the best tweeter for a speaker is???? (1 Viewer)

[Lyden]

alright ive heard that silk dome tweeters are the best of the best but howcome somany say those cheapo looking horn tweeters are better and even those pezeo(spelling?) electric tweeters are good? im no pro but i have a good ear and to me domes seem to sound the nicest.... but thats just me ... i guess earspliting distorted highs are the in thing these days. IMO thats how horns sound.... im working on a pair of towers and cant decide what i should use for tweeters i have a pair of domes lying around some where and i have some horns but none of those ones i cant spell .... haha ... pfft

 

[RichardH]

Piezo is cheap and not that great. You see it in lower-end PA speakers. Definitely not recommended for home use.

If you're building your own towers, there are plenty of options as far as tweeters go. How much do you want to spend??

You can get some decent soft domes for like $50 a pair on up to the Vifa XT tweeters as seen on the $40k Krell speakers. Even these are less than $200/pr.

 

[BrianWoerndle]

There is no best tweeter. It is all in the implementation. What other drivers and how they crossover will greatly affect the sound of the tweeter.

But in general, Tweeters made of metal (Titanium or Aluminum) are crisp, but bright, silks are smoother, and horns are very efficient. Any can work extreamly well, if implementated correctly.

 

[John Garcia]

To add to what Brian said, you can put the best tweeter available into a speaker, but if the crossover is not properly designed, it can still sound like garbage.

Soft domes sound the best to me overall, but there are plenty of metal domes that sound great to me as well. My home speakers all use titanium domes. I am not a big fan of most mass market speakers with horn loaded tweeters.

BTW: you are not allowed to list your gear in your signature.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

It's funny you think that Horns are cheap you must have
never seen a real horn.. JBL and Selenium each make horns
that are in the $300.00 range a piece.. There aren't any
traditional Dome tweeters even close to that price, not even
the highly touted Vifa Concentric or Scan-Speak SMD's.


A horn Tweeter can and will work as well as any other tweeter
as long as it is implimetnted correctly.

You can have $1000.00 invested into raw drivers and even
buy the best crossover components, the best electrolytic
metalized foil capacitors, the best alpha core inductors
etc.. But if it's built wrong your speaker design will flat
out suck..


That all being said, I prefer the crispness of Aluminium and
Titanium Domes.

 

[Mike_Ch]

The Dynaudio Esotar tweeter sold for around $500 when it was still available to the public. Ribbon tweeters such as the ones made by Raven are very nice too

 

[Chris Tsutsui]

Speaking of expensive tweeters, check out the planar tweeters by Bohlender Graebener. There are some models costing over $800 for a line tweeter. I really like the smooth sound of their T1 silk dome and it's only $25.

I havn't been too fond of compression or metal tweeters but then again I havn't heard the best those types have to offer. Sure I think they are accurate sounding, but for some reason they don't seem as natural as some of the soft domes.

I wonder how Scan-speak's 1" revelator dome tweeter sounds because I've been looking into buidling a 2-way revelator.

 

[Manuel Delaflor]

I was about to post an answer, and then I discovered that you think horn tweeters just distort sound!
Horn tweeters distort less than any other technology available! this is one of the goals of the very design! Listen again, you might change your opinion.
Oh, well, I guess horns are not for everybody, on these days when concerts are amplified is no wonder to realize why not everyone likes realistic macro and micro dynamics, lower distortion and crisp lifelike sound of horns.
But you need not to worry, this drivers are almost horns, in fact have all their advantages without their weaknesses:
Accuton drivers, check their ceramic tweeters and if you can afford them their diamond ones!

 

[Brian Foley]

The most popular mid- to high-end tweeters among DIY speaker builders seem to be the Raven R1 ribbons (not suitable for HT), the Morel MDT33, the Scan-Speak 9500, the Seas Excel T25CF002 (Millenium), and the Hiquphon OWI.
If you're looking for a lot of bang for your buck, you might want to roll the dice on the North D25 from North Creek (North Creek Drivers). It sells for $36/pair, and was expressly designed as a poor man's Scan-Speak 9500 ($168/pair).
My "someday" budget speaker project is a 2-way that uses the North tweeter ($36/pair) and the Peerless 850439 mid-woofer (about $100/pair).

 

[Dan Hine]

Along the lines of expensive tweeters, Raven's flagship ribbon tweeter is over $1600 and weighs 58lbs all by itself. I'm sure it sounds nice but that's more than this guy is willing to pay.
So far ribbon tweeters and compression horn tweeters are my favorites. But that is really only because they are on the speakers that I currently hold as my favs. One with ribbons is the Linus array which is incredible IMO. And the compression horn speakers that I love are Adire's HE10.1's. They have great dynamics, great efficiency, clarity and they are NOT fatiguing (at least to me) like other horn speakers I've heard (mostly pro-audio but high end pro-audio).
There is a TL speaker that a fellow I met at the DIY Atlanta event built. It used a Vifa silk dome tweeter if I recall correctly. They were pretty damn good too! Ultimately I believe it just comes down to the design and how well the tweeter is incorporated into it.

