@5th element You clearly have a chip on your shoulder against me. Thats fine by me. Just try to be a little less insulting.
The range of spectral power a typical dome tweeter has to deal with can be as much as almost 4 octaves or less than 1 octave.
In Wilson's case, crossing at 1.4 kHz approaches that 4 octave range. Let's say for example (and likely one of the worst case scenarios) solo piano music was playing with very heavy notes being struck just above the tweeter HP point. This isn't uncommon in alot of solo keyboard work of rhodes, electric piano and other keyed instruments.
When those keys are being hit a bit harder, there's no way that little bit of 6 - 8 sq cm of dome tweeter surface can play back those loud notes as cleanly as the other keys falling in the fundamental range of the other more robust cone drivers.
I've heard this with my own ears on various other speakers that employ small domes (especially fabric domes). The distortion is way too high. Other instruments which provoke this tweeter overload scenario are alto, tenor and soprano saxophone, clarinet, electric steel string guitar, heavy snare drums tuned relatively high (piccolo snare used in some funk), acoustic percussion, etc etc.
The list of scenarios is long and I did some of this testing myself a while back on many other systems, both commercially available and custom designed. The dome tweeter is always the little booger that ruins the party.
The only exception is if the dome is sized and crossed proportionately to the entire system, either with a stout WG and/or a larger dome tweeter membrane surface area. The typical HP point which avoids any overload from a non WG loaded 25 - 29mm dome is 2.5 kHz LR2. Sensitivity doesn't matter here unless its bumped up mechanically by a WG or more membrane surface area.
With an average midrange size of 6" (essentially creating a 2 or 2.5 way system), the option for a sufficiently low HP to blend the midrange/midbass to the dome while avoiding a large directivity jump will end up putting too much stress on the average, non WGed dome tweeter with some types of music.
You guys can fight me tooth and nail on this, but you'll see its a problem in the real world with some speakers playing some types of music. Even some speakers with electrical overload protection, the scenario will at a minimum cause the tweeter to compress or cut out. Soft domes are a bit less in your face this way when they compress. The soft dome material will often "swallow" these big peaks without much drama. The people who know what they're listening to will know when they hear it happen.
If I had a way to record and host a small audio piece uncompressed and unadulterated with this happening, I'd be able to prove this once and for all and end the peeing match. After hearing the select few who always attempt to pull "science" rank in scenarios like this, it would finally be refreshing to show this issue black and white. I have access to a good dozen or so higher end domes and would happily record a small piece of audio identifying a distorting dome tweeter played within the parameters I cited above. I would only do it with a tweeter that has a matched pair of replacement domes available for it.
Those of you who have actually heard an overloaded dome tweeter in a larger system know exactly what I'm referring to. Its obvious, in your face and sounds BAD.
The range of spectral power a typical dome tweeter has to deal with can be as much as almost 4 octaves or less than 1 octave.
In Wilson's case, crossing at 1.4 kHz approaches that 4 octave range. Let's say for example (and likely one of the worst case scenarios) solo piano music was playing with very heavy notes being struck just above the tweeter HP point. This isn't uncommon in alot of solo keyboard work of rhodes, electric piano and other keyed instruments.
When those keys are being hit a bit harder, there's no way that little bit of 6 - 8 sq cm of dome tweeter surface can play back those loud notes as cleanly as the other keys falling in the fundamental range of the other more robust cone drivers.
I've heard this with my own ears on various other speakers that employ small domes (especially fabric domes). The distortion is way too high. Other instruments which provoke this tweeter overload scenario are alto, tenor and soprano saxophone, clarinet, electric steel string guitar, heavy snare drums tuned relatively high (piccolo snare used in some funk), acoustic percussion, etc etc.
The list of scenarios is long and I did some of this testing myself a while back on many other systems, both commercially available and custom designed. The dome tweeter is always the little booger that ruins the party.
The only exception is if the dome is sized and crossed proportionately to the entire system, either with a stout WG and/or a larger dome tweeter membrane surface area. The typical HP point which avoids any overload from a non WG loaded 25 - 29mm dome is 2.5 kHz LR2. Sensitivity doesn't matter here unless its bumped up mechanically by a WG or more membrane surface area.
With an average midrange size of 6" (essentially creating a 2 or 2.5 way system), the option for a sufficiently low HP to blend the midrange/midbass to the dome while avoiding a large directivity jump will end up putting too much stress on the average, non WGed dome tweeter with some types of music.
You guys can fight me tooth and nail on this, but you'll see its a problem in the real world with some speakers playing some types of music. Even some speakers with electrical overload protection, the scenario will at a minimum cause the tweeter to compress or cut out. Soft domes are a bit less in your face this way when they compress. The soft dome material will often "swallow" these big peaks without much drama. The people who know what they're listening to will know when they hear it happen.
