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!
Sorry stereo5, but it is so depressing. There are much worse things than hearing loss at high frequencies. Tinnitus, for example. If all you have is a rolloff at the top end that is actually quite benign. Sure you can't hear certain things but it really doesn't interfere all that much. There is an old audiophile expression, sins of omission are better than sins of commission. A speaker that rolls off - at either end - is better than a speaker that is too bright or boomy. The one that is missing your mind can fill in the blanks but the one that is adding you have no choice but to endure, and this gets tiresome a lot worse and faster.
Similar sort of thing happened with the Supertweeters last night. I turned the level up from 3 to 4, the same effect of improved imaging, greater natural detail, etc only more of it- and now also with more shine and air. Cymbals shimmer more. But now on 4 it occasionally veered a bit into having a harsh edge. Where on 3 it was never like that. In fact on 3 the sound is even more liquid than with them turned off. On 5 forget about it. 4 seemed perfect except every once in a a while, 5 no way. But even though 4 was largely better most of the time than 3, when it was bad it was additive bad. Sins of commission. Much worse than the other.
We will see what happens when they are moved around. Early days. Lots to learn. So many tweaks, so little time.
Oh well, we are getting older, the body is going, but on the other hand maybe we take fewer things for granted and appreciate what we do have more, eh?
The germaine issue here is that old geezers can‘t hear above 12 kHz if
they are lucky to even get that far. Yet they can tell when a
supertweeter with a 15kHz cutoff is present and the effects are wholly
beneficial. Go figure what to measure for starters.
My take is
simply that harmonic overtones, and CD does cover harmonics up to 22kHz,
have a profound impact on the perception of the base notes, the exact
nature of which requires measurements not yet invented.
To
anybody prepared to listen carefully, supertweeters, and particularly on
digital, are a must for advanced audiophile listening.
For sure. Listening to Hotel California (Hell Freezes Over) last night, the bass thump at the beginning has such definition it is like you hear and feel every individual oscillation of the note. Then after a couple times a conga drum doubles up on it and it is so clearly two individual drums. Heard this a million times and the tone of the additional drum was there but not to this degree of separation.
There is now going on in my system a number of things each of which contributes to unraveling and highlighting the unique individual character of each instrument. They all have their own timbre, that unique set of resonances and harmonics that distinguishes one from another. The supertweeter is another one that somehow teases out even more detail. A must have for advanced audiophile listening, indeed!
After reading all of the posts above, many with knowledgeable reasoning that supports the belief that these supertweeters can't really work as they claim to, and as I experience them, I reminded of that saying that goes something like "If the measurements don't support the experience, you're measuring the wrong thing." Maybe that's the issue.
Andrewkelley just PMd me with his succinct review and analysis of his newly setup DBA: "Holy F---n F--k. This is awesome." He has a fine career in reviewing ahead I can see. The point is this (DBA) is another one where people measuring the wrong thing keep thinking they can get there with EQ. Inevitably they are able to believe this only until they actually experience the DBA. Then, well read his review again.
For example, doing a DBA has taught me that really low bass is mono. Yet at the same time it is with a DBA highly localized. How? Low bass is really just volume, with no location. Higher frequencies are highly localized. The only thing I can think of is our brains seamlessly integrate the two without our being aware of it. Anyone who has experienced bass in my system, probably any system with a DBA, will experience it as seamlessly integrated into the holographic sound stage. It is all but impossible to fight the illusion of bass being stereo. It isn't. But it sure seems like it is.
We need better measurement. Until we get it, the ears have it.
I would like to understand more why they shouldn't be placed on the top
of the speaker, or what the tradeoffs are by doing so? Townshend's video
shows them placed on top and doesn't mention doing otherwise. Thanks
For the exact same reasons isolation works, if micro vibrations can be lessened as much as possible, hopefully it will improve the sound. Well at least to me it makes some sense - have I tried it? No but I'm willing.
Having a relatively small listening room I decided against upgrading my existing speakers as upgrade meant buying something even bigger !! So bought myself a set of supertweeters some time ago and recently the podiums - I'm on my way to a one make system - er Townshend ..... might get there before MC, but I wouldn't bet on it. Max suggests connecting the supertweeters out of phase, I use setting three/four for most of my listening.
