Big Treble

[mrkramer]

Was reading with interest the thread on "optimal bass size..." Didn't want to thread jack it but had a similar thoughts.

I always notice at live shows or concerts just how much power and presence there is in lower treble and up. Not simply loudness. For lack of better phrasing "Big Treble".

I feel like I have heard convincing mids and maybe bass from a speaker, but never treble. Lots of very pleasing sounds but not convincing. I've never heard anything special from domes at all. Fullrangers like my SABA or ff85k do capture something 'natural' but no oomph. Horns maybe? I sure lusted after some of those big multi cells in a previous thread!

So, "Big Treble". Is there such thing? Are tweeters just meant to be small, airy and pinpoint imaging? Is what I think I'm hearing at concerts as BIG really something else? A trick of the ears? Some psychoacoustic thing?

MrKramer

[badman]

Originally Posted by mrkramer

Was reading with interest the thread on "optimal bass size..." Didn't want to thread jack it but had a similar thoughts.

I always notice at live shows or concerts just how much power and presence there is in lower treble and up. Not simply loudness. For lack of better phrasing "Big Treble".

I feel like I have heard convincing mids and maybe bass from a speaker, but never treble. Lots of very pleasing sounds but not convincing. I've never heard anything special from domes at all. Fullrangers like my SABA or ff85k do capture something 'natural' but no oomph. Horns maybe? I sure lusted after some of those big multi cells in a previous thread!

So, "Big Treble". Is there such thing? Are tweeters just meant to be small, airy and pinpoint imaging? Is what I think I'm hearing at concerts as BIG really something else? A trick of the ears? Some psychoacoustic thing?

MrKramer

All prefaced by IME/IMO:

Well, a lot of it is clean volume. Most systems run out of juice pretty easily. They're not overtly distorting per-se, but they lose something when too much is asked. Go big! That's a big part of why systems using the heil AMT1 (within its limits), or big midtweeter horns, or large-scale ribbons (a la the 6 ft maggie ribbon) tend to have that big, at-ease treble sound- they can scale up without approaching their limits. Domes can be great and have their place, but for a speaker to do "big" it still, pretty much, needs to be big. The smaller fullrangers can do a much better job of it when you bandwidth limit them and use as midtweeters. That, of course, tosses much of the idea of using a wide/fullranger out the window, but it's all about balances.

[Dr.EM]

I use these in my (under construction) system:

Overview RT2E-A Isodynamic Tweeter_HiVi, Inc.

and find they give a more convincing treble than domes I've heard. The rising edge on drum sounds is very sharp and engaging. A larger surface area (~24sqcm in this case) but still lighter membrane I assume is responsible for this. Overall volume capacity may not be much higher as I believe 'excursion' in these designs is minimal. Seems to give more effortless transients to me anyhow