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Radio Shack Linaeum Tweeter experiment--Buy these now!

Posted by Jon L on May 30, 2000 at 14:48:53:
The Rat Shack Lineum tweeters are being discontinued by RS and are now on "clearance" for $15/each ($30 regular). I've always wanted to experiment with these, but didn't want to before because for my purposes I needed many of them and would have cost too much. Well on sale now, I initially bought 3 pairs ($90 total), and I heard enough good things to go and buy 1 more pair for a total of $120 for 4 pairs!! I first listened to them crossed over with my bryston 10B active crossover. I have Four of them stacked on top of each other/per side, which sits on top of my box speaker, just above my Focal trioxide inverted dome titanium tweeter. I used various frequencies, slopes, as allowed by my Bryston. Also now have used them as semi-supertweeter, crossed over at 10 KHz with a cap, while running my own speakers full range. The cheap cap within the speaker is always bypassed. After many, many hours, my conclusions:
1) These are good, damned good. At $15/each, it's a bargain of the bargain. Of course, I have four stacked per side, which I believe is the only way to go for audiophile purposes, and looks WAY Coool! Sound is linear, extended, airy, and liquid. Not as "sparkly" subjectively as my Focal titanium tweeter and not as focus-oriented, but Linaeum gives more sense of space, air, hall ambience, and more expansive feel of soundstage. It does this without you noticing it, and the whole sound becomes more relaxed and creamy. It's not as overtly dynamic as the Focal, but I'm not sure which is truer to life. In my configuration, the radiating surface area of the Linaeum tweeter/side exceeds that of my 8 inch woofer! and you can tell the effects of just pure ease and strain-free air in the sound.
2) The bad news. The Linaeum tweeter should only be used at fairly high crossover points. There is a resonance at around 1-2 KHz range that you can hear as notable increase in sibilance/spittiness to female vocals and clearly sounds like a resonance problem of the bipolar ribbons. I hear it with both my solid state amp and my tube amp, which I don't hear with my Focal tweeter. The Linaeum should be used as semi-super or supertweeter crossed over at significaly higher frequencies like 10, 15, 20KHz, where they excel in giving you that extra air and ambience. This can be done with appropriate active crossover or simple cap. If you go passive, beware that it will drop the total impedance of your speaker system depending on your configuration.
3) I had to call about 10 stores around my area to locate these 4 pairs of tweeters. Most stores don't have any more and they are going rapidly. They are being discontinued, and once gone, you will never see'em ever again, so if you've been meaning to experiment, I would get on it like now.