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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!



128x128millercarbon
musicaddict
372 posts
 
I’m always late but this has been another interesting concept to start thinking about.

MC, I read the ‘World Beyond 20KHz’ article several times and it is very fascinating to me, especially those hairs. I also very much appreciate the idea of ‘maybe we’re measuring the wrong stuff’ and feel it has merit. Some things are probably not measurable (yet) but they do have an effect on the human body’s ‘hearing’ or ‘perception’ of outside sources of sonic energy and otherwise.

I have embraced the subwoofer DBA concept (keeping it low volume, low Hz: 50). Well-integrated multiple subwoofers somehow do open the upper end and give more air or space (as did a well-integrated REL; DBA is better), but this is not intuitive for the behavior of a subwoofer.  Now, I feel there is very probable merit to the addition of super tweeters (above 20KHz). And, although not yet known to us, many listeners report a more defined low end when using them.

Questions:  1:  Should the super-tweeter try to start at 20KHz to avoid the mains? The fact that people report they can ‘hear’ the super-tweeter makes me fear it is down below 16KHz or so, and if audible, therefore could interfere with the mains’ own tweeters and probably not in a good way? I’m guessing ‘inaudible’ is best. 2: Is a volume control a must, and going to 100dB volume fine?  I think both make sense to have the ability to match up (and stock 70dB vol seems low…)

I still want a fourth audio sub, but now I’d like to try super-tweeters too, just unsure about a non-returnable or high-loss gamble, and I feel I have superb air already with the Raidho sealed ribbon tweeter. I’m just wondering how much more is out there? I admit DBA helped.

Thanks for another eye-opening topic.


millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
Thank you for the compliment. That is my specialty, and my pleasure, ever since having my eyes opened to a lot of crazy things myself. So nice to know it is appreciated, and you are very welcome.

How important the range is, I would guess depends a lot on the listener. We are really good at localizing midrange and treble. But somewhere up around this frequency range that ability starts fading away. Same thing at the low end, where we start to lose the ability to localize below around 80Hz. So I would think the person who can hear test tones really well all the way out to 20k, for them it may be they need to be either crossed over higher or it would be important for that person that they be closely aligned with the tweeter.

There is evidence for this in that some people have said it is a huge improvement to have the supertweeter very close to the tweeter. While mine are several feet away, and others actually have them pointing backwards or in multiple directions. This would totally be a problem with a normal range tweeter but with supertweeters seems to be different with different people.

Yes a volume control is a must. This is because speakers vary widely in sensitivity. My Moabs at 98dB require quite a bit higher setting to be at the same relative volume as a speaker with only 88dB sensitivity. There are speakers both above 98 and below 88. So for sure the level must be adjustable.

At the same time it is not super critical. I can run mine just about equally well at two different levels that are, I think, 2dB apart. A difference of 2dB would be a big deal with a tweeter or midrange. In this case it is very hard to tell. My hunch is the more the supertweeter overlaps the tweeter and the more extended your hearing is the more this will matter. Just a hunch.

There’s a few have said the Townshend Supertweeter is quite a bit better than some cheaper ones they tried. But there’s also one or two changed speakers and they noticed less difference. So it is entirely possible your neodymium magnet ribbon thing is close enough you might not find it worth the extra. Based on my experience this is kind of a guess not knowing your ribbon thing exactly but I did notice a pretty darn nice improvement adding just one more sub- and that was going from 4 to 5, which is supposed to be less than 3 to 4. So if you’re asking advice that to me is the safer bet, and I am a low hanging fruit kind of guy.
musicaddict
372 posts
 
Thanks, mc.  It all makes sense. I can hear the 12KHz tone but not 16. I re-plugged all four Schuman resonators in the room and the jury is still out. The fourth sub may well be the best advice for now, not that I would expect to 'hear' a super-tweeter-I wouldn't. I'd think I'd feel it somehow?

Now I'm wishing I had three of those SVS PC-2000 tall round subs for the floor (and a 4th for up on the high rear wall, unseen). I'd have a seamstress skirt them to the floor and put bronze art stuff on the tops real sneaky like. Good ideas are late sometimes...

millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
Extreme low and extreme high frequencies are so completely different, yet similar in the way we don't so much hear as experience them. With really low bass the big surprise is the way it creates the sensation of being in a larger space, even with recordings that seem to have no really low bass. Something like that happens with ultra-sonic frequencies too.

With both there is improvement in what we can definitely hear. Bass really does have a lot more definition. Cymbals really do have more shimmer. But in addition to that is this sense of space. That part it is hard to put a finger on. But it is definitely there.

This can result in some crazy things. When I put Pods under my subs the difference was immediately apparent but had nothing to do with bass! Likewise super tweeters were immediately apparent but again nothing to do with hearing more top end. Indeed it was only when they were turned up "too high" that their impact on extension became apparent. At the level where they exert their influence they are inaudible- at least in the simplistic test tone measuring way we call audible.
musicaddict
372 posts
 
      Firm believer in the air a sub adds since the Denver REL guys left the demo room 20 years ago, and let me play bass-less "Fields of Gold" (Eva Cassidy's version) and turn the REL off and on at will. The added air and spaciousness was EASILY noticeable and I ended up eventually with a B1.      What is said about the effects of super-tweeters are exactly what I'd expect from a good super-tweeter (the sub effect, but in reverse!).
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