My Dad has Electa Amator III and they sound great with that special tweeter.
I just picked up a pair of speakers for my second system. I bought a pair of Studio Electric M4. They use a silk dome. I am really loving these speakers.
soft dome versus hard dome tweeters
As my internet window shopping continues, I was reading on some speakers that listed for the tweeter textile dome and also silk dome.
So then I used the 'search discussion' function on this site on the subject of soft versus hard dome tweeters and it seemed as if most of the members who offered opinions used that "harsh" and "fatiguing" and "ringing" to describe how they felt about hard dome speakers. In the admittedly short time that I spent reading, I was not picking up a lot of love for hard dome tweeters.
But there are reputable speaker manufacturers that seem to have gone the extra mile to make their hard dome tweeters as hard as possible using, for example, beryllium or artificial(?) diamond dust.
I wouldn't expect a consensus on much of anything audio, but did I just by luck to find responses by mostly people who prefer soft dome tweeters? Because if they really sound that bad (harsh/fatiguing/ringing) in comparison, why would reputable manufacturers choose this route? And I do realize that appreciation of a sonic effect is subjective, so did I just happen on responses by members who had mostly the same subjective perception?
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Following with interest. I have heard the same things about metal tweeters, yet I like the aluminum ones that I have. It has always confounded me when a speaker manufacturer crows about diamond tweeters. I understand beryllium and other exotics, but how does diamond dust make a tweeter any better, other than the marketing glitz of diamonds. |
Over the years, I've had just about all the different types of tweeters including: diamond, beryllium, horn, ribbon, ceramic, aluminum, soft dome, titanium and electrostatic. All the aforementioned tweeter technologies have their redeeming qualities. In the end, my end-game tweeter......."Beryllium." Why? Because ultimately, to my ears, the beryllium tweeter was more pleasing overall to my ears than the others. Happy listening. |
@kennymacc +1 for beryllium. I think some people think they are bright, but mine are not. Von Schweikert uses the same tweeter in their higher end models. With less expensive systems (office system, etc), I generally avoid metal dome tweeters. Cheaper speakers with metal domes paired with less expensive electronics can sound harsh. |
Man, the implementation matters a great deal. Generally speaking, I’ve lost interest in Be tweeters and certainly the B&W diamond tweeters, however the Magico Be based tweeters are really exceptions. Among the top performers in my mind are soft domes, AMTs and ring radiators, but implementation matters so much. There are garbage AMTs and really amazing ones. Ring radiators have probably the most consistent performance I’ve heard at the cost of narrow dispersion. Since the beginning of the Be tweeter craze the performance of soft dome's has really gotten superb, flat way past 20 kHz and extremely low energy storage and wide dispersion. Of course now we also have things like TexTreme which I believe is technically also a soft dome looking to lower the distortion profile even further. |
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