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I like ribbon tweeters but I don't see a lot of them out there on moderately priced speakers. I was wondering if there is a reason. Are they harder to integrate with the other drivers?
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... These extremely modest little Radio Shack 40-1375 planar tweeters (from the 1980's?) are amazingly clean and sweet sounding.
That's why they sound so good, LOL!
... I'll send you your checks, as previously agreed :-)Seriously, the R/S planars are almost astonishingly sweet and refined tweeters, and magnets are comparatively huge and weighty (for a tweeter, especially a Radio Shack product!).
I actually think the R/S planars are knock-offs of the JVC (or made to order), as I believe the JVC's had nice cast metal facades and the R/S are mostly molded plastic.
http://www.pacifier.com/~gpimm/40-1375.htm
When was the last time you saw magnets like that on a piezo? ;-)
I use ribbons in many designs from $2500 up ship inc.But the good ones are not cheap might be why other manufacters dont use much. I havent had any high failer rate. I use pretty much all types of tweeters.And the ribbons are reliable and if fail easy and cheap to rebuild.Ribbons have a great sound if used right and many new designs are available.
I think affordable ribbon speakers are less popular because, aside from the higher failure rate ... budget ribbons sound too much like budget metal domes meaning annoyingly too crisp and brittle sounding and have to be listened to from afar to sound sympathetic to many bright sounding mediocre digital recordings. I also ribbon "flutter" which is probably just as bad as dome breakup modes.
Cause they aint automatically "better" thats why.
B&W and Focal aint using them, and Siegfried Linkwitz has published some pretty "interesting" distortion measurements, if I recall.
I think there are some good ribbons, and some good domes too.
However, i find it real interesting that B&W and Focal/JM labs are sticking with domes.
And why not ?
With perfect pistonic behavior out past 30 K, who needs ribbons ?
Yes but a long line source ribbon, like Apogee Diva, Maggie 20.1, or the big Dali speaker is really something special. It is simply more pure than other technologies. No resonance peak (the Apogee ribbon has a resonance of only a few Hz so it never ever gets excited) is a big reason so much less energy storage. Even the best metal tweeters begin to rise well before the actual resonance peak and this is likely to be what people pecieve as "brightness". The best conventional tweeter is of course the diamond tweeter (but at what price compared to simple aluminum foil?).
Wonder how it performs???thanks,
I have used them they are good but better ones are available
Hi Kloss,I had seen that PE has them on sale for $50. I was wondering about a fairly inexpensive two way bookshelf. Any thoughts? or should I just keep looking.
I used with fostex fx200 its a good tweeter not great but good, if in a 2 way use a small mid woofer.FX200 had lots of range xovered 12khz
Hi Kloss..that's kind of what I had in mind. PartsExpress has them on sale right now...so my interest was peaked. I ended up getting a pair of lower efficiency speakers to play with...so I'll have to wait for this project.Happy springtime!
It's a nice ribbon for a 3-way crossed fairly high butI wouldn't use one in a 2-way.
A quality, real transducer ribbon tweeter isn't cheap. Amazing, true to the music sound but not cheap. Example, Ravens. Swiss watch build, magnet that will suck your vise grips across the work bench but no way are they going to put them in a budget speaker. People are used to the, tish, tish, tish, sit anywhere in the room sound of a dome tweeter anyway so why bother getting it right eh?
Aurum Cantus I understand is fairly inexpensive.How do they integrate? Well you tell us. There are IMO a number of speakers that sell real well that IMO are horrid at integrating drivers and people buy them in droves.
But then again people buy Rap music in droves too -- so....
expensive
higher failure rate
poor vertical dispersion.
Most don't go low enough to meet the woofer.P
I think they are going the route of the metal dome tweeter. When they first came out they were harsh and raspy/ringy, etc but they've really come a long way. If you actually measure a SEAS H1212 or a ScanSpeak D29 series tweeter they measure better than the majority of the ribbons out there. I will probably get flamed for that but keep reading.
The tide is now turning for the ribbon tweeters. They are appearing more and more in professional designs and in the DIY market and I've been watching the specs improve.I've played around with ribbons alot and found much of what Pjay had to say correct. But it is certainly changing these days He forgot high distortion levels. Some of them have been measured to have quite high distortion levels. More amusingly, some of the cheaper ones actually do quite well however. I was surprised too.
I'm poised to jump back in and try a project with some this summer.
I still have an old set at home that sounds real nice at first until you realize that all that extra detail is really distortion. I don't think they have ever lasted more than three days in a speaker. I don't have the heart to throw them out. The newer ones are much better and we will see them more often in my humble opinion.
Pjay wasn't really wrong though.
They do have limited vertical dispersion but folks have gotten around this with line array type solutions or just locating it at the correct height.
They are easy to blow if you are not careful but I see that's getting better.
They are costly but the costs are definitely going down.
They used to be only used for the really high frequencies but their range is definitely improving.
Try the planar speaker asylum for a different opinion.
The minute people start floating around here with an open mind and really trying to learn something, this whole forum will go to hell.
like fountek neo pro 5i - CD2, CD3 or HI-VI RT8-2 Others arround too.
but generally the cost goes even higher.I like ribbons and planer tweeters. One of my better designs had one and it was very good.
The original question was why don't more manufacturers use them. My answers were to that question.
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