beryllium vs diamond

 Elizabeth, A Be tweeter won’t kill you. Unless you planned on grinding up 5 or 6 of them and snorting them.... 🙄

smodtactical141 posts07-15-2019 12:58am@ctsooner those carbon tweeters on the Vandys look extremely appealing. You make it sound like they have the detail of a magico but the ease of a Wilson ?


To my ears, as well as many I know, the Vandersteen’s put you a third of the way back in Orchestra in the middle seat. They are also near or full range (depending on your model).

Not trying to turn this into a commercial though.

I searched to find out if some tweeters are 100% Be with no substrate, but the best I found was ’Be Foil’. Either way, you are trying to get pure piston movement of all speakers (dynamic).

I recently tested a LOT of tweeters to decide what I wanted to include in my speakers.  

Beryllium is bright and metallic.  Some brands do a better job of taming it than others but at a root level, I just couldn't love any of the ones I have heard.  Tons of detail but at a very fatiguing price.  I would rather listen to a silk dome personally unless paired with very warm electronics.  

Diamond tweeters to me sound better but the only one I have heard that I really love is from Accuton and it is PRICEY!  Marten's high end speakers are mind boggling in terms of soundstage but at $1500 each for just the tweeter, I found it difficult to include in my speakers.  Lesser diamond tweeters lack the soundstage that beryllium delivers.  

Accuton and Eton both offer ceramic domes though Eton is sandwiched with Magnesium.  Much more reasonably priced and I feel they offer as much detail as a beryllium without the hard, metallic edge.  Incidentally, I opted to use Eton tweeters in my speakers.  

Today's dome tweeters are way superior to what we had 20 years ago primarily because their power handling has improved to the degree that you can get to 100+ dB without blowing them. For a point source system a single tweeter is optimal. Arrays with dome tweeters just do not work well primarily because you can not get good ones close enough to form a smooth linear array. To do this at 20 KHz the edge of the domes has to be closer than 15 mm. Not easy which is why ribbons make far better linear arrays. Will they ever be as good as an electrostatic speaker? If you prefer point source speakers sure. If not then never. ESLs are better than ribbons because their acoustic impedance more closely matches that of air and you can ditch the crossovers. The downside is that you wind up with a very large loudspeaker. 

Will they ever be as good as an electrostatic speaker?

And ESL's will never be as good as Plasma tweeters. I have a pair of Plasma MP-02's crossed over from my ESL panels.
You've never heard/seen highs "dance" in front of like fireflies you till you've experienced Plasma tweeters.
It's all about the "diaphragm mass" when it comes to producing the upper mids/highs, and a Plasma flame has no mass.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Magnat-Plasma-MP-02-ion-tweeter-massless-air-plasma-speaker-Plasmahochtoner/272894087984?hash=item3f89c15330:g:V5sAAOSwCJxZ6PXy

Cheers George

They are interesting to say the least. I was in on the ground floor with Hill Plasmatronics helium tanks and all. I am not sure what those are but they are not plasma speakers. To create a plasma you need some serious heat which requires serious power and an inert gas. Those things would melt. Aside from that they are not line sources so they will not radiate in a way to match a line source. Maybe they will work well with a point source but you would have to get them close to the midrange driver which would make them impractical to use with most point source speakers. 

I am not sure what those are but they are not plasma speakers. To create a plasma you need some serious heat which requires serious power and an inert gas. Those things would melt.

You need to do some homework, they are Plasma, and one of the best.
There are pages on this German Plasma tweeter if you take the time to look.
https://img.aussieaudiomart.com/uploads/large/823697-magnat-mp02-plasma-tweeters.jpg
http://www.plasmatweeter.de/magnat.htm

Oh, and georgehifi it is the mass of air moved per unit weight. Since ESLs have such a large surface area the mass of air moved is quite high even when compared to ribbon tweeters and the mylar diaphragm weights much less than a comparably sized sheet of aluminum. The issue with ESLs has always been beaming. Unless you sit right in front of the diaphragm you hear no high end at all. ML deals with this by curving the diaphragm which greatly limits the low frequency capability of the panel. Sanders just makes a wider panel and says to sit right in line with the speakers and you shouldn't be listening any where else anyway. I am not kidding. Check out his web site. Acoustat made narrower panels and angled them. My 2+2s are two panels wide and only disperse 20 degrees at best so in reality you have to sit in line with them. They did make 3+3s and 4+4s which were really huge. Soundlabs uses a facet system that covers 45 degrees so you will have even treble over the size of a 3 person sofa. This is probably the best solution but it still results in a very large speaker. There have been attempts to electrically decrease the size or width of the tweeter area like Quad and Acoustat eventually played with but this causes other problems which I think interfere with the magical quality ESLs can have. No speaker can do the 1 way thing as well as a large ESL. Cross overs are a pain.

