I want CES 2011 NOW!!!! New Product Rumours

[RGA]

John and Adam

The thing with the driver materials is the companies out to make a buck need to differentiate themselves from the pack. The driver itself may in fact be technically superb but it doesn't mean that the sound will be anything other than fatiguing over long listening sessions. Kevlar was written about and people found them to be highly problematic beaming whatever. but they don't sound good in music listening applications IMO. Driver integration is not just a crossover but a sonic character that the driver itself puts out. Because a given woofer may put out 200hz so will four others but they don't all sound alike doing it and that is one reason to consider materials. At some point the tweeter hands over to a woofer and if the materials are dissimilar then a good ear or even average ears will at some point hear that handoff. On a showroom floor a speaker like the Monitor Audio designs with dissimilar drivers can generate a wow factor but sooner or later that dissimilarity will creep in IME. Which might be why the founder of Monitor Audio doesn't own them himself!!!

Someone read a graph and it looked good so build them and have lots of advertising on the cool new tweeters. Metal, titanium, tube tapering, ribbon, circular ribbon, stretched ribbon, stretched metal, Platinum, Diamond - and it's oh so "cool" - it's a shame they almost always get outclassed entirely by speakers using boring old silk domes and paper. A good plasma in Acapellas or Manger flat cones, field Coils have sounded good but the costs. I have never been convinced by a speaker using a ribbon tweeter. Actually I've never been convinced by a ribbon doing anything. I've liked two recently - Sonist and Audio Zen but even here I kind of feel it could be better with a regular boring old silk dome. The added zing sssss (detail) would be removed and it would like integrated better with the woofers. Although I liked them at the show quite a lot. (but then a show is a 15-45minute listen and then on to the next).

[Ajani]

John and Adam

The thing with the driver materials is the companies out to make a buck need to differentiate themselves from the pack. The driver itself may in fact be technically superb but it doesn't mean that the sound will be anything other than fatiguing over long listening sessions. Kevlar was written about and people found them to be highly problematic beaming whatever. but they don't sound good in music listening applications IMO. Driver integration is not just a crossover but a sonic character that the driver itself puts out. Because a given woofer may put out 200hz so will four others but they don't all sound alike doing it and that is one reason to consider materials. At some point the tweeter hands over to a woofer and if the materials are dissimilar then a good ear or even average ears will at some point hear that handoff. On a showroom floor a speaker like the Monitor Audio designs with dissimilar drivers can generate a wow factor but sooner or later that dissimilarity will creep in IME. Which might be why the founder of Monitor Audio doesn't own them himself!!!

Someone read a graph and it looked good so build them and have lots of advertising on the cool new tweeters. Metal, titanium, tube tapering, ribbon, circular ribbon, stretched ribbon, stretched metal, Platinum, Diamond - and it's oh so "cool" - it's a shame they almost always get outclassed entirely by speakers using boring old silk domes and paper. A good plasma in Acapellas or Manger flat cones, field Coils have sounded good but the costs. I have never been convinced by a speaker using a ribbon tweeter. Actually I've never been convinced by a ribbon doing anything. I've liked two recently - Sonist and Audio Zen but even here I kind of feel it could be better with a regular boring old silk dome. The added zing sssss (detail) would be removed and it would like integrated better with the woofers. Although I liked them at the show quite a lot. (but then a show is a 15-45minute listen and then on to the next).

I agree with your general view that dissimilar driver materials are not likely to integrate well... That has been my experience with combinations such as aluminum tweeters and kevlar midranges... I think it is often just a case of looking at specs and tossing in exotic materials...

I think, however, that your decision to apply that theory to Monitor Audio is way off base.. Monitor Audio uses the sames C-CAM (Metal drivers) from woofer to tweeter... The only distinction in the tweeters was adding a thin layer of Gold over the already metal driver... In the Platinum line they use the C-CAM material to create a ribbon tweeter... So it is not a case of using completely different driver materials that don't integrate...

One of the reasons I like Revel and also Monitor Audio is because of using similar materials for all drivers... I believe that we too often blame crossover design for the inherent incompatibility of different driver materials...