umm.. as the tittle said

as a focal fan, TN47 or TN52 but thats me and i know there are plenty of people that dont like the focal sound, Harsh. To me they are smooth as silk, personel taste

nooooot to bad, could be a bit smoother past 10k

did you have a budget in mind?

DynAudio Esotars have always sounded pretty nice to me.

redlined upto bout $1500 the pair

redlined upto bout $1500 the pair
ooh the dynaudio md102 look quite nice, nice n flat uptop too

Go the Esotar's with that sort of money...

or the scanspeak revelators.

can you fit ribbons?

yeah i was thinking of Aurum Cantus ribbons or Bohlender Graebener plannars

The B&G's only work properly when mounted dipole.

hiquphon ow2...will leave u plenty of change to optimise install too

Scanspeak revalators getting the nod here

Yeah I vote scanspeak too. Given how many studio monitors use them (and the studio is where accurate reproduction matters more than anywhere else) you can't go wrong with them. The revelators would be better than just about anything money could buy unless you've got many may thousands to fork out on berillium, and even then, how much better they would be in anything but an anechoic chamber would never justify paying SO much more money for them.

Morel Tweeters

HAT L1. they sound great in my car

See, I would never pay that much for tweeters. I've heard many different types, seen the testing results for many more, and would never ever pay that much for a pair of tweeters. My current Ribbons set me back around 200 for the pair, and I'm yet to hear anything that comes close.

Why? Because quality isnt expensive, and the best tweeters in the world can be had for a fraction of that price.

Its a really opened ended question, and you'll have responses that go on forever. People recommending tweeters left right and center. In the end, units like the Revs, the Esotars, the Hiq's, Ribbons..... these are the top notch of the sport. The Lance Armstrongs of the tweeter world.

What really separates them isnt their performance, but your environment and intended install. Do you have masses of room? Esotars. Are you way way off axis? Hiqs. Are you running 3-way, with high speed mids, and tweeters on-axis? Ribbons. Do you have low distortion mids and are very much on-axis? Revs. Do you want to pay for ridiculously overpriced but great performing compact units? Berillium. How about an old-school design, small unit to attach to a wide-band mid? Legatia.

Its really six of one, half a dozen of another. The tweeter wont be the piece that makes or breaks your result.

^^^That post should be stickied.

I was thinking the same thing, but couldn't put it into words anywhere nearly as well as you have Matt!

Matt. This is why you're a legend

For the OP, if you want specific recommendations, A few guys (including myself) here in vic have used Vifa XT19's - great tweets, but large diffuse plate, which makes them more challenging to mount. Other than that, listen to some different systems (in car rather than in store if you can) to see which suit your tastes

why not talk about tweeters likw that? people talk crap about subs all day long which play bugger all of the freq range of music? so subs are the only important thing worth spending money on to get that 100hz worth of bandwidth compared to the 15,000hz from a tweeter?

The reason we don't talk about tweeters like subs is because their job is kinda "easier". Don't get me wrong, there are good and bad tweeter designs. Getting tweeters to sound good is more about mounting, angling, and crossover settings than the actual tweeter used. Those things will depend on the tweeter used, the locations available, and the sonic "map" of your car. You've got a point though in my opinion. If I could get 10-12 inch midbass into PROPER enclosures in the front of my car I would not use a sub. There's pretty much nothing musical below about 35hz anyway.

You can't think about cycles per second in linear terms like that either. A sub usually plays 2 OCTAVES, a tweeter rarely plays more than 3. One Octaves covers frequency range from x hz to 2x hz.

Mids are actually the things you want to get right (and where to spend you hard earned), so much so that in certain designs using small mids, there is NO NEED for tweeters! The reason they are the most important is that almost all of the frequencies that clearly define one instrument from another are in the midrange, plus it's in the centre of your hearing range, where your ears are most sensitive to phase and location. Bad mids = bad audio.

The end.

Plus, there is no fundamental information in the frequency bands reproduced by tweeters. They simply reproduce ordered harmonics of the fundamental. Also, any decent install with a good midrange wont have the tweeters crossed below 5k. That means only 1.5 octaves of primary information (though subs should only be around 1.5octaves too...).

