Come tweeter

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Cressy Snr
Amstrad Tower of Power
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Location: South Yorks.

#1 Come tweeter

Post by Cressy Snr »

Hi-fi lore tells us that cone tweeters suck, and are hopeless anachronisms, with no business being in a serious speaker
Maybe, but the ones I am currently testing are producing some fine high frequencies and are knocking an SB acoustics ring radiator into a cocked hat.

Having heard a wide range of HF units in my time here is my own personal heirarchy of best to worst sounding tweeters, starting with the best:

Air Motion Transformer.
Ribbon
Isodynamic
Cone
compression horn
bullet horn
dome
piezo

As a result of my own listening this week, I've slotted the cone tweeter into fourth place, just below the isodynamic.
The cone tweeter puts in a surprisingly good performance.

YMMV and of course it all depends on the skill of the implementation and the crossover design, but for first-order filters, with single cap bass blockers, the simple cone HF unit is an easy to integrate solution, that sounds sweet, smooth and natural.
The larger diaphragm size means that more of the upper mids can safely be allowed to leak into the HF unit, meaning that shallow filter slopes are far, far easier to get a good sound out of, than would otherwise be the case.

I've found that using a cone HF with simple a first-order filter preserves a lot more of the musical information than the same filter with a dome tweeter.
To get the same information levels out of a dome with a first order crossover, whilst avoiding distortion, means judicious doping of the dome so it'll go lower without reacting badly, which presumably is why the Doc dopes his dome HF units in the Cube range of speakers.

From what I am hearing with my own speaker designs I've decided to revive the venerable cone tweeter. The polyprop diaphragm with paper dustcap, car audio derived dashboard, 3 inch, cone tweeter I found on the web, is very, very good; so good, that I've decided to move over to using cones from bass through to treble in all my designs, including the straight Metronomes that use widebanders rather than full range drivers. Omnis will have either a single cone, or an angled, wide dispersion pair, depending on the size of the speaker.

Try one with a simple first order bass blocker xover. They are relatively inexpensive and you may be secretly impressed with the results. :wink:
Sgt. Baker started talkin’ with a Bullhorn in his hand.
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The Stratmangler
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#2 Re: Come tweeter

Post by The Stratmangler »

Cressy Snr wrote: Tue Oct 24, 2017 12:18 am... the ones I am currently testing are producing some fine high frequencies and are knocking an SB acoustics ring radiator into a cocked hat.
Those ring radiators are fine tweeters, and they'll hold up where everything else falls over. They reach way below most tweeter's operational frequency with ease.
At the other end of their range they are extremely clean and uncoloured.

If they're less sensitive than your mid/bass driver (and it sounds like they are), even with the mid/bass driver firing upwards and with very much reduced sensitivity relative to the manufacturer's stated sensitivity, then anything else that has higher sensitivity is going to do the job better.

You can easily reduce output when there's too much, and passively driven you can't add what isn't there already, as it's all subtractive.

High frequencies for any tweeter is easy.
How they cope going down into the midband is a better measure of their capabilities.
It's also where the musical realism and detail lies.
Chris :happy3:
Cressy Snr
Amstrad Tower of Power
Posts: 10552
Joined: Wed May 30, 2007 12:25 am
Location: South Yorks.

#3 Re: Cone tweeter

Post by Cressy Snr »

The Stratmangler wrote: Tue Oct 24, 2017 1:05 am
If they're less sensitive than your mid/bass driver (and it sounds like they are), even with the mid/bass driver firing upwards and with very much reduced sensitivity relative to the manufacturer's stated sensitivity, then anything else that has higher sensitivity is going to do the job better.
The cone tweeter I'm using is 1dB less sensitive than the ring tweeter, but in this design, it outperforms it. Not knocking the SB tweeter just telling it like it is.

If you have a two way speaker then yes, as I did say in my original post, the midband capabilites of an HF unit are important; the larger diaphragms of cone tweeters come into their own in this situation. Ultimate extension and dispersion from a single cone, is compromised compared to a dome, but in terms of musical capability, the cones I'm using give the ring radiator a right royal kick up the backside. You pick your compromises.

Interesting, I find it, that the demand for top end "sparkle" has steadily increased over the years in line with the age of 'yer average hi-fi punter :lol:
Sgt. Baker started talkin’ with a Bullhorn in his hand.
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