Sorry Chris just from what I can tell - all the speakers from the following using metal tweeters don't sound to me like the integrate their drivers properly and thus there is either stridency or a fall off or some other annoyance to me. The best to me has been from B&W and JM Labs from what I have heard.

The following list I just posted in regards to somehting else so some won't have metal tweeters just brands I have heard.

B&W, Paradigm, Totem, Castle, Mission, Wharfedale, KEF, JBL, Energy, Mirage, Reference 3a, Klipsh, Jamo, Sonus Faber, Hales, ML, Mordaunt Short, Tannoy, Linn, Vandersteen, Cabasse, Legacy, Polk, Athena, Cerwin Vega, Acoustic Research, Thiel, Acoustech Labs, Boston Acoustics, JM Labs, Dynaudio, Gershman Acoustics...

And that's the list of the top of my Head - though it's probably close to complete.


I made the assumption(Don't do this I know) that when Audio Note sounded very cohesive from top to bottom and the others didn't, that their reasoning must be correct.

Basically I made an observation - then when reading their site several weeks after owning them - and talking to their owner on another forum that was the rationale he provided.

I also asked this of him on a forum:

As to the drivers, they are both from Vifa in Denmark, the tweeter is a highly modified version of the TD19, no ferro fluid, no damping and a special ferrite magnet, the woofer is also a Vifa which is a derivative of the original standard driver.
What makes the K do what it does is three things,
1.) Cabinet shape
2.) The choice of complimentary sounding drivers, i. e. the drivers have the same sonic signature across the band, so when the sound of an instrument travels from bottom to top it retains its characteristics. This is an area most sadly neglected by speaker designers these days.
3.) We set each crossover up under dynamic conditions using an in-house test set-up.
AN-K/SPe which is a fully veneered speaker cabinet with birch plywood front and back and an MDF wrap.