Super tweeters

Dear Hifi Sifus,

Need some feed back to those of you have tried the super tweeters from the likes of MURATAS, JAS AUDIO Etc...

I understand its a plug and play connected to the speakers.Any opinion on super tweeters? I'm looking at getting myself one in the near futures.

Thanks

some shops at Jalan Pasar are selling some cheap & very good sounding supertweeters.

After I heard the super tweeters in play, I cant get it off the shelf. the missing part of the HIFI is now appearing on the system. I am using the Eminence APT series and it is a plug and play. The cross over uses Jensen Oil cap. To sum it up, presence, airy and most importantly, clear.

bass better after added super tweeter

i use the jas audio super tweeter at my tannoy gold 15", after that
the sound is very diffrent like in front at singer. sometime i also used at other speaker also.

Correct me if I am wrong. Is there any specific min requirement in kHz for a tweeter to qualify as suopertweeter?

According to wiki :

A super tweeter is a speaker driver designed to produce ultra high frequencies. Its purpose is to recreate a larger, more realistic sound field. Super tweeters are usually found in Hi-Fi speaker systems and home theatre systems. They are used to emphasize the sound from the regular tweeters by reproducing frequencies (within the threshold of human hearing) above the tweeter's physical capabilities.

Since human can only hear up to 20kHz, I doubt any tweeter that can produce beyond this will be called Supertweeter, right?

My current speakers are using this



It is single 1" (25mm) Soft dome ScanSpeak "AirCirc". It is claimed to cost about USD200 per piece.

Yes, it indeed sound very good. No pronounce harshness. The clarity and importantly you feel that the soundstaging seems to be better. Placebo? Whatever. I am enjoying it by the day

is there a diff between super tweeter & horn tweeter?
coz horn tweeters also can cost a bomb!

once i had this philips hi end tweeters, it cost like rm800 something for a pair at that time ( in the 90s)
a friend gave me & told that it needs to be recoiled, at that time i wasnt in to it, so gave him back

the friend said u can even hear the hissing breathing sound from a female vocals

Hi M7,
regarding the super tweeters u find in Pasar road,
how much they cost and are they really good? i frequented pasar road quite regulary but seldom sees any quality stuffs.
I once see ribbon tweeters cost rm 10+pc only but it's very
light and plasticky. i wonder how it sounds.

ya loh i see it b4 too are it sound good as some major super tweeters in the hi fi company ?

i am not convinced that supertweeters can improve sound quality.

at the kl av show there was someone (i cannot recall the brand) selling supertweeters which you could simply connect to the tweeter terminals and they made the sound worse.

human beings are supposed to be able to hear up to 20kHz, so can anyone hear the supertweeters at work beyond 20kHz?

the Red Book standard for CDs state that data from 20Hz to 22.05kHz are contained in the CDs. so is there any signal beyond 22.05 kHz? some supertweeters claim frequency response up to 35kHz.

also some new speakers have normal tweeters with frequency response up to 25kHz-30kHz. is it necessary to use supertweeters with such speakers?

to answer htkaki's question about the definition of supertweeters, generally a supertweeter is one that claims frequency response beyond the usual 20kHz. supertweeters can go up to 30kHz-35kHz.

btw, found this article abt hypersonic effect :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_effect

i am not convinced that supertweeters can improve sound quality.

supertweeter can improve sound. I tried in my system. It really works. I am using HPM-40 Pioneer ribbon super tweeter. Can't hear
with ear but sound improve significantly after added in.

wabun,

1) if the CD contains no signal above 22.05kHz, what is the sound that is produced by the supertweeter beyond 22.05kHz? if there is sound, what is the source of the sound? some kind of super high frequency distortion created by the amp perhaps?

2) what is possible is that you are hearing the supertweeter boosting the high frequency performance of the tweeter in your speaker in the frequencies that a human ear can hear. remember that many tweeters roll off before 20kHz. manufacturers claim response up to 20kHz but in reality some lower-end tweeters start rolling off from as low as 15kHz and at 20kHz, the response may be 3dB to 6dB down. if that is the case, your supertweeter could be filling up the rolled-off highs and that is the difference that you can hear.

anyone out there with other views?

I agree, the super tweeters served as an reinforcement maybe,
so u hear differences/improvement.

after added super tweeter, the bass is better, the midrange improved. and the air, timbre..all improve. my spk is JBL-LE14C
bi with Isophon Stereolette and added Pioneer HPM-40 ribbon
super tweeter. I know you guys concern on human hearing range
as an engineer, I recognize the theory too, however, as an audiophile, I will differ. Coz I really experience it with my paper ear.

sounds bullshitting for supertweeter improving bass? haha..you guy just dropby Ipoh, I show you this theory works.and maths or science cannot clarify it.

save for theory, what I found supertweeter improve the bass department and give back the sound that I lack - clarity.

well my supertweeter comes with Jensen oil capacitor.

