Can Ribbons be part of the s.o.t.a.?

You got it wrong transducers can be hi-quality and of diferant design no 1 transducers type is realy better than another it comes down to how the loudspeakers designed and end goal of said design not if it uses ribbons or not. Some ribbons are wonderful ravens some founteks hi-vis top models others but ribbons are not superior to other designs in performance. Apples to oranges. Just depends whats the end goal of the total design. I have owned designed arround some of the best hi-frequincy transducers availible all types except plasma. Ive heard plasmas never owned or designed arround. No drivers are perfect. Loudspeaker designers work with driver limitations to creat a total whole. Sure quality of parts used does matter. But its the total design that counts weather its a monitor or giant horn OB or TL, ribbon or compression driver. Ribbons are becoming more popular the Chinese are building many diferant models. And today you can even build hi-eff loudspeakers with ribbon mid and tweeters. And thats pretty cool Ribbons for flee power.

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

cut the merlins down and use 'em on stands, or set them free.

I owned a pair of apogees, but they were only the minors therefore not as good as the big models. I have a small room, doesn't the apogee like a big room?

Apogees were the king of ribbons (and maybe the king of speakers in many respects).

Why not?

Like many tweeters, not just ribbons, the big problem is seamlessly integrating it with the midrange. DALI's done a pretty darn good job of this, although I don't think it's ideal on the 400 (I forget the model name, they've got so friggin many).

With the right crossover or a big enough ribbon, almost anything is possible.

Dave