It may be argued that wide dispersion at high frequencies is just as important as extension, if the goal is openness and airiness. Reverberant energy contributes to the sense of ambience and acoustic space, and a wide-pattern tweeter will give you more reveberant energy in the upper treble region. Unfortunately there's a possible tradeoff involved: all else being equal, the imaging may not be as precise because a wide-pattern tweeter will put more energy into the early reflections.
Is high frequency extension important to openness
I have noticed that speakers with exceptional tweeters to an excellent job of separating both the sections and individual instruments in an orchestra.
For example: the Mirage 490s, a $600.00 speaker, are terrific at delineating individual instruments on CD, even with as modest a system as an Arcam Alpha 7, Transparent Music Wave cabling, MIT CVT Termintor interconnects, and a JVC XL Z-1050TN CD player. In fact, the level of openness in the high frequencies give the impression of being on a catwalk peering down into the orchestra and being able to hear individual instruments "sitting" near each other.
In contrast, a considerably more high end system, say, a Marsh A400s, with Alon speakers and speaker cabling, Philips/Arcam CD player and Nordost interconnects don't show the "individuality" as well. And the room is quite well treated, thanks (for those suggesting it's room acoustics) and speaker placement is good.
Why is this so? The Mirage tweeter is an older design, but HP once averred the Mirage tweeter (a bigger model,but same line) was superb. Shouldn't a $3-5,000 speaker have better separation than a 12-year old $600.00 speaker?! And of course, I realize that technology is no guarantee of progress, but intellectually I'm curious as to what others think.
What thoughts do you have that would explain this? What speaker below $5,000 are adept at this separation? And is it simply the tweeter or is it the entire design of the speaker?
For example: the Mirage 490s, a $600.00 speaker, are terrific at delineating individual instruments on CD, even with as modest a system as an Arcam Alpha 7, Transparent Music Wave cabling, MIT CVT Termintor interconnects, and a JVC XL Z-1050TN CD player. In fact, the level of openness in the high frequencies give the impression of being on a catwalk peering down into the orchestra and being able to hear individual instruments "sitting" near each other.
In contrast, a considerably more high end system, say, a Marsh A400s, with Alon speakers and speaker cabling, Philips/Arcam CD player and Nordost interconnects don't show the "individuality" as well. And the room is quite well treated, thanks (for those suggesting it's room acoustics) and speaker placement is good.
Why is this so? The Mirage tweeter is an older design, but HP once averred the Mirage tweeter (a bigger model,but same line) was superb. Shouldn't a $3-5,000 speaker have better separation than a 12-year old $600.00 speaker?! And of course, I realize that technology is no guarantee of progress, but intellectually I'm curious as to what others think.
What thoughts do you have that would explain this? What speaker below $5,000 are adept at this separation? And is it simply the tweeter or is it the entire design of the speaker?