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Regarding supertweeters

hello!
in my ears theres no doubt the supertweeters are worth the money(from what ive heard in some systems). but,- theyre supposed to take over for the standard tweeter where it cant go higher. what if the cd player and amplifier cant produce the over 20000hrtz "normal" range? ive only seen some cd players do this, where it says from 15-100000hrtz or so. my cd player and amp says 20-20000. does that mean a supertweeter will not do any good in my system?
hifimannen

Showing 2 responses by eldartford

eldartford
4,262 posts
 
I believe in supertweeters, because I know, from personal experience, that auditory ability exists well above the frequency at which you can detect the pure sine wave that is used for testing.

However, I think you may be on to a point about CDs, and their 20KHz limitation. Some LPs can go a bit higher, but there is some argument about how high, and it certainly varies a lot between different LPs. If there is no signal at 30KHz, a supertweeter good to 50KHz is just an expensive paperweight. Probably the best application for a supertweeter (apart from some very exceptional vinyl systems) would be a SACD or DVDA system, where there is no doubt about the ability to have signal above 20KHz. Of course, the recording equipment must be good enough to include this signal.
eldartford
4,262 posts
 
The wavelength of 20KHz sound is 0.66 inch. Therefore there is no need to carefully align the supertweeter and the tweeter for phasing reasons. Slight changes of listener position will affect the relative phasing of multiple drivers, so there is no "right" position. Perhaps the best approach is to aim the supertweeter at the wall behind the speaker, and many designs that include supertweeters do this.
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