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
Interesting observation, Ozzy. My previous Talon Khorus looked like a 3 way but they always told me no they are a two-way with a Supertweeter. Thought it was just marketing, bragging about their tweeter going higher. It was a metal dome, not ribbon, so I doubt it went up into the 90kHz region where the Townshend works, where the magic seems to happen. But now I wonder if maybe even though it didn't extend that high it did go high enough to get a little taste, and maybe that is one of the reasons I liked them so much?
High frequencies in general are directional and more of them will tend to shrink soundstage FBOFW all else remaining the same.  That’s a fact. 
@ozzy, Can you provide some insights as to why you didn't get much benefit with the Focals vs your former speakers?
Thanks
I only stream content, and I'm intrigued by the prospect of adding these, but I'm struggling to understand how these devices can produce any ultrasonic content when - correct me if I'm wrong - ultrasonic content is filtered out in the the A-to-D process. Am I missing something?
That is why I can’t wait to hear with my turntable. Digital does indeed have the so-called brick wall cutoff. Yet it does indeed work with digital. Analog has no such restriction. Really looking forward to it.

Also look forward to the day more people put as much effort into trying to read and understand as they do trying to not read and understand. Not picking on you, you might well be truly trying to understand. Even though you seem not to have read the linked article, which would answer at least some of your questions.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I am just an exceptionally good reader. The following lines from the paper linked above caught my eye:

The inner hair cells clearly relate to the frequency analysis system described above. Only about 3,000 of the 15,000 hair cells on the basilar membrane are involved in transducing frequency information using the outputs of this traveling wave filter. The outer hair cells clearly do something else, but what?

Did you get that? Only a small amount of our hearing comes from these frequency responding cells. We seem to understand their function. The vast majority of cells however, we do not understand their function at all. How is it audiophiles are anything less than fascinated by this???