Oh, and georgehifi it is the mass of air moved per unit weight.

I'm not talking about the mass of air moved, which is also needed to give bass air pressure into a room which ESL's don't do well and why a dynamic bass driver is better down low.
I'm talking about the mass of "the diaphragm" being moved back and forward to "accurately follow" high frequencies at 5 to 20 thousand!!! times per second. Like I said it's all about "diaphragm mass" at these frequencies, and that's why Plasma's rule, because the flame has no mass. 

Beryllium is bright and metallic.

I think the implementation was faulty. Be tweeters do not necessarily sound bright and metallic, and silk domes can sound bright in the wrong speaker.

@tomcy6 I have heard seven implementations of beryllium tweeters from four companies that are in VERY expensive speakers.  I tried three different tweeters myself from different manufacturers.  Unless paired with warm gear, I don’t like them.  

Normal tube gear  is not warm enough.  Still hate them with an MC275 driving them or some VTLs.  Personal taste but I find them unpleasant.  

The exception was Magico in the S line.  Their implementation is outstanding.  I haven’t heard the M line but I am sure it is as good.  

I agree that silk domes can be awful as well with crappy implementations.  I like a slightly forward sound but have been hearing a lot of speakers that take it way too far lately.  

Like I said 4 posts ago

" I was more referring to Yamaha anyway, many models 1000 1000m 1000x 2000 2000x were a hoax saying they were Beryllium, when they were just vapour deposited coatings over plastic domes."

I stand corrected on the Focal ones. http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg311.pdf
" repeated exposure to beryllium and beryllium compounds may cause cancer. This has not been proven to occur in humans, but employers are required to handle beryllium and its compounds as if they can cause cancer."

As for Diamond tweeters I can’t believe they are pure and not vapourized over some former..

I think ESL's are an inferior technology.

That's your opinion

Hey smodtactical, the best value by far is the 3.7. Fabulous speaker for the money. There is no dome tweeter as good as the Maggie ribbon. 

Oh kosst-amojan, there is no question that ribbons disperse better than many if not most ESLs. But if the ESL is designed correctly this is not a problem. Everywhere else there is no comparison first because there is no crossover.  Second, the diaphragm has less than a 10th of the mass.
Third, the diaphragm of an ESL has uniform drive right down to the molecular level and is push pull throughout. 
If you were to sit down in front of Soundlabs Majestic 845s driven by say Atma-Sphere MA-2s even without subs you would be dumbfounded. Your response would be, "How can a speaker do that!" You would probably even wet your pants or diaper or whatever.

georgehifi, it is not a matter of opinion. That ESLs are better is a matter of fact for the reasons I stated above.  I love Maggies but they can not hold a candle to a big ESL. 

The N28-BER by Transducer Labs that Fritz uses in his Carrera speaker is the only one I've heard that I think I could live with.  BTW, TL describes this on their website as pure beryllium.

I have no experience with diamond tweeters, however I recently picked up a pair of second hand  Focal Electra 1008 BE speakers and am using them in a near field setup in my computer room, driven by my Audio Research VSI 55 integrated and they sound fantastic.  I don't care for "bright" speakers and the Focals are not to my ears.  They are very detailed, but the top end doesn't call undue attention to itself.  I don't play them super loud, but have tried them out in my main system and in many ways they bested my Legacy Audio Focus 20/20's, but they are too small for that large of a room.

There are some "reviews" (sales pitches) on Upscale Audio's youtube channel on a couple of the Focal speakers that use the BE tweeters.  You might get more technical info from those.

kosst_amojan"Big panels are some of the most unnatural speakers I've ever heard. They sound interesting, no doubt, but almost no natural sound source is a gigantic flat membrane."

