@asctim DIYaudio is the best place to discuss mods to drivers, but I suggest you want a phase plug instead. :)
soft dome versus hard dome tweeters
As my internet window shopping continues, I was reading on some speakers that listed for the tweeter textile dome and also silk dome.
So then I used the 'search discussion' function on this site on the subject of soft versus hard dome tweeters and it seemed as if most of the members who offered opinions used that "harsh" and "fatiguing" and "ringing" to describe how they felt about hard dome speakers. In the admittedly short time that I spent reading, I was not picking up a lot of love for hard dome tweeters.
But there are reputable speaker manufacturers that seem to have gone the extra mile to make their hard dome tweeters as hard as possible using, for example, beryllium or artificial(?) diamond dust.
I wouldn't expect a consensus on much of anything audio, but did I just by luck to find responses by mostly people who prefer soft dome tweeters? Because if they really sound that bad (harsh/fatiguing/ringing) in comparison, why would reputable manufacturers choose this route? And I do realize that appreciation of a sonic effect is subjective, so did I just happen on responses by members who had mostly the same subjective perception?
Showing 5 responses by erik_squires
@knotscott Depends. You should ask the fans, but one approach is to use a coaxial or coaxial-full range driver. If you are willing to accept the beaming above a certain frequency though you can get get most of the benefits of being without a crossover at all. |
I want to repeat myself a little though. Tweeters don’t matter. They are the sprinkles on top of the doughnut. Midranges matter. I’m saying this a little funny, tongue in cheek, but honestly we pay far too much attention to a device that may not even be working in some speakers, and we overspend based on the tweeter. The midrange is where it’s at. In this respect ATC speakers have the right approach. I’ve never heard them BTW, so I don’t mean to push them, but the balance of manufacturing costs in them is better than a lot of other speakers. |
Man, the implementation matters a great deal. Generally speaking, I’ve lost interest in Be tweeters and certainly the B&W diamond tweeters, however the Magico Be based tweeters are really exceptions. Among the top performers in my mind are soft domes, AMTs and ring radiators, but implementation matters so much. There are garbage AMTs and really amazing ones. Ring radiators have probably the most consistent performance I’ve heard at the cost of narrow dispersion. Since the beginning of the Be tweeter craze the performance of soft dome's has really gotten superb, flat way past 20 kHz and extremely low energy storage and wide dispersion. Of course now we also have things like TexTreme which I believe is technically also a soft dome looking to lower the distortion profile even further. |