Any owner who tried connecting only the super tweeters n test how it sounds? at what frequency range it produce(audible by ears)? than only can tell at what particular frequency range it works/helps.

htkaki,
the scanspeak airclrc that you have is actually classified as a tweeter even though it can go up to 30kHz.

btw,

can anyone out there explain how a supertweeter - producing sounds from 20kHz up to as high as 70kHz - can somehow improve bass and mid performance?

I think i understand why some suggested it also improve bass sound.
It remainds me when i was in my teenage building lots of hi-fi Diy speakers,"Pasar road grade" of course. Ok i am no expert here n do not have any formal training in electronics b4, my opinion is solely base on my experience.
Obviously the lower frequency register is out side the super tweeter's range, but still you can hear difference in the bass?
i think not only will it affect the bass but the entire bandwidth.
Adding additional drivers/speakers (woofer/mid/tweeters)
will change your speaker's impedance (Ohm), if your speaker is rated at 8 Ohm, you add a tweeter 8 Ohm in parallel, then your system will become 4 Ohm. And the load factor of your super tweeters may affect the power, since your amplifier will now need to feed the tweeters as well.
And at last the built-in crossover for the super tweeters will somehow change character of the existing speakers x-over.
If not mistaken this call 2nd or 3th order x-overs when connected
in parallel.
So i believe u will definitely hear differences but for the better or not is a different story.

not all system improved with super tweeter, my fren's Tannoy Gold 15inch did not improve by adding supertweeter,sound bright and edgy.bad sound. but mine JBL improved after added super tweeter.But the super tweeter I used is ribbon type, with a matching transformer as impedance matcher. one can hardly hear anything from it, but if you put a capacitance meter to it, you can hear the high pitch sound. super tweeter is not the jalan pasar horn type which meant for loud not quality sound.

anyone got crossover diagram for jbl 2402h super tweeter?
i got 1 pair of jbl 2402h tweeter but don know how to make the crossover. tq

anyone got crossover diagram for jbl 2402h super tweeter?

try this..
http://nodevice.in/images/sm/big/2008_09_30_07_31_29/47036_1.jpg
but of coz 077 is far better choice.

wabun wrote:I know you guys concern on human hearing range
as an engineer, I recognize the theory too, however, as an audiophile, I will differ. Coz I really experience it with my paper ear.

Actually this has got to do with the sampling rate - human hearing range is secondary. CD sampling rate is 44.1kHz, and it can only encode signals up to 22kHz. Anything else above is noise. In fact the CD player has a low pass filter that filters out everything above 20kHz.

Similarly DVD audio has a limit to 24kHz with a sampling rate of 48kHz. The limit is more like 22kHz in reality.

Unless you are listening to a lot of SACD - whatever improvements you hear is probably due to something else rather than the high frequency resolution.

u come to listen urself la. paper talk no use. if everything on paper then a computer sound card + china made amp sounds heaven oredi. I saw China made amp declare THD up to 0.0025% before.
and a soundcard digitally process data as loseless. sychronized clock somemore. but how it sound ? terrible.

wabun,

It has got nothing to do with with theories or specifications.

It is simply that there is a low pass filter in the CD players that filter out everything above 20kHz. In other words there is no signals whatsoever above 20kHz coming out of a CD player!


Take a look at this:
http://jthz.com/mp3/CD-44100Hz.htm

As the frequency of an incoming signal increases, the shorter period
will be represented by fewer samples, until, at 20 kHz,
the reproduced waveform is represented as a square wave.
In order to eliminate these types of higher-frequency
output distortions and to preserve the lossless nature of sampling,
another low-pass filter is placed at the output of the device.
This has the effect of blocking the upper harmonic components
of a 20-kHz square wave, leaving only the original
undistorted waveform.

before you really experience it, you won't believe it..until u hear it yourself one day then you will believe your ear.

I am not disputing you on that. What I am saying is that whatever you are hearing are NOT frequencies above 20kHz.

wabun wrote:before you really experience it, you won't believe it..until u hear it yourself one day then you will believe your ear.

But then, a 32 years old can discern high frequencies with much clarity than a 49 years old!

tycham wrote:But then, a 32 years old can discern high frequencies with much clarity than a 49 years old!

The point is that - if you are listening to CD - there is nothing - I say that again - absolute nothing - above 20 kHz. The CD player will NOT output anything above 20kHz at all. There is a low pass filter at the output stage that filters away everything above 20kHz in CD player.

It doesn't matter how old or how young you are. If you are hearing something - you have got to be imagining it.

If the position ( away from wall + height + room size ) of speakers are correctly plus the room treatment with bass trap / diffusor / absorber , U can get the actual performance of your speakers with wide range from low bass to high frequency , without above supporting , some frquencies cant be clearly heard becos of sound overlapping and reflecting.

(Sorry.. I cant help but to go out of topic for one post.)

Yoh.. We have a guinness world record here..
Robinlcc is 1958 years old leh..

tycham wrote:
But then, a 32 years old can discern high frequencies with much clarity than a 49 years old!

Age doesn't matter. It depends on individual health condition. theoretically yes.but not absolutely.