If I had a way to record and host a small audio piece uncompressed and unadulterated with this happening, I'd be able to prove this once and for all and end the peeing match. After hearing the select few who always attempt to pull "science" rank in scenarios like this, it would finally be refreshing to show this issue black and white. I have access to a good dozen or so higher end domes and would happily record a small piece of audio identifying a distorting dome tweeter played within the parameters I cited above. I would only do it with a tweeter that has a matched pair of replacement domes available for it.
Those of you who have actually heard an overloaded dome tweeter in a larger system know exactly what I'm referring to. Its obvious, in your face and sounds BAD.
It depends on who's complaining. Most people aren't tuned in enough to be bothered by the sound of a badly distorting dome tweeter. Thats sadly the way it is and the people who do complain will be brow beaten by the "experts". We have a fair amount of them on here.
Reality is, there are many typical dome tweeter equipped speakers which sound awful in the lower mids even at lower SPLs thanks to an insufficiently placed HP filter. I used to be a factory service tech for many higher end speakers. The one driver that lets go first is almost always the dome tweeter. Its always been an issue and you'd hear the distortion first before it goes.
@billshurv I'm sure the canned THX stuff is dialed in to be "perfect" for most people. I don't watch anything that constrains dynamics. The movies I do see are usually in the theater and most dvd/bluray I watch in 2.1
I listen to CD, vinyl, R2R, even laserdisc and cassette. Whatever the format was available for given artists at their period of time, that's what I listen to.
As a rough guide, if the CD has a transparent spine (not the heavier ribbed black style), its likely too compressed for my tastes. Thats about when the loudness wars started, right when the CD jewel cases started becoming flimsy with transparent spines.
When I buy older CDs, I always look for the earliest release to avoid excessive compression. There's quite a bit of good new music out there, but its usually ruined by excessive compression and limiting.
I listen to CD, vinyl, R2R, even laserdisc and cassette. Whatever the format was available for given artists at their period of time, that's what I listen to.
As a rough guide, if the CD has a transparent spine (not the heavier ribbed black style), its likely too compressed for my tastes. Thats about when the loudness wars started, right when the CD jewel cases started becoming flimsy with transparent spines.
When I buy older CDs, I always look for the earliest release to avoid excessive compression. There's quite a bit of good new music out there, but its usually ruined by excessive compression and limiting.
People fry tweeters in your typical hi-end hifi speaker all the time. I have a couple of friends that operate ”exklusive” hifi stores in different countries (one of them with Wilsons) and they used to replace fried tweeters in super-duper expensive speakers all the time - common denominator- every time party related.
Serious hi-end stores now offer free pro-audio type speakers on loan to their fancy speaker clients when demanded for dance and party duty.
Serious hi-end stores now offer free pro-audio type speakers on loan to their fancy speaker clients when demanded for dance and party duty.
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My point was that THX actually specifies something sensible for power handling which is that, at 85dB at the listening chair (per speaker) you have transient headrooom up to 105dB. That is more than loud enough for most of us (and too loud for me*) and is at least a spec, whereas home audio doesn't need specs. It's IMHO a good starting point from which you can hunt for music that needs more than that. A number of us like to look at the sums and come to conclusions.
Aside I did discover a few years back that Rickie Lee Jones Ghetto of my mind is a great track for tuning click supression software, as it will trigger detection on default settings.
*I should also note my listening room is about the size of a Texas walk in closet.
@tktran303 The larger surround domes typically have quite a bit higher H2 down low. Thats the expense you have when using such a tweeter at a lower crossover point. The large surround encourages more dome wobble and less axial stability. The other issue is the VC diameter usually is the same size or smaller than the original, thinner margine surround dome tweeter.
FSAF testing is a functional simulation tool for what you propose. It doesn't however change the fact the tweeter isn't up to the job. The distortion sets in far sooner than the destruction and that power level required to destroy the tweeter is far above the point where distortion starts to rise sharply. Its not a hard cut off point but more of a gray area.
My issue is the simple fact the HF dome is already acoustically undersized and behaves non-linear long before the point of failure. Another issue is reliability, which usually means prematurely fractured VC lead wires (common on some Seas tweeters, even higher end models). Crossing.lower, increasing excursion will result in lower reliability.
Back in the early 1990s when people started going more to lower sensitivity, longer stroke woofers, it was common to see smaller 2 way designs that needed more power to keep up. Tweeter HP frequencies started going down and the typical HF dome was being pushed harder. This wasn't a problem due to the output limits of the smaller, lower sensitivity woofer in a smaller box. It was with the greater popularity of HT l, when you added a sub, when things started to get ugly. The trend continued, pushing the tweeter lower and lower and the woofers started using harder cone materials for better bass which lowered the diaphragm breakup point and raised the peak amplitude. Thats about when most smaller woofers were no longer suitable for being crossed at what was previously seen as a reasonable cutoff point. For example, 3.5k was seen as a normal and doable for the Focal 5K013L. This is when people also started becoming overly obsessed with off axis directivity.
