end of its usable range before break up modes. I would like to see a 8" or 9" woofer mated with a 2" tweeter at maybe 1kHz and passing off to a super tweeter at around 5 or 6kHz. That system would offer a lot of dynamic range and potentially very nicely even dispersion up to a very high frequency.

 

[Swerd]

Got into a conversation about Ribbon Tweeters vs Dome and dispersion rate. Discussed the fact that RAAL, AMT tend to work better in larger rooms where you are sitting further away from speakers, and that in smaller rooms domes tend to work better with a wider dispersion rate. (Yes I have dumbed it down a lot)

Revel Proforma3 m106 was the speaker I was comparing the BMRs too. I can get a very good deal on the Revels. That being said, I was part of another poster who didn't really like them. I have a few Revel dealers that are close me, will have to demo myself.

That Revel speaker is a 2-way design where a 6½" mid-woofer crosses over to a 1" dome tweeter at 2.3 kHz. And the BMR Monitor is a 3-way design where the BMR mid-range crosses to a RAAL 64-10X ribbon tweeter. I don't know that crossover frequency, but I believe it is higher than 2.3 kHz. Trying to judge these two speakers by what type of tweeter they have is not a good comparison. It might be a case of dumbing it down too much.

The sound quality of the lower treble (the upper end of the speech discrimination frequency range) – in a 2-way speaker – is a function of the crossover frequency. If it's too high, the mid-woofer's performance can be the problem, and not the tweeter as you might think. The mid-woofer might be going into break-up. That would result in unwanted noise. If it's not break-up noise, it might be that the mid-woofer's off-axis performance is falling off too much compared to it's on-axis performance. That can lead to speakers with a drop off in performance in the upper frequencies of the speech discrimination range. Also, if the crossover frequency is too low, the tweeter might be audibly distorting at its lower frequencies. However, in my experience, the mid-woofer's loss of off-axis performance is the most likely cause of poor sounding treble. It's less likely to be the tweeter.

In a 3-way speaker, especially a very well designed 3-way like the BMR Monitor, the crossover from the mid-range to the tweeter is at a higher frequency. High enough so that any problems the 3-way might have will not resemble problems the 2-way might have. FWIW, that Revel speaker looks very good on paper. But so does the BMR Monitor .