This reflects, indicates, and displays a profound, substantial, and significant misunderstanding, confusion, and/or ignorance/unfamiliarity with the design, substance, and nature of speakers intended for Music Reproduction Systems. For one thing no instrument in an orchestra, band, or ensemble resembles a cone speaker yet that would be your alternative to a panel speaker also depending on the design, construction, and technology employed in the panel speaker there may be substantial benefits and advantages in terms of crossover design and implementation that can easily render the panel speaker to be the objectively and measureably superior speaker but of course if you're experience is limited to just a few designs you may suffer from the type of misconception and misunderstanding as stated hear. 

The esteemed moderators have wisely deleted the insulting, mocking, and arrogant post directed at me above by kosst so I have accordingly deleted my thoughtful repsonse to this person.

kosst_amojan"Well, let's start again, foggythink.."

Let's do this, Mr. Brilliance: Leave me alone. Always. Stay out of my face and just ignore me stop at once your threats, insults, and mockery. You're arrogance and pomposity speak for themselves clearly.

The esteemed moderators have wisely deleted the insulting, mocking, and arrogant post directed at me above by kosst

That’s typical as when he’s on it he has no idea, is obnoxious, and full of it in more ways than one. The only cure is to put an AVO out on him

I love Maggies but they can not hold a candle to a big ESL.

Totally agree, and neither can any dynamic tweeter I’ve heard, the top Raven ribbon comes close, and the way out in front of all is a Plasma, preferably without horn loading.

Cheers George

smodtactical, 3.7s are the cherry in the line cost considered and you will usually be able to hear them at a dealer. 
Carbon, beryllium, diamond, silk, paper mache, whoopee. Power handling is the big issue for domes. But you are still left with a point source radiator.  Using them in multiples has never worked well and probably never will. So, if all you are looking for is a midget sound stage they can be wonderful and I am not so sure the material makes an overwhelming difference. It is more important to find a speaker you like the sound of and will support the volume levels you aspire too and the best Tweeters will do this. 

I’ve heard enough ESLs and big membrane speakers to know what they sound like, and they all basically sound the same. They present a massive wall of hyper-detailed sound with no sense of space

So full of it, you have no idea, you just described horns.

Over many years of audio, ESL’s have given me the best imaging in both side to side, outside the speakers, and in depth perception. No dynamic I have heard even Wilson Alexia MkII has ever equaled them.

But they wouldn't hold up too long being fed a steady diet of, Daft Punk, Tool, and DCD

As for your band/music taste, it explains now so much why you are the way you are.  

Manners, Georgehifi.....it maketh the the man. Fine to disagree, less so to berate and belittle....

Hey Kosst_amojan the more a speaker disperses the worse it's image is going to be in any typical room. In open air they will image fine. I think your imagination may have the best of you. The membrane of an ESL represents a segment of the sound wave of a performance at a distance and it hearkens back to the stage in a way no other speaker can because it represents a segment of that sphere perfectly as there is no crossover. The ESL mimics the performance while the point source tries to mimic the performers resulting in a miniature sound stage and contracted depth as well as much more distortion and much poorer phase characteristics due to the crossovers and the nature of the drivers. ESLs can actually produce fabulous bass but you have to put them in an infinite baffle to make them work well which is totally and completely impractical for any remotely reasonable person so, the compromise is the subwoofer.
Because I am sure your hearing is just fine I know for an absolute fact that you have not heard an appropriately set up ESL infinite Line source system and they are not easy to find. Should you ever be in the Boston area I would be more than happy to demonstrate.
Now for those of you that want the ultimate point source speaker that will go loud enough to bust your eardrums you get four Accuton C168-6-490 midrange drivers and two C30-6-024 tweeters for a total price of $5000.00 Make a 2" thick plate 10" X 20" out of MDF and mount the midrange drivers on either side of the tweeter and as tight as you can to the tweeter. Make a simple 6 dB/Oct crossover at 3000 Hz. Cross to two subs at 125 Hz 24 dB/Oct. Lacquer plates to taste. I like Rasta. Don't forget to bull nose the edges. You might have to pad the MRs just a little. Hang the speakers from chains 1' in front of your wall right over the subs. The sensitivity will be about 93 dB 1 watt at 1 meter and the speaker should do 120 dB on just 100 watts! I would put acoustic foam behind the speakers. You would have to spend at least $30,000 on pre-assembled 
speakers to match these, maybe even more....much more. Life in the fast lane. 

