Successful implimentations of ribbon tweeters?

My own experience of hearing ATC's at my house parallels your own 'anubisgrau'; although well integrated I really didn't think the treble offered the kind of transparency that the mid and bass offered - unfortunately, ribbons don't really fall within the kind of power handling expectations ATC have of their speakers (they are supposed to be working on an 'in-house' designed high frequency driver).

 

Hi Shin, where are the measurements for those tweeters on Zaph's site? I can't find a link to them, though I see your graph was in his 'temp' folder. Cheers, simon

 

See his blog. There's a few other interesting drivers tests in there too.

 

Interesting stuff.

I know I went into the Dali room at Bristol but have no recollection of the sound in there, maybe it was just busy and I didn't stay. Is the idea with these that you have both a ribbon and a cone covering the same range?

Back to the original point about the Rountree and Ypsillon rooms: the thing I responded to was the depth they seemed to give to the soprano voice. Whilst a soprano and a mezzo soprano cover much the same range a mezzo generally has a darker sound; this slight darkness is also present in a lot of straight soprano voices - though not to such a degree - and bringing this out, I think, balances the perceived shrillness of the voice. The last time I heard something similar was in Martin's Impulse H2 set up.
Could this also be to do with where the speaker is crossed over?
If a ribbon requires a slightly higher point could the bit of voice I'm talking about shift to the lower driver?

The other thing I'd not given much thought to is that, in general, very little of the retail cost of speakers goes on quality drivers - are there exceptions to this?

 

Not really, the retail cost mainly goes to the dealer and the distributor.

 

Another ribbon manufacturer with seemingly good feedback:

http://www.raalribbon.com/

So, can anyone recommend a diy design using one of the high end ribbons plus cone bass?

 

late to this discussion..:

Interesting - I liked the Rountree, it reminded me very much of the Impulse H6s I had before the H2s! Ridiculous price though.

Perhaps not; I'd expect the mezzo-soprano's power resides rather below most crossovers, in the 150-300hz area roughly(the H2 midhorn covers 800Hz - 4Khz BTW)

(Robert - Listening for these sorts of cues, and 'squillo' as discussed on your visit, has helped enormously in judging the voicing of the modded CD player. There definitely was a mid-emphasis thing going on then that was easily fixed ...by properly compensating a single voltage regulator.)

 

not necessarily high end but turned these up so far:

visaton

wilmslow-audio
using a Fostex

and

iplacoustics
using a Fountek

 

...you didn't venture into the Ypsillon room then?

 

NO. Quickly tired of the whole thing, so my borther & I ran for the haven of the Severnshed and downed Mojitos and Zombies until the show receeded to a distant memory... which happened quite quickly!

 

I had Icon 6 for almost 2 years and one of the huge advantages towards their competition was that beautifully sounding tweeter. And there was definitely no distortion, what so ever.

 

I wonder that so far there was no mentioning of, and this is especially intended for you gentlemen from USA, the circular ribbon tweeters from San Diego. Of course, I mean Acoustic Zen circular ribbon.
My HI-FI vocabulary is very poor, so I give you something from the man himself, Mr. Robert Lee:

My circular ribbon tweeter design, unlike a traditional dome or cone tweeter, presents a purely resistive impedance that's completely linear in the audio range. It also has an essentially linear phase response, which contributes to an immediate and precise response to any transients in a complicated music signal. This dramatically reduces distortion and coloration.


I am using the thinnest diaphragm possible, a 0.01 millimeter Kapton diaphragm. That's just about weightless, with a 95% covered aluminum circle of conductors across the entire vibrating area positioned between super strong Neodymium magnets. Some people use metal ribbons which can result in very harsh HF response. Kapton is not only extremely light, it is also heat resistant, hence the thermal behavior of the voice coil will not translate into audible distortions. My tweeter's larger circular membrane not only provides much higher power handling and a wider frequency response, it also eliminates the offsets between horizontal and vertical dispersion that are common with narrow ribbons.

 

Mr Robert Lee is often being criticized for too much hocus pocus in his products.

 

From memory: speakers £25,000 - integrated £18,000 - you get the idea

 

May be so, but:
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/acousticzen/adagio.html
or,
http://www.stereotimes.com/speak081006.shtml
or,
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue31/adagio_az.htm
or,
http://www.audiophilia.com/hardware/Loudspeakers/reviews/adagio.htm

 

I have to say it is a nice sounding speaker. Not sure about it costing nearly £4k, though, especially since it is a similar price in US$.

How much were the Rountree, then?

 

5K25 IIRC.

Whereas the finest Mojito outside Havana runs about £4.50 at the SevernShed; it's no contest

 

And the Mojitos sounded better, if I remember correctly, which clearly I don't but I put that down to the zombies. Either way they made the pain of the whole 'show thing' go away most pleasantly so.

 

150-300hz is pretty much the octave below middle c to just above, ie the bottom end of the mezzo/soprano range but I've no idea whether this is what contributes the darkness to the voice or whether it is the harmonics well below it. Which ever way you look at it it's going to be the bass driver that covers it but will the ribbon be operating from that much higher up in the upper ranges and thereby missing the painful bit? I don't know which bit of the soprano voice we perceive as hardness and whether it is within the fundamental range of the voice or not (ie all done by about 1.5Khz), but in a two way it's presumably plausible that the bass driver could get up that far?

 

Many thanks for that, Coda II. Does anyone here know of how I might go about getting a one-off design using e.g. those Raven units?