Although I have no idea how a 20 or 30 year old ribbon tweeters might compare to contemporary ribbons, my limited experience tells me that ribbon tweeters are far more accurate, refined, extended, and just plain more musically complete than dynamic driver tweeters which tend to break up, distort, and/or flatten out at difficult/dynamic passages.
Moreover, you may have heard it said that opera and choral are the most difficult types of music to reproduce. And though there are several reasons for this, I think one primary reason is that dynamic tweeters appear to be unable to keep pace with long sustained notes so common in opera and choral music.
Perhaps diamond and beryllium tweeters and midrange drivers are better/faster than titanium, aluminum, Kevlar, pulp, etc., but I still have yet to encounter a non-ribbon tweeter match the musicality of a ribbon.
Not to say that one does not exist but again my limited experience tells me ribbons are absolutely mandatory if one is striving for the holy grail or even settling for today's SOTA.
-IMO
Moreover, you may have heard it said that opera and choral are the most difficult types of music to reproduce. And though there are several reasons for this, I think one primary reason is that dynamic tweeters appear to be unable to keep pace with long sustained notes so common in opera and choral music.
Perhaps diamond and beryllium tweeters and midrange drivers are better/faster than titanium, aluminum, Kevlar, pulp, etc., but I still have yet to encounter a non-ribbon tweeter match the musicality of a ribbon.
Not to say that one does not exist but again my limited experience tells me ribbons are absolutely mandatory if one is striving for the holy grail or even settling for today's SOTA.
-IMO