RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days?

Posted by PAR on November 15, 2015 at 04:44:17

In Reply to: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? posted by eduardoo on November 14, 2015 at 21:24:44:

I have never bought into the idea of add on supertweeters as I do not accept that they add to the listening experience by extending the frequency response beyond the upper limits of the majority of people's hearing ability.

What they certainly do do, however, is add a spurious treble response extending down into the normal audible bandwidth. It is not how high they extend but how low they go. There is no low brick wall cut off at, say, 20kHz. Rather they typically gradually roll off to say - 20dB @10kHz or below. There are published measurements to support this (Keith Howard, for example, has written on this with his measurements in various audio journals).

One of my direct experiences was with a friend who had bought a pair of ribbon supertweeters and had them connected to his Mark Levinson pre/power/ Sonus Faber system. He was playing the radio and switched the super tweeters in and out. He pointed out the clear difference and attributed this to the ability of the supertweeter to reveal previously unheard high frequency information above the louspeaker's upper response of circa. 20kHz. However he was not knowledgable enough to know that the FM radio signal we listened to had no program information above 15kHz. Incidenattly I recall that Keith Howard's measurments of the same device showed audible output down to 7kHz.

You may also find it instructive to listen to any given supertweeter with no loudspeaker attached. I am happy to predict that you will hear the supertweeter chirping away at considerably lower than "ultrasonic" frequencies

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Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? - eduardoo 21:24:44 11/14/15 (17)

RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? - Presto 10:21:29 11/18/15 (0)

How do you feel about phase issues? - genungo 08:47:53 11/18/15 (0)

RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? - dadbar 08:27:46 11/16/15 (1)

RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? - Jack D II 19:27:10 11/17/15 (0)

I'm devoid of any feeling as I install super tweeters - Kloss 06:35:02 11/16/15 (0)

RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? - eduardoo 23:25:57 11/15/15 (1)

Not the lack of credibility - we've just been there - airtime 06:11:22 11/16/15 (0)

RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? - bare 19:32:32 11/15/15 (0)

RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? - hahax@verizon.net 19:12:43 11/15/15 (1)

Seems like the same question gets asked once a month. - MikeCh 23:14:43 11/15/15 (0)

RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? - SgreenP@MSN.com 12:57:37 11/15/15 (0)

Two questions - airtime 09:35:24 11/15/15 (0)

But frequency response only extends to 150kHz. - Mr. Dick Hertz 07:51:13 11/15/15 (0)

RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? - PAR 04:44:17 11/15/15 (1)

RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? - Dave Garretson 14:12:58 11/15/15 (0)

RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? - John Elison 21:37:56 11/14/15 (1)

+1 nt - boboli 07:50:50 11/15/15 (0)

Follow Ups

RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? - PAR 04:44:17 11/15/15 (1)

RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days? - Dave Garretson 14:12:58 11/15/15 (0)

RE: How do you feel about adding supertweeters these days?

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