 

[Lyden]

if i hear good horns i will change my opinion but the ones ive heard sounded like crap IMO. im not willing to pay $1600 an a driver.... but anyways since when does cost have anyhting to do with sound and quality ive seen some cheap things that sound wonderful .. my current towers for instance ..... its going to take alot to get some crossovers isnt it? howmuch do decent 3 ways go .... my tower enclosures are multy-driver designs dual 6.5" bass drivers dual 4" midranges and single tweeter i dont know why i went with this design and i know nothing about building speakers but it looks cool on paper ... do you think i should have seprate internal enclosures and have the 2 6.5's ported seprately?.... its not costing me alot of moneyand i will only make one just to see how it will sound im sure i can scrap it if it doesnt work out to good what you think?

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Lyden,

Unless you are designing these speakers from a set of
pre constructed plans from an audio engineer then I hate
to say this but your results will probably (most likely)
yeild a complete failure.

The problem is that you can pick the best drivers in the
world and design the best enclosure on paper but you have
absolutely no idea where to start with the crossover construction.

Cost of the crossover isn't even the issue, you may tie up
$150.00 in parts to build a pair of very high quality passive
crossovers. The problem is that you don't own the equipment
needed to test your speaker design. Equipment like an Aneoic (SP?)
Chamber, Wideband RTA, Wideband Spectrum Analyizer etc..

Without the right tools you are shooting in the dark. I hope
that you do get lucky and make a set of crossovers that work
but I honestly have my doubts.

You would be much better off going with something like Adire's
Kit 281's or GR Research AV1's or even some of Parts Express's kit monitors would be a great place to start.

As for custom enclosures. If the mid range driver is an open
back design is must be sealed off from the woofer and the
tweeter. If two mid drivers are used they could share a
common sealed enclosure within the enclosure or they could
be externaly ported but I would go sealed on the mids for
better cone excusrion control, faster transient, better
group delay and better power handling. You can go bass reflex
on the woofer if you use a dedicated woofer in this design.

IMHO mids are not made to produce low frequencies, never
have been.. Some claim that thier 2 ways will reach down to
30Hz and they may in fact do that, but I would want my mids
sealed and crossed over well above that range.. Let a larger
dedicated woofer handle the lows, as it should do.

 

[Bill Law]

Easy question....SILK DOME...nuff said.

 

[Jeff Ery]

I will say that I find it important to match the speaker to the application....I have a pair of large bookshelf speakers with horn-loaded tweeters in my sitting room off the kitchen, I choose them because I wanted the potential for dynamics from a non-floorstander in a room with a lot of plants, furniture and other absorbtive materials,running off a warm lower powered (but wonderfull) amp..I sometimes take them just outside the room to crank them up for outside parties when I want more than what my outdoor speakers can provide......in this scenario the horns are perfect...
In my main system I have titanium domes running off a strong ,warm amp in a "not-to-live" room wher I have EQ ability . We listen to a lot more music here and my wife studied classical music for years, so we want detail and accuracy...these work well.........
In my bedroom I have soft domes hooked to a strong rcvr that has a very detailed sound already and the room is moderately-to- more reflective and we are listening to more mellow, dulcet tones here anyway so again I feel they "fit the bill".....try to understand that environment and use should always come into play when considering speakers.....
while I don't mind horns, I wouldn't think I'd put them in my greenhouse or tiled bathroom.....

 

[Lyden]

isnt there a way to get crossovers that are pre made? or do they allredy have them but are designed for a spesific elclosure... true i dont have all the tools :frowning: but its just a side project something to pass the time and i want towers to match up with my other custom speakers but in those i used crossovers i got a few years ago that were 3way set from radio shack i had like 6 of them they were free so its all good. i have probably 2 left i could try to use them ..... knew when i started i would never make anything close to being "high quality" in sound but im sure anything i make would sound better then normal speakers i buy(sony,KLH, every other cheapo brand) and besides the drivers wont cost me anything all im paying for is the MFD and its my time going into the construction design and so on.... wow kinda got off subject heh its all the same ... hmm what if i used multiple tweeters? like differant types ?? ... sorry for all the reading and thanks for the advice

 

[Dan Hine]

You can buy pre-made crossovers but they suffer from the same problems as just making a generic one yourself. They will not be optimized for your specific drivers, your cabinet, or have any other compensation networks for impedance, attenuation, etc...
You say you knew you wouldn't get anything "high quality in sound" but the thing is you CAN if you take a proven design and build it. Anything from Adire audio, GR-Research, or kits from Parts Express or Madisound, Speaker City, and more.

hmm what if i used multiple tweeters? like differant types ??

That probably won't help. In fact, without a good understanding of how speakers work and how to optimize your cabinet and crossover design, using funky set ups will just make things worse. I know you really want to design your very own speakers. Believe me, I do to! But until you read up on design theory and have some time to trial and error different crossover designs with good measurement tools you'll only be wasting your money.

 

[Geoff L]

Enjoy your experiment cause this is what your really doing.

Listen to the advice of the knowledge in this thread. There is so much more to it than a raidio shack 3-way or 4way crossover and picking up some drivers, drawing up a cabinet and putting it all in the box.

I certainly don't mean to be rude or discourge you, but your lack of any real knowledge really has you building blind.

BUT, of course your drivers/mids/& tweeters could always be used later as you learn that there is so much more to it than you curently understand.
You might consider picking up a book on (speaker building) from Parts Express or some other place so you can begen to learn/understand at least some of the basics things involved in speaker building & design.

I will simply end with, ~{good luck on your project}~!

Oh as to your question, I prefer Silk and Planiers when done right and in the right design.

Regards
Geoff