FSAF testing is a functional simulation tool for what you propose. It doesn't however change the fact the tweeter isn't up to the job. The distortion sets in far sooner than the destruction and that power level required to destroy the tweeter is far above the point where distortion starts to rise sharply. Its not a hard cut off point but more of a gray area.
My issue is the simple fact the HF dome is already acoustically undersized and behaves non-linear long before the point of failure. Another issue is reliability, which usually means prematurely fractured VC lead wires (common on some Seas tweeters, even higher end models). Crossing.lower, increasing excursion will result in lower reliability.
Back in the early 1990s when people started going more to lower sensitivity, longer stroke woofers, it was common to see smaller 2 way designs that needed more power to keep up. Tweeter HP frequencies started going down and the typical HF dome was being pushed harder. This wasn't a problem due to the output limits of the smaller, lower sensitivity woofer in a smaller box. It was with the greater popularity of HT l, when you added a sub, when things started to get ugly. The trend continued, pushing the tweeter lower and lower and the woofers started using harder cone materials for better bass which lowered the diaphragm breakup point and raised the peak amplitude. Thats about when most smaller woofers were no longer suitable for being crossed at what was previously seen as a reasonable cutoff point. For example, 3.5k was seen as a normal and doable for the Focal 5K013L. This is when people also started becoming overly obsessed with off axis directivity.
The only tweeters I've seen destroyed instantly were close to this scenario, but neither was from intentional application of a test tone.
In The Matrix there's a scene where it sounds like a sine wave at about 14 kHz for a few seconds. Literally saw smoke rising from the speaker after that. I'm not a high SPL listener, so that was a bit of a surprise and a bummer. Also gave me more respect for THX's recommendations when it comes to home theater.
In a friend's car, his flaky DSP randomly emitted an even higher tone during a file save. This was probably around 18-20 kHz and maybe lasted 2 seconds. I could just barely hear it, but it killed one tweeter immediately.
@billshurv Yes I understand what you mean. I dont listen that quietly but I'm not "unsafe" with my average levels.
Most of the time I'm listening at about 90 - 95 dB midfield. When I listen to orchestral, jazz or symphonic music, its all fair game and the taps are wide open.
If there are any peaks above this (even significant ones) I don't want to notice any compression. Those 20 dB extra, which amount to a 100 fold power swing, need to be available. That may sound excessive to most people, but its what I prefer.
When I heard the Wilson WATT puppy, I was very disappointed. This speaker also started up alot of the arguments between the two camps of speaker preferences. This was also a very hard to drive speaker thanks to its crossover design and as usual, the tweeter HP is too low.
When Daryl took over Wilson, he introduced alot of "hippster" culture into the brand. Thats essentially the main devide that has been created for me. It injected alot of esteem and prestige into the brand, diverging from the original mantra of the way Wilson speakers were designed. The younger leadership put way more emphasis on the brand image rather than all out reference level speaker design. Comparing Wilson speakers to other brands of similar "prestige", I'd place Dunlavy in the same ring, which is by far a more accurate sounding speaker on every level, even with its aggressive 1st order filters on the tweeters. The Dunlavy stuff doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. It just sounds good. Wilson Audio speakers are now trying to be more like the trendy IPHONE of the speaker world, making no excuses for commanding an absolutely insane price tag. Even Magico is a considerable step above Wilson in terms of performance and accuracy while being more reasonably priced. The big rub for me is how vague Wilson is on specs, mainly the crossover specs. This secrecy is what creates the issue but its obvious how inappropriate the effective crossover is for such a small driver needing to cover so much of the midrange. Its not just fluff and air. This is a substantial portion of the midrange which can't be covered with the necessary ease or authority by just a small dome tweeter. I'd use the words "barely adequate" rather than anything else.
Most of the time I'm listening at about 90 - 95 dB midfield. When I listen to orchestral, jazz or symphonic music, its all fair game and the taps are wide open.
If there are any peaks above this (even significant ones) I don't want to notice any compression. Those 20 dB extra, which amount to a 100 fold power swing, need to be available. That may sound excessive to most people, but its what I prefer.
When I heard the Wilson WATT puppy, I was very disappointed. This speaker also started up alot of the arguments between the two camps of speaker preferences. This was also a very hard to drive speaker thanks to its crossover design and as usual, the tweeter HP is too low.