I agree that silk domes can be awful as well with crappy implementations. I like a slightly forward sound but have been hearing a lot of speakers that take it way too far lately.

verdant audio, I appreciate people like you providing us with the knowledge gained through your study and experience. It is certainly more welcome than the incorrect info and bickering often found on forums.

Detailed and forward sound seems to be one current trend in high-end speakers. Apparently you are working on a different path and that’s good. I don’t like bright, forward speakers myself.

Another big problem for me on forums is that people believe that not only should everyone like what they own, but that their gear is the best available and you are an idiot if you don’t agree.

I’m not accusing you of that. You have extensively listened to a lot of Be tweeters and don’t like them. That’s good to know, but my aging ears are probably not as sensitive to their problems as yours.

Maybe you could give them a try in relaxed listening mode rather than in critical listening mode sometime and let us know the result. I know that conducting comparisons is one way for me to be sure I won’t like a speaker, but that's just me.

Good luck with your speakers!

@tomcy6  - thank you for the civil response.  Something that seems to be lacking these days.  

If I get a chance to do some relaxed listening I will and I am looking forward to a day when I can spend some time with the M series from Magico. 

What is fascinating and i learned this through some recent testing.  I held everything constant except the cabinet material.  In a cabinet that was less rigid, the same driver, tweeter crossover combo was dead and lacked detail. 

The solution to this is to tweak the resistor and one of the capacitors in the crossover.  This increases the output slightly offsetting the lack of damping and the net effect sounds very good but makes the tweeter bright.  If the cabinet is very poorly damped you have to adjust a lot.  

My hunch is is that the worst offenders (products will remain unnamed) have poorly damped cabinets and need to make bigger adjustment to their crossover which is why I hate them so much. 

And why something like the Magico S line sounds so good because the cabinets are heavily damped and the crossover values are closer to optimal.

My hunch is, the Magico M line is going to be as close as a beryllium tweeter will get to absolute perfection.  I am hoping someone at Capital Audiofest has them so I can hear them.  

for a stand-mount mine are very good and for my taste, are 99% perfect.  I am looking at two materials that will be significantly stiffer and potentially offer better damping compared to the Carbon Fiber sandwich panels I am using and I am looking at three tweeters that will crossover at a more optimal point.  

One will I’ll be a ribbon, one will be diamond and one will be beryllium.  That last 1% to perfection will come at a price though as I expect these standmount speakers to retail at $15k to $20K when done.  

same way that rock can beat everything but paper in the game rock, paper, scissors, match.

Yeah but I went "lizard spock" that beats them all. 
https://www.monkeyland.co.za/userfiles/mkboe/article/Largepics/ostrich_001.jpg

Cheers George

spinaker01
Manners, Georgehifi.....it maketh the the man. Fine to disagree, less so to berate and belittle....

I usually have, but there's no such thing with kosst, many will tell you.

Cheers George 

It is all about the design and specs of the tweeter, not the material. In the speaker design I mention above the tweeter is ceramic not diamond because the Accuton diamond tweeter does not fit into the design well. It is less efficient and will not match up well with Accutons spectacular midrange drivers. The diamond tweeters will go up higher but the ceramic ones already go way beyond the limits of human hearing so it means zip. There is no commercially available dynamic loudspeaker that will keep up with the design I mention for anywhere near the money and you can cut the price dramatically by using other less expensive drivers with very close to the same results. 

@mijostyn

Now for those of you that want the ultimate point source speaker that will go loud enough to bust your eardrums you get four Accuton C168-6-490 midrange drivers and two C30-6-024 tweeters for a total price of $5000.00. Make a simple 6 dB/Oct crossover at 3000 Hz..

No kidding…
Did you look at the frq response? These mids have a 10db(!!) breakup at 7Khz (!!!) starting to clime at 3Khz (!!!!). With 6db slop, let’s say starting at 3K (actually more like 4KHz, if you using 6db XO and don’t want to burn your tweeter on the first note), you will be listening to ceramic hell the entire time!
You can’t use "simple" XO with these, or basically any worthy, drivers.
The amount of nonsense people post here is hilarious, but of course anyone can build a loudspeaker...

