Successful implimentations of ribbon tweeters?

Ha..

I asked lately Aleksandar from RAAL: Ha..you cannot make me a pair of ribbons showing me a 109db/w/m efficiency at 20K... Bweehhh!

14 days later he asked me to come to Zajecar as he had something for me to hear.

Aleks gave me these and

My God...yes they are yelling out what I asked for.

If they sound good? You bet.

Gerner

 

Ah! Mr RAAL san

Hope you've been keeping well Gerner. I like the new toys. Looks like three 70-10 stuck together!

 

Oh Shin San..

Yeah..almost and then with with an array of neo flux guiders behind the ribbon for max tesla in the gap. Awesome.
Very nice rool off. Extremely friendly to implement in a 110db/w/m D'Appolito monster.

Gerner

 

Just had to look out this thread to see how long it had taken: only seven months!
A pair of SD Acoustics SD1s are now installed at home. Not a name that came up in this thread but rather liking them so far.
They use a Visaton tweeter which is no longer produced, but assuming the radiation pattern is not hugely dissimilar to the current model do these plots indicate that the potentially forward nature of some ribbons that was referred to earlier, drops off markedly when off axis in the vertical plane?

 

Hi Coda

I hope you are enjoying 'my' SD1s .... here's a pic of one of them when they were installed at my place, baring its all (and sharing the limelight with a Bowers Active One speaker - the SD1 is the big one ). I must confess that I really liked them.

 

Yes Jerry they are doing fine. I had a long chat with (almost certainly) the person who made this very set of speakers. One of the consequences is that I now have them tri-wired - I use Van Damme so for an extra 30 pounds I thought it worth a try. I actually get a lot less bass and mid than in Frank's room, there's very little reinforcement from anything around so they sound nicely open and clear but could do with a little more 'filling out' to my ears; I think the extra wiring did help here. When I have a minute I've also got to try them with some spikes.
At the moment they are sounding best at my nearer seating position - about 3m - not quite so good at 6m, hence the interest in the off axis characteristics of the tweeters.

 

Oh dear. That doesn't seem so good to me. Have you fooled around with their distance from the back wall? With the floor-firing bass port closer proximity to a wall boundary may be the right way to go.

I suspect the SD1s are quite dependent on the amp driving them as well. The guy I bought them from had them driven by one of those huge AV receiver thingies .... and the bass power, depth and slam was quite something. I certainly never matched that performance in my system - mind you, I'm not sure that I'd want to! - but there is certainly bass power and authority to be had from these speakers. System synergy, that's the key!

I tried tri-wiring, but with inferior cabling comapred to my standard single wire set, and the sound was definitely inferior to my ears - so tri-wiring certainly isn't a panacea in itself.

 

Back wall is all books, yes I have been playing with the distance but obviously it's not a solid wall so doesn't reinforce in the same way. They are also a good metre away from side walls which is enforced by the room layout. All this 'well away from boundaries' is usually a good thing IME (and should work for these speakers I gather) but there are other things to try.
The spike holes are a bit wobbly, don't know if the threads have come loose inside - did you ever use spikes?
The other thing that was recommended to me was to take off the MDF stands and get something more solid made up - might not be a bad idea even if it makes no difference to the sound.
My understanding is that they were intended as a match for valves and that may well shift the balance enough.
Using single wire I thought the different binding posts certainly made a difference and given I'm using cheap cable anyway tri-wiring was cheap to try.

 

No, I never tried spikes so didn't know the sockets were dodgy.

I did use 3 metal cones per speaker - 3 being more stable than 4, that is generally my preferred option. Helped a lot in tightening up the bass in my place.

They certainly work well with valves - I used the Leak Stereo 20 you saw at Frank's with excellent results. Also worked well with Quad II amps I had on loan for a week, gained a fair bit of warmth and tonal colour at the expense of a bit of rez. By the way you describe the SD1s in your room, the Quads (or similar)could be a good move.

 

I've got the place to myself for a couple of hours this afternoon so the grills are off and the volume is up; currently listening to the Grieg/Sibelius Karita Mattila disc that I had with me and, being realistic, it's the best I have ever heard it sound.
Whether I've just got accustomed to them or whether they take a while to settle or whatever I don't know. The room is neither warm (sound wise) or resonant so I'm probably looking for a bit of colour from an amp.
The reason I got the Quad 909 in the first place was it's reputation for even handedness; it's certainly that at present. Thus far I have been after transparency, I'd like to keep all of that but with a touch more 'ampleness' to the sound.

 

jerry, how old is your sig?

 

err ... it's up to date, I think. It does need constant revision, though!

Why do you ask?

 

Heh heh - I tol' you the SD1s was good'uns. You can send the extra £1,000 that they are clearly worth by cheque, that'll be OK.

Must admit I was impressed by the Mattila CD when I heard it at Frank's. It's on order!

 

I dont like ribbon tweeters
Only silk or ceramic domes for me.

 

I wouldn't make a rash judgment like that, as there are good and bad examples of all the technologies.

 

Slightly off-track, but I thought it was interesting a PA system manufacturer has employed ribbons.

http://www.alconsaudio.com/site/index.html

What do you think Simon?

 

I heard some Robson Burlingtons - they use a ribbon tweeter and were very good.
I thought (as has been said in this thread) that perhaps they only suited accoustic or 'plinky plonky' stuff - so the music was change for faster, more crowded pop music - still just as impressive!
Not strataspheric pricing either. (IIRC about £4k)