When Daryl took over Wilson, he introduced alot of "hippster" culture into the brand. Thats essentially the main devide that has been created for me. It injected alot of esteem and prestige into the brand, diverging from the original mantra of the way Wilson speakers were designed. The younger leadership put way more emphasis on the brand image rather than all out reference level speaker design. Comparing Wilson speakers to other brands of similar "prestige", I'd place Dunlavy in the same ring, which is by far a more accurate sounding speaker on every level, even with its aggressive 1st order filters on the tweeters. The Dunlavy stuff doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. It just sounds good. Wilson Audio speakers are now trying to be more like the trendy IPHONE of the speaker world, making no excuses for commanding an absolutely insane price tag. Even Magico is a considerable step above Wilson in terms of performance and accuracy while being more reasonably priced. The big rub for me is how vague Wilson is on specs, mainly the crossover specs. This secrecy is what creates the issue but its obvious how inappropriate the effective crossover is for such a small driver needing to cover so much of the midrange. Its not just fluff and air. This is a substantial portion of the midrange which can't be covered with the necessary ease or authority by just a small dome tweeter. I'd use the words "barely adequate" rather than anything else.
I don’t agree on this being an obsession for serious designers.
@airvoid. I can understand the issue with people throwing parties with their "hifi" speakers. We all know the scenario. This is why its important to design some amount of durability into the design. Even just an appropriately sized poly fuse or other cheap device can avoid much of these issues. I've used poly-switches on many speakers I've designed with great success. The trick is sizing them correctly with the appropriate supporting components. They don't hinder any audio detail or introduce any other artifacts into the sound. You just have to select your parts correctly with strict measurement parameters. Failure is rare as long as the abuse to the tweeter isn't constant.
I believe in using protection on tweeters, as it only avoids expensive failures and doesn't cause any negative audible issues. Crap happens easily with amplifiers and even DACs. A sudden peak in DC voltage from a rail going high on a DC coupled amp is all that needs to happen. Even just a quick HF burst on a DAC output due to bad data or noise is all it takes. There's nothing bad about placing a correctly sized fuse in line with your woofers. Its just for a worst case scenario and won't negatively affect anything. Some of these drivers are insanely expensive, so its cheap insurance to have a little piece of mind.
Most of the time, people's amps will overheat before anything else speaker related happens. I don’t worry about heat because the amps I use have adequate heatsinking for constant use. They never go above 110 - 115 deg F.
I believe in using protection on tweeters, as it only avoids expensive failures and doesn't cause any negative audible issues. Crap happens easily with amplifiers and even DACs. A sudden peak in DC voltage from a rail going high on a DC coupled amp is all that needs to happen. Even just a quick HF burst on a DAC output due to bad data or noise is all it takes. There's nothing bad about placing a correctly sized fuse in line with your woofers. Its just for a worst case scenario and won't negatively affect anything. Some of these drivers are insanely expensive, so its cheap insurance to have a little piece of mind.
Most of the time, people's amps will overheat before anything else speaker related happens. I don’t worry about heat because the amps I use have adequate heatsinking for constant use. They never go above 110 - 115 deg F.
@Robh3606. I agree that playing hifi speakers too loud is abuse. It shouldn't be covered under warranty. However, wouldn't it be a nice selling point for some people if it didn't cause a failure? That sort of reputation can go a long way to building a brand following. Even covering occasional repairs under warranty caused by questionable care in use can build a loyal customer base. I'd rather build a product that won't easily fail under abuse than deal with upset customers who don't understand why it broke to begin with.
Problem is these clients don’t see it as abuse, they simply want to use their system in their sitting rooms to the fullest extent. It’s not as if they’re carrying out their megabuck speakers to the party tent or using them as PA for the band in the back yard.
Hello
Well I guess the old adage is true sometimes. More money than sense or basically a lack of common sense. Fullest extent doesn't include excessive SPL levels. Not directed at you personally, how about a little personal responsibility and admit "Yeah I screwed up".
Rob 🙂
We're in agreement then. Nothing you've said here contradicts what I've said.
I was merely trying to address the issue of you mentioning the power limits of tweeters (10-15 watts) and how tweeters crossed over low would blow up. They will not do this in most cases unless you're in a thermally constrained environment.
I said quite clearly that exceeding xmax is another mattery entirely and if you do this it will sound bad (and turn it down). No doubt it's going to start sounding bad before this happens too. Linkwitz calculating a 105dB max for the SEAS millennium tweeter was based on its xmax but let's not forget that that would correspond to a thd of about 10%. I definitely don't want a tweeter at 10% thd in any system.
To be honest scenarios like these, at least in terms of the movie, are where the sound engineer should have known better. @ 14kHz not even a waveguide is going to help you out either. Putting any sine like high frequency signals into movie score is asking for trouble if you ask me.
Yes especially if it at or near the 105 peak levels at the listeners position.
Rob 🙂
Mozart wrote the Queen Of The Night Aria as a showcase for his sister-in-law who could hit F6 (about 1400 Hz) above high C. Nice to know 250 years later ol' Wolfie is now trolling designers using imprudently low crossover frequencies. 😀