Are super tweeters useless?

[JBryan]

Believe me,I've sought high & low for not only speakers to fullfil me neads,but also sent out more ?'s on the subject(THANK YOU all for their advice)on speakers.I've come to believe that the only spkr. to exceed my Cornscalas w/ my large subs. would be the K-horns & Bob C. advised me that I would'nt notice(at least not nitice a $2500/min. difference)in the K-horns & the Cornscalas & I don't have any reason to doubt him.tHE ONLY SPEAKERS i FOUND OUT THERE TO BE MORE EFFICIENT THAN Klipsch were Oris(just put oris speakers on google)& Avantgarde.They are,imoho,beatiful horn speakers.They look like trumpets in bright,vibrant colors.Makes you feel like your at the circus.There's some on the b&d design sight(oris spkrs.)that are called "swing" & state they're 117 db. eff.They're just too far out of my league.Does everyone believe this boast of such eff. or better yet,has anyone been able to listen & give an opinion on these spkrs.Lastly,they did show a set of white Lascalas bass bins w/ Oris horns on top.Maybe their compatible.Thanks,Tim.

Tim,

I'll try to be unbiased (which I'm not) but you seem to be looking for more of everything from your setup - more SPLs and greater frequency response. Bert designs the Oris systems to be efficient mainly so folks can use them with low-power amps, not necessarily to listen at high SPLs. He uses AER full-range drivers because they provide a wide frequency range at low distortion alone or in the case of Oris, in a 2-way setup. I use Oris 150 horns and AER drivers on top of Khorn bins and they give me plenty of headroom with 1.5 watt amps. Aside from the benefits on the top end, I heard improvement by cutting off the bass bin at 150Hz. It removed a good deal of mid-bass distortion and measured flatter response at the cut-off point and between 80-100Hz where there was a 8dB spike before. Like several others on this forum, I was looking to get more detail and a cleaner sound by replacing the Khorn's top hat and the Oris/AER combo offered a few other benefits specific to my system but achieving maximum SPLs was not a goal. BTW, Bert ships his horns out 'plain-jane' white for the most part. The colors you see are what the owners came up with or had the local auto shop apply.

As far as super tweeters go, I think that just because you can't hear the highest and lowest frequencies doesn't mean that you can't perceive them and the more information you can squeeze from your rig - the better. Harmonics play a big role in creating the 'being there' illusion. Both Tannoy and Fostex (I'm sure there are others) offer 8 ohm ST's with built-in xovers so you could give them a try without much trouble. If those don't fit the bill, then you can find a ST and a simple xover can be made from a resistor, a capacitor and a pot (variable resistor) - just set the point at 17kHz or so.

[boom3]

All these discussions on source bandwidths are very germane, and that factor is often overlooked. Super tweeters originated when the existing tweeters crossed over at the de facto standard of 5 KHz just couldn't make it past 12 KHz on a good day. Tweeters improved, and even the T35/K77 makes it to 17 KHz now. But consumers were (mis) educated to that magic 20-20,000 Hz jazz, and tend to think that that gap between 17 and 20 Khz represents a real problem, ignoring all other factors.

I have often thought, and some research corroborates, that supersonic distortion products can be irritating even though we can't perceive them as part of the "audible" experience. Better that a tweeter has good behavior in all other respects and cuts off at 15 or 17 KHz than has one that has high distortion, beamy directivity and goes on up to ultrasonics.

[Marvel]

I've been thinking of trying out this Beyma slot tweeter in one of my systems here at home. I would consider it a poor man's JBL 2405. They run about $139.

Bruce

CP21F.pdf

CP21F.pdf

[DrWho]

I have often thought, and some research corroborates, that supersonic distortion products can be irritating even though we can't perceive them as part of the "audible" experience.

Have you seen any research where there are ultrasonic distortion products present with perfectly reproduced fundamentals?

For instance, a second harmonic distortion of a 12kHz signal is an indication that the 12kHz signal is not being reproduced correctly....a simple example would be clipping. If you could remove the HF content of a clipping 12kHz signal, what would you end up with? And would it be audible different than an unclipped 12kHz signal?

There's more sources of distortion, but that's just a simple example where the frequency content resulting from the distortion is easily predicted...

Maybe I should just put together a test one of these days...

[boom3]

there are no perfectly reproduced fundamentals from loudspeakers. On the road, not able to access papers now, look at PWK paper on doppler distortion and see some interesting spectrum plots of ionized air tweeters

[ZAKO]

PWK mentioned that to me many times,, "If it moves it distorts"

[gearfreak]

I've been thinking of trying out this Beyma slot tweeter

Hopefully not OT, but I am wondering what the differences are between the slot design and the butt-cheek designs.

(2404, is the cheek design Afaik - or is that only the driver and does it need to be augmented with a horn designation as well?)

I was/am considering the CP-25, maybe a slot would be better? Is the design difference primarily just a matter of dispersion angle?

(...somebody queue Jacksonbart for a zinger on slots and butt cheeks) :-)

[DrWho]

I've found that diffraction slots have the tendancy to sound honky and constricted. As far as I know, they're both diffraction designs, but the baby-cheek shouldn't be as obnoxious sounding.

If I had to choose one of them, I'd go with the CP-25.

[ZAKO]

Since Super tweeters only handle the upper harmonics and not the fundamentle, I dought if any honky sounds exists.

[colterphoto1]

uh, perhaps this is too elementary, but how dead is your room? You could possibly have a system with HF that's just fine, but a room that absorbs it.

[ZAKO]

Even if you lived in a anechoic chamber you would hear the high frequencies... Did you forget to take the cotton out of your ears??? No seriously check your hearing,,,, Even if you bought a dozen super tweeters,,, it would not help if you got a hearing problem.. Find out what is masking the HFs