The best tweeter design

Late to the party....

wolf__garcia *L* The 'organic approach' isn't for everyone.  Besides, having to replace the bird after every session is really a PIA.....

Eric, absolutely right.  The smaller AMT's, esp. the one's made to 'front radiate' only seem to be a general disaster.  Perhaps size does matter in this regard too.
A lot of the less expensive 'leaf' planars seem to be fails as well.  Again, perhaps the radiation issue.  The only ones to seem to have gotten that right is Newform.  I'm surprised I never 'hear' anyone mention them.

There's only one source for a 'commercial' plasma that I've seen; you can DIY them, but you'd best be committed to that quest.  That, and a bright spot of light burned into your eyeballs. ;)

But all of the best of the above are dipoles or an omni....which requires a change of mind and taste....not to mention a revamp of the listening array and space....

Well, MHO....

As Suncoast posted, it's about the material and speed matching the other drivers in the speaker.  That=implementation.  I personally haven't like the plasma system as there is a disconnect and lack of coherency to MY ears.  Many love them, but I always wonder about 'special' tweeters. So many who have them, market the tweeter and not the speaker as a whole.  Most to me, have lacked a coherency that is needed in order to trick our brains into thinking we are listening to 'live music'.  

As Suncoast knowns I haven't spend much time with recent horns and will when I get down to Sarasota to visit family again.  

I too hear the ringing on so many of the exotics out there.  That and the coherency of the Vandersteen line is what drives me there. I never was into them until fairly recently.  I still really like some other speakers. Heck the Tidal's with their 'black diamond' tweeters can sound awfully musical and enjoyable.  I just expect a ton from speakers costing over 10k a pair regardless of what materials they use.  That's just me.

Some of you have experienced issues with low mass tweeter designs.In my decades of research I was always reminded by physical rules.If we respect this we learn to predict which result we will get. From our evolution we react first to a air pressure change, before we hear a tone. We are more sensitive to a first Positive air pressure change. The best possible step response of a speaker system should be a fast positive rise with ana-periodically damping. We want a Q-Factor of around 0.7 over the whole frequence range. The waterfall diagram therefore should show the form of a sickle. If we go away from this ideal, our brain tries to correct the artefacts and causes us to interpret it different, depending on our listening experience, age and actual condition. It becomes subjektive, an indication that it's far from true. In the same way we like a constant relation between the mass of an active part of a diaphagm and the spring rate to return it to it's 0 possition of around, Cms = 0.4mm/N at home SPL and over the whole frequenze range. For any Dome Tweeter with around Mms = 0.4g Diaphragm and a low Fs Resonance of 600 Hz this is fine. In a 2 Way-Speaker this could virtually disapear. If the Tweeter has Fs 1200 Hz instead it will be visible with Cms = 0.1mm/N, if the woofer has Cms 0,4mm/N. A Softdome is more forgiving. If Cms gets very high, often seen with Ribbon Tweeters, it might sound too lean. Between 1kHz and 3kHz our ears are very sensitive to detect resonances and hard phaseshifts. Best regards.