As Br85 stated, subs aint that important either. A great midbass will almost eliminate the need for most subs in SQ, and the midrange is where its at. We cant stop hip hoppers and doof doofers from talking about subs, but we can educate the willing about tweeters!

Agreed the XT19s are great tweeters.

But listen to theMatt, he always provides top advice.

Check out the Scanspeak D3004-6600 AirCirc if you can - it's a new model in the range.

A quote from npdang on diymobileaudio.com:

These have been regarded as one of the best tweeters around in every single objective and subjective test I have seen.

The theory / subjective:
* On axis response of 600hz - 32khz @ +/- 2dB
* Extremely low distotion down to 2khz
* 4ohm and 92.5dB sensitivity, making themvery easy to drive in-car
* Extremely shallow 23mm mounting depth (less then 1 inch) thanks to AirCirc motor
* Outstanding build quality

The objective:
I owned these tweeters in my previous install, and I've never heard anything that's come close. They are absolutely stunningly transparent, sounding absolutely fantastic, even with no EQ whatsoever. These are considered by many to be the best tweeters Scanspeak have built, far better then the Revelators and (according to many) superior to the hyper-expensive Ring Radiator. For pure amusement I once crossed this tweeter at 1khz just to see if it would actually play as low as the graphs suggest - it did. That said, I still wouldn't recommend it over long periods of time (you could hear the increase in distortion at such a low crossover point).

These cost around $650 / pair give or take, and if you want a seirously brilliant tweeter I think you'd be crazy to not at least look into them!

Hi guys sorry for digging up old thread but thought it better than starting new one ,looking for a bit of help with tweeter selection ,i have blown one oz audio matrix elite tweeter (were crossed at 4khz 24 db slope) running active ,ive got replacements but running them passive now so they dont blow.I want to get some tweets that i can run active ,what i need from tweets is SQ and to be able to take some punishment as i like it loud.I have two categories one that will fit under dash in factory location (ef fairmont) and the other ones will probaly have to be fg into pillar big faceplates .Can some pls tell me are the tweets with big face plates like scanspeak ,morel supremos and dyn esotar are these tweets less forgiving for off axis response because there more for home audio .

!st under dash
L1 pro $484
seas lotus rt27f $498

2nd Fg in pillar
morel supremo $690
scanspeak air circ $690
dyn esotar 2 out of my price range at $1699

Thats what of got on my list so far if anyone has suggestion to what else i should look at to match my oz midrange and midbass or any advice at all much appriecated
cheers xwfalcon

Hats all the way....i have the standard L1....and they sound great....and thats with no eq n crappy install atm

Nope, depends entirely on the tweeter.

Smaller MT-23's have a better off-axis extension then Supremos, but then the Scanspeak AirCirc has better off-axis response then both (and it's not all Scan's, as my brothers' ones are average off-axis).

So essentially it depends on the tweeter and it's design, rather then the size of it's face plate.



I looked into the Lotus tweeter recently and to be honest, I don't see what all the fuss is about. I wasn't hugely impressed by it when I heard it in person (it was good, but not great) and subjective tests i've seen seem to confirm my thoughts - good, but not brilliant.

The L1 I can't really say anything about, as I haven't heard it myself (or done any research on it).



First thing I'd do is take the Supremo off the list. It's a good tweeter, but the Scanspeak AirCirc costs the same money and beats it absoutely everywhere. Better on axis, better off axis, better top end extension, better low end performance, lower distortion, less power hungry (4ohm, 92.5dB sensitivity), smaller mounting depth, and build quality is at least on par.

With the exception of 'badge name value' or looks (as it's subjective), I can't think of any area in which the Supremo can beat (or even match) the AirCirc. It's not a bad tweeter by any means (it's actually very good) but the AirCirc is just better everywhere.

Then, take the Esotar off the list. Firstly, I'd be very surprised to see it outperform the AirCirc (I know the response curve isn't as good, but not sure about the rest). Secondly you've already stated it's out of your price range, so it's not really an option anyway.

That pretty much leves the AirCirc as the pick in the second group.

Off-axis response is relative to a tweeters dome size, not the size of its baffle, or any technology used in its production.

The Hiquphon has a better off-axis response to the rest of the units mentioned, because its only a 3/4" as opposed to a 1". If you want good off-axis all the way up the scale, get a smaller sized dome. No technology or magic in all the world can overcome beaming.

