If my speakers were still under warranty there is NO way I would follow their dumbass advice. If removing that little plastic thingy really improved the sound, don't you think the factory would have done that by now?
-RW- |
In front of the tweeters on my big B&W800's and adjacent midrange I did remove the cloth grill.
In front of the tweeters, behind the cloth grill are plastic rings that serve to focus the tweeters, and they should NEVER be removed!
Richard |
OK the speakers are not in warranty and I do not plan on removing the plastic grill attached. Of course I do always remove the cloth grill when playing music. End of story. |
Most people listen with their grill clothes removed.Why listen through a sock.Warranty concerns considered or poking an issue? |
Check this out: The problem is NOT the metal dome. A good metal dome tweeter will sound sweet, open, transparent, and resolved. The problem is that 98% of all metal dome tweeters put a "thing" in front of the dome. Sometimes they call it a "phase plug". Sometimes they call it a "diffusor". But in reality it is neither of these things. Instead it is actually a Helmholtz resonator (think of blowing across the top of a pop bottle), but tuned to 15 or 20 kHz. The Helmoltz resonator rings like a bell at that high frequency, and THAT is what makes the thing sound "metallic".
The larger the structure in front of the dome, the worse the problem is. Most of the time these things are plastic and can be cut off with a pair of diagonal wire cutters ("dikes"). If you are brave enough, you can cut them off in two minutes and your system will sound much sweeter and smoother in the high frequencies.
The only catch is that if you screw up and damage the tweeter you will have to buy replacements. You may want to call Paradigm first to check, but I would guess that they are somewhere between $25 and $60 each.
I'm not just some crackpot on the internet giving "advice". I was the founder of Avalon Acoustics, and we were the first US company to use metal dome tweeters. This tip was given to me by Martin Colloms in '85 or so, and he was right on the money. - Charles Hansen, Ayre Acoustics |
