Harshness in tweeters: the price of transparency?

It's a harsh ringing tone of dome break-up sound, not hard clipping hash or soft clipping hash.

Like I said light rigid materials all tend to ring like a bell.

I want to play horns and cymbals loud and clear, without that bite in my ear.

Of course, another possibility is simply that your expectations are unrealistic.

Are you familiar with real acoustic drum sets, real trumpet and trombone? Frankly, on a good recording if these lack "bite" then the system is just sugar coating the sound...

This is quite normal. You are hearing either tweeter compression or tweeter ringing or IMD distortion from the amp driving your speakers or compressed pop music. It is all too common - things sound great at modest levels (as almost all consumer designs do and then fall apart at high levels). Compressed pop music is all too common - so you need to eliminate a large percentage of popular music if you expect to be able to crank it without any harshness at all -see this.

Bear in mind, most consumer designs are not particularly intended to play dynamically and loud - they are mostly designed to sound best at modest levels while looking really great (costly cabinetry and finishes) - consider a pro speaker for you next upgrade -ugly but may get you what you desire.

Light weight materials will ring like a bell (for example metal or ceramic) - the ringing has nothing to do with the music so it is rather intrusive and gives you an etched sound. It can be misinterpreted as detail at low levels much in the way a hypercompressed modern pop CD sounds good at low levels and harsh when you crank it. Like a bell - ringing is worse when you drive the tweeter harder - at high levels it is constantly ringing. The diamond tweeter is perhaps the only exception - it has a resonance well outside the audible band. If you select a pro speaker then chances are much higher that they have chosen a tweeter that performs better at higher levels.

As you crank it your speaker amplifier is being asked to send AMPS of current to the woofers - at the same time it is sending milli-amps (thousandths of an amp) signals to the tweeter. Hardly surprising that this results in loads of audible IMD distortion coming out the tweeter. The amp is trying to feed 'niagara falls' for the kick drum and at the same time provide syringe-like accurate volumes to the tiny tweeter. Active amplification of each speaker driver with a separate amplifier will solve this issue. Funnily enough, most pro speakers are actively amplified...

I tend to think you have to think about the speaker as a whole not just the tweeter.

Agreed - and yes the Dunlavy's are awesome - and the midrange and bass and overall "integration" are much more critical than the choice of tweeter. Dare I suggest that a tweeter is almost an afterthought in a speaker purchase...

Dave,

I could not agree more - you gave some great suggestions on music. I have the Harry James Sheffield Labs on XRCD - awesome!

In return may I suggest ToP "Soul Vaccination" LIve - What is Hip....awesome drums and persussion!

Another greatt is Chuck Magione Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

And some real fun is "Cissy Strut" cover by the "Dirty Dozen Brass Band"

Dave, Oh and lest I forget - Robbie WIlliams "Swing while your winning"" - great sound! Another one for the "demo" collection - if you love a realistic brass sound with a bit of "bite". Or Sante Fe and the Fat City Horns or Strokeland Superband or Phat Phunction

The Stereophile review states the speaker "can be unforgiving of bright material". Frankly, I believe your problem starts here,

At the SPL levels the poster mentions a speaker this size is laughable. Thermal compression and Xmax limitations will make for a terrible sound - completely wrong speaker for the requirements. Not to mention all the problems I listed above with a rigid metal tweeter....

Soundstage stop their second set of measurements at 95 db SPL at 2 meters for a very good reason - if they went up to 103 db spl the results would be so sobering that many audiophiles would complain to their manufacturers and dealers...

I would either learn to listen always at moderate levels even if the dynamics of the recording want to go high, or look for another pair of speakers once again. And that is going to be challenging.

Kurt,

Challenging in consumer audio yes - because such high SPL is not normally required. Costly speaker drivers must compete with nice finish and elegant woodworking - factors that are much more likely to be appreciated by an aesthetic conscious consumer. You are simply discovering the physical limitations of most low cost consumer speaker driver designs: drivers that were never intended to produce extremely high SPL's cleanly and without harsh distortion. If you continue down the path of eeking out high SPL's from designs that were never intended to play so loud then you will likely end up being the unhappy owner of a blown speaker.

My advice is to look for far-field speaker designs used by professionals for monitoring in studios rather than consumer designs. Studios deal with real live music every day (before it is compressed for distribution to consumers for home/car/personal audio systems) - they also have similar accuracy requirements shared by audiophiles (unlike most nightclubs, stadium and DJ/PA speaker customers who will forgo quality for the sake of loudness).

I did go to see Indiana Jones this weekend and it was a very clean horn system without harsh digital artifacts either. It was louder than I ever play my system these days and I walked out with no pain. I want those speakers I think. But those are way too big.

Cinemas can play very loud cleanly. Same as large pro speakers. I think this may be your problem - you are pushing very good little speakers to levels that they simply cannot handle (ringing, compression and distortion). No mystery here, most people would probably never crank it like you and would obviously not experience this problem with their home hi-fi.

I'd suggest a large three way or a large two way with a horn, preferably something used/recommened in pro audio. Remember that horns "honk" or ring when driven hard - something pro designers will take into account and therefore will go to extra lengths to ensure their horns still sound sweet at very loud levels. Same applies to box speakers - requirements for high SPL levels with low distortion will mean an entirely different type driver selections..."horses for courses" if you know what I mean.