Which kind of tweeter WORKS??

LittleCar_w/12s

Ok here goes... I got no responce from the home-audio half....

For my sound system for my computer, I have a custom 12" sub, front speakers by Altec, and a dipole film tweeter. I just recently dug up the old dipole and set it up. nnedless to say it realy enlightens my PC music, as well as being omnidirectional, allowing it to be a whole room system from a corner when needed.

My car was recently vandalised, and I am re-staging my entire system in it. I had a set of 3-way 6x9's, destroyed now. I pulled the pole piece off, which consists of a 2.5" sealed high-freq stiff-cone driver, and a metal-peizo dome tweeter.

As a test, I hooked up the unit to the amp powering my dipole... decent sound, but the dipole still overly outperforms above AND below the stiff-cone high. I also disconnected the high, and only drove the tweeter. NOTHING! the tweeter seems to be a peice of aesthetics when it comes to output. I cranked up the highs of the eq, as well as the amp... still nothing, whilst the dipole was screaming along!

Here's My question: While I am set on dipoles for home, they are relatively large for where I would put them in the car (the post where the seatbelts for the front are mounted). I want to use small coned set, high and tweet, but... Is there any real output from a peizo dome-tweeter? They are the predominant tweeter on the car-stereo market.

What would you reccomend, as I am an enthusiast for HQ, not SPL in my car, I only want to install the best, once. Is there a better dome-tweeter? Is there a film-tweeter capable of withstanding the SPL in a car?

Thanks for the help yall -Jerry

neomagus00

bump for this... it sounds cool, and i'm curious

Jstas

Um, if there was no sound coming from teh speaker, first thing I would do, rather than dismiss it is pull out my multi-meter and see if there is a current across the leads of teh speaker. No current = broken speaker. Don't just dimiss all piezo tweeters because one you have might be broken. Tweeters are typically the first thing to go one a 2 or 3 way speaker if the driver set is being over-powered.

As far as the "Is there a film-tweeter capable of withstanding the SPL in a car" comment/question, get real is all I have to say. The difference between a home speaker and a car speaker is not in the characteristics or power handling or performance of the speaker. The difference is in construction, resistance to the elements and durabilty. For all intents and purposes, car speakers are fundamentally the same as home speakers. There os no such thing as a "film-tweeter capable of withstanding the SPL in a car" because there is no difference between a film tweeter for your car and a film tweeter for your home.

The main reason you don't see film tweeters in car is acoustics. Cars are small, tight spaces and there is no room for the sound to expand. Consequently, film tweeters and other magnetic planar technology speakers do not do well in a car. Not only do they have poor imaging due to the abundance of non-symmetrical shapes and hard, reflective surfaces but they are often over-come by the white noise generated by road noise, wind noise and general automotive operation.

You can try anything you like. I do not see your results being much better than say a decent quality piezo tweeter. If you want the kind of sound you get from linear tweeter in your car, find a good silk dome tweeter like Polk Audio used in the dB/DX series of speakers. I think the MOMO components use a silk dome tweeter too. They are much more versatile and forgiving of an installation than a ribbon/film/planar tweeter is and they hold up to the elements better.

LittleCar_w/12s

Actually I had tried the ultimeter test.. checks out at 4ohm roughly. That should be right. They did produce a little sound, but just barely. I was simply asking, because I know that b/c they are part of a sony 3-way setup, they have a good chance of being mainly aesthetic, and not that great.

As for "Is there a film-tweeter capable of withstanding the SPL in a car" ? I was talkin about if I had them in a sealed enclosure, would the pressure over-flex the film and cause un-due wear. This is keeping in mind that in home audio, these things sit on top of the main drivers, as in my car they will be in the middle of the car, essentially in the direct path of a high pressure low HZ vibration. In home audio, they are a bit out of the way of that.

Aside from all that... You reccomend silk dome tweeters? I am not certain what the freq response on those are, I'll look them up, but in your experience, how are they for performance and directionality?

Jstas

Tweeters in an enclosure will not do anything for you. They are directionaly and typically operate in a frequency range where enclosures will offer dubious benefits at best.

Just because you can't hear teh sound doesn't mean it isn't producing any. Most tweeters will be able to play well above the human ear's capability. The human audible range is typically 20-20,000 Hz. some people can hear as high as 24,000 Hz and others can hear 18 Hz signals. But they are exceptions to the rule. In alot of cases, companies will take cheap speakers and tag on a "super" tweeter to boost the high end range. When thier normal tweeter will only reach about 18,000 Hz, it looks rather lack-luster against a speaker with a range of 22,000 Hz for it's upper end. So tage on a "super" tweeter that plays from maybe 15,000 Hz up to 28,000 Hz and sell it with a range of like 30 Hz to 28,000 Hz as a selling point. It doesn't mean it isn't doing anything though.

As far as my experience, I listen to silk domes everyday and they, IMO, are the best material to make a conventional dome tweeters out of. A better tweeter is a magnetic planar like what you see from Magnepan or an induction tweeter like you see in ribbon tweeters. They are typicaly the most clear, accurate and natural sounding tweeter out there but they need an evironment pretty damn close to ideal to sound good. Hence the reason you don't see that technology in cars as much. Piezo tweeters can be good but they are the least musical tweeter out there. The only ones I have seen that are decent are the piezo tweeters in compression horns from companies like Klipsch and even then, only the cheapest models use piezo tweeters. I think ID has component sets with compression horns too. While I haven't heard those, I can say that compression horn tweeters tend to be bright and vibrant. Not always the best for music but perfect for movies. Very few speakers out there use compression horns and pull it off well. Only two companies pop into my head right now and that is Altec Lansing and Electro-Voice and both companies have not made consumer level products for some time now. Klipsch did pull off compression horns well too but I always found them too bright and fatiguing to listen to. If you want to use a piezo or a compression horn tweeter, it is best have a seperate midrange speaker that is capable of entending into the 10,000-15,000 Hz range to help smooth out the transition from tweeter to midrange. The reason being is the brightness and power with which a piezo tweeter can belt out sound. It's response curve drop off drastically, quickly and if you don't have a crossover point high enough, it's glaringly obvious. But if you want loud, piezo/compression horns are the way to go.

AustinKP

One of the good benefits of my recent speaker-listening days, was that I got to hear the Polk and the Infinity components side-by-side. The infinities had the Titanium tweets while the polks had the silk domes. The infinity tweeters were just as loud, but sounded much harsher, to the point where I could see them really hurting my ears at volume. On the other hand, the Polk silk dome tweets were very crisp and clear. I have them in my car. I love how they will get very loud if I want them to, but they are very crisp and clean - silky smooth, if you will. It's absolutely incredible to hear the difference between them and a stock stereo in someone else's car. I couldn't be happier with the Polk tweeters.

MacLeod

I hear ya. I owned a set of Infinity Referece speakers before my Momos. The Infinitys sounded great on Tori Amos CDs (about the only thing I listen to without heavy guitars) but once I put in some crunch it turned bad. Rush was the worst. It made 'Test for Echo' sound like it was playing thru a piece of tin. The more you turned it up the worse it got. I tried all kinds of settings and it just didnt matter. I got the Momo speakers and within the first 10 seconds of listening to them it was an instantaneous aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh.

Bottom line: cant go wrong with silk tweeters!