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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!



millercarbon
petg60
1,486 posts
 
Also, and this is important!...don't just plunk them on top. Make a dedicated set of stands for them with a wooden pole and two pieces of flat square wood about 5"x5", at the correct height to be approximately coincident with the center of one of your tweeter arrays.
Good point for not placing them on top. I did nearly the same thing when I had my pair of Sony ss-tw100ed attached to the side of the Dunlavys.
Only I had a metal brace where the tweeters were attached and had adjustable for and aft movement as to fall with tweeter axis.
roxy54's avatar
roxy54
8,136 posts
 
I can’t address any of the points that mijostyn makes about supertweeters in an informed way, because I don’t have the knowledge, only hearsay.
I do believe that some, or maybe all of what he’s saying could be true, but I let what I hear guide me, because in the end, that is what matters to me.
I can say that I listen to my system every day, and the imaging (as I understand the term) has not suffered in any way from the addition of the supertweeters. I have not noticed any comb filtering effects either.
I do understand that a supertweeter like this one that is not brought in at a frequency specific to the owner’s particular speakers would be considered crude and improper; and the only adjustment is five levels of attenuation.
In spite of these technical problems, in my perception, the music has a more extended but smooth treble response, and as other users have said, the effect appears to reach into other areas. Listening to string bass in jazz music, the harmonics that the strings produce are more audible to me, and sound more realistic. I will also note that two years ago I bought a nicely made pair of supertweeters for $300.00 that are not ribbons, but more like a flat EMIT type, and I found them artificial sounding and "separated" form the rest of the music. They worked the same way, attaching to the speaker terminals an with attenuators.
That is my experience, and for me, in spite of what may indeed be technically "wrong" with the Townshend supertweeters, I am very pleased with them and have no plans to get rid of them.
I can understand your viewpoint mijostyn, based on your knowledge, but my actual experience with them has been different. I do respect your input.
facten
2,932 posts
 
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
roxy54's avatar
roxy54
8,136 posts
 
facten,
That's true, they do recommend placing them on top of the speaker, and I called a Townshend dealer who said the same. However, in my case, my speakers are a D'Appolito configuration with a center horn between two bass drivers which produces the midrange and treble; so I thought that it would make more sense to have the supertweeter located on the same level as well as pushed back as deep as the depth of the driver inside the horn to make it at least somewhat more coincident.
I didn't have a proper stand when I first bought the supertweeters, so I placed them on top, and did hear some of the desired effect, but once I built the simple stands that were needed for the placement that I describes, it sounded much better, and I think that there are two reasons for that. First, as I said, the placement made the tweeter more coincident with the midrange, and second, the ribbon tweeter was now much closer (on my tall speakers) to my ear level. Remember, ribbon tweeters aren't like dome tweeters; they don't have very wide vertical or horizontal dispersion, so the placement relative to your ears matters.
If you are using a set of small monitors on stands for instance, with the speakers tweeter mounted near the top of the cabinet, then it's probably fine to just place the supertweeter right on top of the cabinet. 
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
Townshend shows them placed on top of a speaker that uses the typical speaker design with a tweeter near the top of the cabinet. So placing the Supertweeter on top it is within a few inches of the tweeter. The Moab design has the tweeter in the center of the cabinet, a good 2 feet or more from the top. In this case the closest place is moving the Supertweeter to the side and down to the level of the tweeter.

It is kind of strange though when you think about it. All the objections people have, they are all based on the false assumption the darn things can be heard. But it is made clear as can be from the beginning the output range is well above audibility. 

Here is the exact quote from the OP:
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.

Clearly something else is going on. http://www.townshendaudio.com/PDF/The-world-beyond-20kHz.pdf
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