One of my friend at the age of 65 is using 3 pairs of super tweeters,Tannoy, Murata & Decca to match with bookshelf speakers.

lavender wrote:
One of my friend at the age of 65 is using 3 pairs of super tweeters,Tannoy, Murata & Decca to match with bookshelf speakers.

3 pairs??
So much emphasis on high freq..

car o scope wrote:

lavender wrote:
One of my friend at the age of 65 is using 3 pairs of super tweeters,Tannoy, Murata & Decca to match with bookshelf speakers.

3 pairs??
So much emphasis on high freq..

Probably already hard of hearing the highs!

Maybe we need to add 1 pair every 10 years.

It's 3 pairs of super tweeters matching 3 different pairs of speakers. He listens to each speaker system randomly. What I mean is that he's using super tweeter to obtain the airy sound and depth.

I think u guys have misunderstood my statement. He's 65 years old and yet he's still able to enjoy the effect provided by the super tweeter.

Aiyoh.. On 3 different pairs of speakers hor... Say lar earlier..

lavender,

yr friend has three pairs of supertweeters...does it mean they sound different with different speakers?

i'm very puzzled here cos if the cd has no signal above 22.05kHz and if cd players filter off signals above 20kHz, what is reproduced by the supertweeters?

Assuming there is no sound at all, why is it that three different supertweeters sound different with three pairs of speakiers?
assuming there is sound from the supertweeters, what is the source of the sound?

can anyone out there explain?

sflam wrote:i'm very puzzled here cos if the cd has no signal above 22.05kHz and if cd players filter off signals above 20kHz, what is reproduced by the supertweeters?

I would like to propose that the 'super' tweeters are boasting the frequency range below 20kHz. In other words, it is acting as an 'extra' to the usual tweeter.

BTW - the low pass filter of a CD player is set at 20kHz - and there is a sharp drop from there to zero at 22.5kHz. It has to cut off completely at 22.5kHz, because above it are very ugly aliasing noises. It is a very narrow cut-off window for the low pass filter indeed.

The aliasing noises are created because of the digital nature of the signal. From one sample to the next is a ladder step jump - which corresponds to a square wave. Square waves contains a lot of high energy odd harmonics. These are very ugly and very non-musical noises.

So technically - the frequency response of a CD player is only 20kHz.

http://jn.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/83/6/3548

Which explained why the bass is also boosted and the quality of the treble is enhanced.

tycham,

if you were to read the research report, you will discover that the researchers had to store the sound from a gamelan band in sacd format.

sacd format stores signals from 20Hz to 50kHz.

it is impossible to do a test on the hypersonic effect with a cd which stores signals from 20Hz to only 22.05 kHz.

if someone plays sacd and uses a supertweeter and claims to hear a difference, well i guess i have to accept it as truth since there will be some signal up to 50kHz.

the problem is - people are playing a cd and using a supertweeter and claiming that it is changing the sound when the cd player cuts off all signals above 20kHz. in other words, the supertweeter is generating no sound at all above 20kHz, yet some people claim to hear some difference.

Another factor to consider is the frequency response of the recording microphones.

All response graph of microphones I see has serious roll-off beyond around 18kHz. I have not see many graphs - so I would be interested to know if there is any microphones that go beyond 20kHz.

Some examples:
Microphone response graph

If the microphone can't record it - it is useless to talk about anything down the chain.

Wee, I found one microphone that is amazingly straight all the way to 20kHz.

http://www.leonaudio.com.au/freqplt5.gif

but the graph did not go beyond 20kHz. It will have to roll-off somewhere, and I would be interested to know at what frequency is.

Does anybody knows the frequency response of microphones used in typical recording studios?

for the benefit of forumers, here is the link to the japanese research team's report on hypersonic effect.

details of recording equipment, sampling rate and microphone used are included. the microphone used was the B&K4135 1/4 inch condenser microphone, which has a flat free field frequency response of up to 100 kHz.

http://www.icad.org/websiteV2.0/Conferences/ICAD2002/proceedings/Oohashi.pdf

Yeah there were some reviewers who swear by them. My view is it's more psychological than anything. Yep human ears at the very perfect can hear up to 20 kHz max, period. Less you have dogs and cats enjoying your hi fi with you then it makes sense, pun intended. Then again depending on whether your source exceeds 20 kHz. IMHO they're bloody waste of time. Cheers.

Cooltube - I actually do not doubt that the high frequency sounds above 20kHz can have an effect on us.

However there are a few things to consider before one rush out and install a super tweeter to one's speaker:

- There is NO signals above 20kHz coming out of a CD player.

- The recording microphones used. I remembered reading about the highly irregular frequency response of microphones used in the early recording studios. I have my doubt that many early recordings will reach 20kHz. I also have reservations that microphones used nowadays will go much higher than 20kHz.

So unless one is listening to SACD (or DVD Audio) - the super tweeter will only be enhancing the existing tweeter. That is not altogether bad, because the human hearing is highly not linear.
In order to hear the full frequency range we would need to give the bass and treble a significant boast especially when listening at low level.

But for that - an amplifier with a tilt control would be much more effective. Installing a supert weeter will very likely spoil the sonic signature of the speaker, rather than enhancing it.