The tweeters with the larger baffles are compensating for baffle step diffraction, a frequency response anomaly that is audible and undesirable. Most small format (read: no baffle) tweeters are usually designed without it, with the expectation that the install will give the tweeter a decent baffle. Unfortunately, I've rarely seen a small format tweeter that does.

The AirCirc (at 30deg off axis)is only down by 2dB @ 17khz - that's a pretty impressive off-axis response by any measure.

You sure the H1 is better off axis then that?

Not being a smart alec, genuinely asking as I've never gotten seen access to a response curve (which includes off-axis response) for the H1, so I'm not too sure how good it is-off axis.

muzzy>
http://www.audioheuristics.org/measurement...eeter4index.htm

You have your drivers totally mixed up, the Hiquphon "the matt" is referrring to is not the H1 "keepitreal" is referring to.

The Hiquphon they are referring to is this http://www.hiquphon.dk/page4.html

The H1 they are referring to is this http://www.mobileelectronics.com.au/store/...p;productId=295

YAY for XT19s....

Ahh makes sense now!

The Hiquphon looks very good on-axis, but there doesn't seem to be much there to show its response off axis.

Looks pretty good from what I can see though

Zaphs is a great resource for driver testing, though he doesnt currently have the off-axis response up there. Accurate to boot too. And he has a speal on offaxis response to, quoted below

www.zaphaudio.com/offaxis.html

that being said, he did have this to say on the Aircirc "off axis response is closer to normal for a 1" dome". With that statement alone, I'm fairly convinced that the 6600 isnt anything special in regards to rolloff.

And that link that Luke provided has the offaxis responses for the Hiq all the way down to 75-odd degrees.

I found hiqs on speakerbits.com for $264 im pretty sure this will be for pair as the come as a matched pair, just not sure which one would better suit OW1 or OW2 im leaning towards OW2 but not sure . They are a fair bit cheaper to other stuff i was looking at so might give them a go.

It was Spyne but check the link at the bottom of page two, and if you read his comments the Hiq is only down 5-6db at 20khz at 60deg off axis.

xwfalcon >
the hiq ow2 is considered by many to be the better of the two, but it also comes with a certain 'airy/ribbon' sound to it. some people love this, others find it too clinical and prefer to have some warmth to their treble
read a forum post somewhere recently where someone had used ow2 tweets in their kicks and simply couldnt get rid of some sibilance they were hearing - whether this was bad installation, bad eq/set-up, or just the speaker i dont know, but i have always liked the sound of the ow2...havent heard the ow1 (or ow3 or ow4 for that matter) to compare against though.

what i do know is that it might be worth contacting Oskar directly through the hiquphon site and see what price he can give you - i know he will deliver straight to your door in 99% of cases (even international)
i also know the ow3 is being discontinued, and the new ow4 is out and apparently is very good - building on the ow1 and ow3 designs. it also comes at ~$50 extra/pair

Thats each mate. I've also contacted Oskar before I got my ribbons, and they'll set you back around $500 landed for a matched pair.

Ive just had email back from oskar telling me he thinks OW2 would be a great chioce and he can ship matched pair to oz for $170 OW2 and $30 for shipping 200 euros so about 340 au and if anyone intrested the OW3 and OW4 are 242 euros shipped

cool, its probably been 12months since i emailed Oskar, but i remember back then it was only ~AUD$220/pr landed

Damn, we must have got our wires crossed and got a pair price thinking it was singles.

Thats settled then, the best tweeters on the market for less then $250 is by far the Hiq.

on ECA forum someone tested about 10 sets of tweeters.
Their #1 choice was the OW1 & OW2, and then factor price it was a no brainer.

However they did talk about the different characteristics, the writer loved the ribbons for their clarity etc.
From memory also Rainbow CAL28, very smooth and just listenable for ever.

My vote Brax HT1, much better than Rainbow CAL26, should be too, and then I got them cheap too!

I was looking at adding some GS200 Aurum Cantus ribbons to my system not too long ago when considering the gear to use. I have them in my home speakers (Leisure II SE) and love their extended, natural, airy sound. Gotta love the sound of a good ribbon.
Damn deep though!!!