They do all that magical up/down, left/right, fore/back, beyond the boundaries imaging you claim only ESL’s can do. I’d say they do it better than any ESL

No they don’t, I’m very good friends with the owner of Audio Marketing (importer) that imports the Focals, and believe me, I’ve heard them many times with Nigel the owner when he asks me to listen to the new models, they can’t come close to what big ESL’s can do, not even the Grande Utopia could.
https://6moons.com/industryfeatures/superfi/1.jpg Nigel's on the right.

And with that synthesizer music, all you need is a good PA for that stuff. you can’t tell what’s real anyway, because nothing is.
FYI there’s no hi-jacking going on here, the OP bought up ESL’s in his very first post.!!!! get a grip.

how do you define a "simple crossover"?  I ask this as I have learned the term "simple" means different things to different people.  

For instance, I have spoken extensively about how to optimize sound utilizing Eton drivers with the folks at Eton and they said their speakers sound best with "simple crossovers". 

Digging deeper, what they mean by simple is 2nd order to 3rd order.  But 4th order bricks of inductors and capacitors are unnecessary to get the most out of their drivers.  They mean simple by professional standards.  

Secondarily, what is "ceramic hell"?  As someone who uses a ceramic tweeter in their speaker implementations (admittedly not pure ceramic, but a ceramic magnesium sandwich), I have no idea what you are talking about.  I find the ceramic tweeter to be smooth, detailed and revealing without a smidge of harshness, edginess, etc... that would lead one to describe the speakers as hellish.  

smodtactical The 3.7 is the best value in the Maggie line up. It's tweeter is better than any dome made of any material. Even an ESL can not match it for sheer performance above 10K. It has an amazingly smooth dispersion pattern and because it is a line source throughout its range it projects way better than any dome. In this regard its only equal is an ESL. ESLs have a problem with dispersion. SoundLabs has the best solution to the problem but the result is a huge loudspeaker 40 inches wide. 

ScienceCop, how many loudspeakers have you built? 6dB is a huge difference in power and volume. The anomalies you mention will have less effect on the sound than the phase shift from a higher order crossover. Burn that tweeter out? Your ears will burn out long before that tweeter will get even just a degree warmer. I suggest you go pick up a copy of loudspeaker design for dummies. 

Stereophile has an interesting paragraph on the  Magico Be-Diamond tweeter:

"A beryllium dome is both light enough and stiff enough to behave pistonically, and was used in the Magico Q5, which Michael Fremer reviewed in November 2012. Applying a layer of diamond to the metal, Tammam explained, results in a dome with a more homogeneous surface, which both reduces intermodulation distortion and results in a more benign harmonic-distortion signature that is less like that of a metal dome. I asked why they hadn't gone all the way and used an all-diamond diaphragm. It turned out that, yes, diamond would produce a very stiff diaphragm, but the required suspension would raise the tweeter's low-frequency resonance from the desired 500Hz or so to about 1.3kHz. This, in turn, would mean that the tweeter would have to be crossed over to the midrange drive-unit at too high a frequency. Beryllium's lower mass ensures that the resonance frequency is close to 500Hz, but the diamond layer raises the dome's stiffness to extend the high frequencies."

@mijostyn
Do you even understand what a 6db XO is? How about breakup modes? The geniuses you are, you surly understand the difference between a 6db electrical XO (simple - but unless the frq. response of the driver is flat, which is not in this case, not phase coherent) and 6db acoustical slop (very complicated - phase cohere). Or did you not get to this part in your loudspeakers 101? There is nothing simple about building loudspeakers. That is why simple minded people should stay out of it. The speaker you are proposing will not be phase coherent, will sound horrible due to the fact you didn’t suppressed the breakups, and will not play loud at all (yes, you will blow up the tweeter in no time). 

Sciencecop, I hate to say this but you have no idea what you are talking about and you are having trouble applying the manufacturer's  data to real life performance. Those frequency response graphs you are referring to are take under static conditions. Music is not. It is dynamic. Whether or not a cone "breaks up" depends not only on the frequency but on the volume and duration of the signal.  I know from experience that I can apply certain drivers that way in that format with insanely good results for a point source speaker. 

Oh and Sciencecop, I can digitally emulate any crossover you can think of and on the fly bi and tri amping. Making analog copies is child's play.