Not technically "SuperTweeters" - but during the last 14 months I spent a LOT - I mean a LOT of time in the listening room tweaking gear. I was given a pair of Heil ESS air-motion tweeter/drivers many years ago. They were used in a pair of DIY main speakers mounted in (essentially) boards with two Dynaudio 8" drivers mounted both above and below them. Completely open baffle - zero crossover used - there were subwoofers in his system.
I disassembled it all when I got them and saved the tweeters. During the pandemic (having a lot of free time to tinker) I set them on top of a pair of old Boston Accoustics A40 Series 1s. Amazing. Sat them on top of some B&W 686s2's. Amazing. Sat them on top of a pair of Klipsch REF IV RF62 Tower Speakers. I've never LOOOOVED these towers, but they served well in my basement surround sound system.
Adding the Heil ESS tweets to the top - revolutionized the system. The Klipsch are powered by a MAC6700 and the ESS Tweets driven by MC250. The openness and airiness - the detail. The soundstage. I've heard amazing speakers - been in the pro audio game my entire life (I'm 50) and even though this seems like a band-aid to a marginal pair of speakers - (Head's up: It IS) - I have never heard something I love more than this setup. I'd spend tens of thousands to achieve what I've got in the basement theater.
We've been shut for a year - so I didn't believe myself. As the world opens back up, my friends have come over to listen. I asked them to sit down and listen. Don't just tell me it sounds good because they think that's what I want to hear - tell me what you REALLY think. Each and every one of them suggest it's the best setup they've ever heard (these are not audiophiles, so weight opinion as you see fit).
I recommend highly experimenting with "things" like super tweeters. Just because you can't hear above 20kHz doesn't mean a driver (and source music) being able to go way up there - doesn't still give your head, your ears and your body some "feeling" that it's there. We search for subwoofers that can extend to 20Hz and below - because you can "feel" the bass down there. I think the human body can perceive it. Headroom.
I added (I know, gasp) a JBL EQ between the output of the preamp and MC250 to tame the ESS's a bit in certain frequencies I found a touch harsh. "CUT" only - no boost anywhere in the chain.
facten, When I owned and used the Townshend super tweeters they seemed to add a level of air or spaciousness that was not obtainable by my speakers. Once I installed the Focal Sopra 2's they added the same amount (or perhaps more) of the same qualities that I heard with the super tweeters.
I just didn't think the Townshend's added anything more to the Sopra's.
They don't really "blend" in the sense of a normal tweeter, because the output from these is almost entirely too high to hear. They use a switch with 5 levels. The first two are I think 4dB increments, the top three are 2dB. Something like that.
So you don't hear it as a tweeter, and none of the normal effects one would expect actually happen. Imaging, for example. Normally one would expect it to be ruined by adding a tweeter so far apart. If the output was in the tweeter band it almost certainly would. But in this case the output is so high it is not heard as a discrete source, not heard at all even, and so imaging actually improves.
There is a point where if I turn them up too much certain things take on a harsh character. Cymbals go from ringing and sizzling to grating. There's a sense of more air and presence but also this harsh edge. Moabs at 98dB are pretty sensitive speakers, but Townshend makes them to go with horns, some horns can go to 104dB, so it makes sense the Level 3 mine are at is about right.
Even though they don't blend in terms of tone, there is still some work to do getting them down closer to tweeter level where they will probably integrate better. Hard to imagine the imaging getting even better, but we will see!
The effect in terms of the resulting sound is similar. The Supertweeters lean more to improved presence and drive, Schumann more to the smooth liquid side. Both improve imaging and depth. But the similarities end with the way they work. Supertweeters are acoustic, SG electromagnetic spectrum. But, yeah. The same only different, as the French would say.
I always put my supertweeters on the middle of the rear top edge of the speaker, firing "backwards" to add air and ambience. Only caution is that for this to work you can't have your speakers crammed up to the wall behind them,
I used Townshend Maxs for several months--they do indeed add atmosphere and improve the soundstage as advertised. Front firing they added a bit of "glare," however, and seemed to give me a headache. I switched to rear-firing, aimed upwards at the ceiling corners, after lots of experimentation. Eventually I switched to Audiokensis Sound Generator Horns that aim toward ceiling corners behind the speakers as well. They sounded more natural to my ears and in my system they helped the high end on my full-range speakers. Both products are excellent and the best choice depends on the rest of one's system.
