Ribbon Tweeters

To put one of the contentions made above into the right perspective:

Experiments have shown that it is true of course, that you can hardly HEAR above 20khz and then only in your younger years. But subjects listening to MUSIC have complained of "something missing" in its representation, when everything above 20 khz was sharply cut off, even though they could not hear over 20 khz in an electronically induced single tone sweep from 20hz to 50khz. Unfortunately I have forgotten, where these findings were published. But the experiment, which has been repeated several times in different places, is quite well known and its findings are practically common knowledge by now.

I would encourage you to go ahead and audition the Piegas. I just bought the P10s and they are truly wonderful speakers. Better still, they are said to improve substantially after 300-400 hours of burn-in. If there is a better speaker at this price point, I would love to hear it.

There are 2 theories, one believes in "break in period", i'm in the other camp. Now most every tweeter/ribbon goes at least to 25K. After that i'm not interested. Most important to me are the fq's between say 60hz - 10 or 15K hz. In other words i prefer a superior driver making nice music in this range. So if a woofer goes to 20hz but sounds boomy or sloppy whats that to me. Same for a tweeter that goes to 30K but has little character with a metalic sound.?? 90% of the music ( classical) is in the mid bass to upper treble. Then the 20-40hz + 20K-25Khz make up the 9%. The 1% falls in the below 20 and above 25K. Those are rough figures but just to make a point.

Tweekerman, you're point about classical being in the mid bass to upper treble should mean that you want a speaker that can reach and cleanly deliver the high end. It goes back to the original question about the capacity of ribbon tweeters and whether they have the ability to accurately handle the high end. It looks like the answer is yes, but I suppose that primarily depends on the speaker. I'm probably going to ask the Piega rep bring over the speakers based on what I've read in this thread. Maybe the ribbons will sound harsh -- I'll probably find out soon.

Could it be that a tweeter with a range that extends beyond 20khz sounds more detailed and extended because it is working more comfortably within its range and not being affected by the mechanical limitations of the diaphragm. I would think that if a driver does not have that extention you could here the effects much lower in its response. Its like running a woofer a little too close to its upper limit. Also, HiVi (Swan) ribbons sound very nice and seem to be fairly durable. Dont know about others but the smaller HiVi goes down to 3,000 and the bigger to 1,700hz.