@roxy54
He sure is a babbling, mumbling fool.
He sure is a babbling, mumbling fool.
Townshend Maximum Supertweeters
Yes, Maximum. I don’t come up with the names, I just review the stuff, okay? ;) And I got em because everyone keeps telling me I should, and once again they are right. Whew! That was easy!
Kidding! We will now laboriously delve into why you cannot live without these tweeters, that you can’t even hear.
For sure I can’t. My hearing rolls off somewhere north of 15k. If that. These things extend to 90k. Why? What difference can it possibly make?
Who knows? And since when has that stopped me?
So out they come and what have we here? Two heavy black bricks, with a screen on the front and a couple binding posts on the back. In between the posts is a little knob you use to turn them off and set the levels. On the bottom are rudimentary rubber dimple feet. Guess I was expecting Pods or something, this being Townshend. No such luck.
They go on top of the Moabs. Well there is already a BDR Shelf on top, and a HFT dead center right where this thing is supposed to go. Moving HFT even an inch changes the sound so executive decision, the Maximum Supertweeters go just outboard of the HFT. They are first just placed there not even connected, just in case this somehow messes with the sound. It doesn’t.
Okay so now you need to know my system is all messed up. No, not the usual mess I mean really seriously messed up. No turntable. Chris Brady has the bearing for some resurfacing and stuff. So we are slumming with the heavily modded Oppo. Not to fear, Ted Denney sent me some of his latest Atmosphere X (review to come) which with the right tuning bullet the Oppo now sounds....digital. Oh well. KBO.
The usual: Demag. Warmup. Listen a while. Hook em up. What level? Who knows? Moabs are 98dB. How ya gonna know anyway? How can it even matter? How do you even set the level of something you can’t hear? Level 3, good as any. Plug em in. No change. Not the slightest peep out of these things. Total dud. Knew it. Sit back down.
What the...? No way. There is not the slightest hint of top end coming from these things. They may as well not be there at all. Except the whole presentation is somehow different. Top to bottom. No way!
I get up and turn the black magic off. Sit back down. Crap. Flat, grainy, digital. Turn em back on. Deep, liquid, analog.
No, not analog like my turntable. They are just supertweeters after all not magic. But way more analog than it was. More dimensional, more solid, more liquid detailed. More black between the notes, and in the black it is now easier to hear the natural acoustic decay. I do NOT want to go back to listening to CD without this! I cannot wait to hear it with my table.
And I haven’t even had time to get them dialed in yet!
Kidding! We will now laboriously delve into why you cannot live without these tweeters, that you can’t even hear.
For sure I can’t. My hearing rolls off somewhere north of 15k. If that. These things extend to 90k. Why? What difference can it possibly make?
Who knows? And since when has that stopped me?
So out they come and what have we here? Two heavy black bricks, with a screen on the front and a couple binding posts on the back. In between the posts is a little knob you use to turn them off and set the levels. On the bottom are rudimentary rubber dimple feet. Guess I was expecting Pods or something, this being Townshend. No such luck.
They go on top of the Moabs. Well there is already a BDR Shelf on top, and a HFT dead center right where this thing is supposed to go. Moving HFT even an inch changes the sound so executive decision, the Maximum Supertweeters go just outboard of the HFT. They are first just placed there not even connected, just in case this somehow messes with the sound. It doesn’t.
Okay so now you need to know my system is all messed up. No, not the usual mess I mean really seriously messed up. No turntable. Chris Brady has the bearing for some resurfacing and stuff. So we are slumming with the heavily modded Oppo. Not to fear, Ted Denney sent me some of his latest Atmosphere X (review to come) which with the right tuning bullet the Oppo now sounds....digital. Oh well. KBO.
The usual: Demag. Warmup. Listen a while. Hook em up. What level? Who knows? Moabs are 98dB. How ya gonna know anyway? How can it even matter? How do you even set the level of something you can’t hear? Level 3, good as any. Plug em in. No change. Not the slightest peep out of these things. Total dud. Knew it. Sit back down.
What the...? No way. There is not the slightest hint of top end coming from these things. They may as well not be there at all. Except the whole presentation is somehow different. Top to bottom. No way!
I get up and turn the black magic off. Sit back down. Crap. Flat, grainy, digital. Turn em back on. Deep, liquid, analog.
No, not analog like my turntable. They are just supertweeters after all not magic. But way more analog than it was. More dimensional, more solid, more liquid detailed. More black between the notes, and in the black it is now easier to hear the natural acoustic decay. I do NOT want to go back to listening to CD without this! I cannot wait to hear it with my table.
And I haven’t even had time to get them dialed in yet!
- ...
- 133 posts total
What will it be? Past or future? Tyranny or freedom? In every revolution there is one man with a vision. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deq6_p47g54 |
I decided to try supertweeters in my main system and ordered the Taket Batpro2s which I received yesterday afternoon. Like the Townshend’s they allow for adjustment, in this case 0 thru 4. I have them placed on top of my Daedalus Argos V2s in line with the 2 Argos tweeters that sit "one over the other" . The Batpro2s don’t come with cables so I ordered Anticables Level 2.1s speaker cables ( I may upgrade the cable as I go along). My front end is digital - Mojo EVO DAC, SimAudio 260DT transport, Wadia 171i transport . Thus far I only have about 7 hours with the Batpro2s in my system but to my ears they add some extra body/weight across the frequency range. I am still experimenting between the settings but none of them create brightness or glare, nor have the converse effect of dulling the sound. YMMV. I can’t comment on how these compare sound-wise to the Townshends as I have not heard those. What I will say is that if your budget doesn’t allow for the price of the Townshends, or you want to lessen your experimental cash outlay you might consider giving the Taket Batpro2s a try. The total cost for the Batpro2s along with the separate Anticable purchase was roughly $700. |
- 133 posts total