I got glare only when running them too high level. At the right level not only is there no glare, but the sound is even more liquid than without them. That is only with CD. Real keen to hear with analog when my bearing gets back next week.
I can’t help but wonder how much further out of the range of human hearing a pair of supertweeters would have to be before they stopped improving on the sound of some of our audiophiles’ systems?
Part of the story is even though we don't hear such high frequencies as such, we do have specialized cells within the ear canal that do detect and respond to them. Instead of hearing it as a distinct tone it seems this is used to tell us information about the source and character of the sound.
It makes sense because if a dry twig snaps or a leaf crumbles and you can tell from the sound it was a tiger and not a mouse, well the one you can eat but the other can eat you and so if you are not a pretty good audiophile hey you, out of the gene pool!
Ideally you want to know this even without having to think about it. I have seen studies showing the response to seeing a snake is so fast it cannot possibly have time to travel up the neurons all the way to the Neo-cortex and back, the reflex had to have been triggered further down like in the brain stem. Down to where you literally do not even have time to think. So like that.
Here's an interesting test if you own these supertweeters, or even another brand. I've seen several comments on this thread questioning the audibility of the supertweeters because of our limited ability to sense or hear very high frequency information. Well, one contributor here said that Max Townshend advised that he reverse the polarity be swapping the leads. I emailed Max and asked why. He said that it gives a feeling of airy spaciousness, which is pretty much the response I expected after many times hooking up interconnects incorrectly. I tried it today with music I know well; first correct phase, and then inverted. Inverted phase was clearly unfocused whereas correct phase sounded focused with clearly defined images. For me, this clearly proves the audibility of the contribution made by the supertweeters. I already knew what they were doing, but I think that this could be a good test for doubters.
jasonbourne52631 posts06-14-2021 7:20amThe capacity of Humans for self-deception is apparently unlimited - Mr. Spock the Vulcan
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ haha Richard Gray dug out from his stash room a pair of *super tweeter ribbons* Tag on rear is Pyramid Loudspeaker Corp, So i gave thema shot , to see if they out shoots his Magnovox 1963 tweeter horn which is IMHO probably the best tweeter ever made. So hooked them up, ha!, sounded so weak and thin, maybe 82db, These things from what I am told sold for like $4k a pair and some were actually sold. I wouldn;'t give a dime for em. I just got my AMT chinese Neo's in, $70 a pair, says 98db. HA! again lucky if these things are 90db. Thats 8 db off from what I was hoping. Again, the Magnovox horn tweeter is the benchmark, the gold standard, the top dawg to out shoot. . Honestly i really do not believe there is a tweeter that will surapss the Magnovox horn, made in 1963 right here in the USA. China can NOT make quality speakers, It is impossible, They do not have the engineering. But they sure make the world;'s finest opamps for digital.
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.
mapman, I didn’t realize that you were in the room listening before and after adding the supertweeters for you to contradict my assessment of what I hear
What I thought. Townshend and the one you tried are different, but it sounds like they produce the same or very similar effects. Whenever this happens- different implementation, same result - I always take this as confirmation we are on the right track. In this case, the track is telling us frequencies too high to be heard as such nevertheless somehow affect the character of sounds at much lower frequencies.
I would love to hear from Audiogon member @folkfreak about his integration of the Townshend Tweeter with his Magico loudspeakers, which I heard when he was still in Portland, Oregon. Magico might be viewed as one of the least likely speakers needing any high-frequency augmentation, especially in a room as small as Simon's Portland room was. Simon, care to disclose what about your system, Magico's, and/or room that lead you to feel the need to add the tweeter?
I have supertweeters with my MA PL500II. Amazing addition overall. They add a sense of air around, more of 3D like effect. Also noted improved bass (don't know how can I expect this, but definitely saw this) with deeper and wider soundstage. Need to be careful to align them with the speaker tweeters and fine tune it with different levels. Have settled for level 3. In general, I like Townshend products. They are undervalued.
Romey80..... May I ask how you set up your Townshend ST? Were they on top of the speaker like Millercarbon? ( which would have them almost 6 feet of the floor) or did you fabricate a stand to mount them approximately 3 feet off the floor, so they were sitting beside your main tower speakers?
Have not had time to experiment. Too many other things keep getting in the way. Right now it is 100+ degree heat! But talking with John Hannant, they do not seem to be particularly sensitive to location. They have customers using them pointed backwards, using multiple tweeters (up to 3 per speaker!) and some even running them out of phase.
This all sounds super zany until you stop and think about the physiology of human hearing. In the Cliff Notes version we have three different but somewhat overlapping systems. One for very low frequencies is really good only for volume, and not even all that good at that, it hardly registers until the volume gets fairly loud. (Which is why the Loudness switch was invented.) One for midrange is incredibly sensitive, able to localize with high precision, fine tuned to such subtle details we can tell a violin from a viola, distinguish a million different human voices, etc. (Which is why the midrange is so important, why speakers must be positioned precisely, etc.) Yet a third system registers ultrasonics- frequencies too high to register as distinct discrete sounds. We literally cannot hear them. Yet the majority of cells in the ear canal are designed to detect them!
As if all that weren't cool enough, the best part is we have something that combines all the inputs from these disparate systems into one solid and dimensional mental map of our world!
This is why five subs spread around at random are able to produce impeccably precise bass. Why the two main speakers must be positioned with extreme precision. And why super tweeters we can't hear not only work, but improve even very low bass.
I have the Townshend supertweeters on top of my modded Revel F208s. If they are distorting the sound it is a beautiful distortion that I crave. I have another brand of supertweeter on my lakehouse stereo system that I have kick in well below 20 Hz. I love the sound I get out of both systems with supertweeters.
musicmann1 and millercarbon, I want to again strongly recommend that you try to align the supertweeters as closely as you can to the tweeter centers. It absolutely makes a positive difference.
Supertweeters add overtones to frequencies in the audible spectrum. One of the more interesting results is that muddled bass becomes clearer. They are not about ‘air’ or not only, the more fundamental effect is the addition of higher frequency harmonics.
@antigrunge yes and those high-frequency overtones are referred to collectively by the term “air”. Look it up. I’m not making up the definition. Some instruments have them and some do not. Some that do might also produce some upper bass frequencies. This stuff is well documented and anyone can look it up.
mapman, I think that what antigrunge is saying is that they do effect other parts of the frequency spectrum, like the bass. In my experience, I have noticed enhanced string overtones on stand up string bass, which gives a feeling of more dimension and increased definition.
Supertweeters obviously produce no bass but if there are instrument overtones in their range they can boost those and deliver the full range of certain instruments better. Of course you don’t need supertweeters for that unless your system is otherwise just not producing enough to satisfy at those higher frequencies. Most good speakers will go up to 20khz by design. Some more than others by design. Supertweeter can help there if needed but most importantly our hearing deteriorates with the age and most older audiophiles do not hear above 10khz or so like they used to so an adjustable high frequency driver can help. That or DSP or an equalizer god forbid. Many ways to tune the sound to ones ears as needed.
Now I'm wondering if there is much difference between brands?
You mentioned the improvement with CDs is exceptional. Since CDs cutoff at 20kHz, I'm wondering what is being emitted? Are they creating harmonics (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and if so, it might suggest some brands may well be better than others.
There seems to be sceptics who use human hearing range as the excuse. There is no reason to believe higher frequencies aren't entering the ear and interacting with frequencies we can hear.
Your thoughts on all of the above would be gratefully appreciated.
Good question. Never tried anything else. I do know there are a couple people who tried cheaper ones that weren’t as good. So quality does count for something even here.
I have no idea what it is we are hearing or why it works at all with CD. Only know it does. Now with my turntable the sound is really something. Which is the bigger improvement CD or LP? Don’t ask. Who knows. They are so different. All I know is they both got a lot better, and in the same ways.
The most important thing I think is there are about 15k hair cells in the ear that sense sound, but only about 3k of them respond to the 20-20k range we call "audible". That leaves 12k that respond to sounds we cannot hear. Four times as many, for something we cannot hear seems a bit odd to me.
Another great example of how what we can measure falls so far short of what we can hear. Anyone who tries supertweeters will know in an instant we certainly can hear these ultra-sonic inaudible frequencies. The question is not whether we can or not. We can. The question is how?
That is one for psychoacousticians. Me, I am an audiophile. If it works, if it makes my system sound better, I just do it. You probably are right, inaudible frequencies get in there and interact with audible ones. Would it be nice to know why, sure. But ultimately? Long as it works that is good enough for me.
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
