My rant about tweeters

[barney91]

Why don't you just run the tweets of the crossovers? I have the same speakers and they sound great. I'm only giving each door around 50rms

[Jessica]

Great to you may not be great to me. I will give the crossovers a try, but i doubt they are better than running active.

[IH8PunkRok]

also aiming them at the windshield can sometimes bite you in the ass

chances are the painful peaks you hear are due to the reflection angle of the glass

have you tried aiming them elsewhere?

[n8ball2013]

it cracks me up seeing people with 3 pairs of mids and 3 pairs of supertweeters, it's overkill. i'm gonna be running 3 pairs of 8's seeing 150 watts a piece and 1 pair of supertweeters seeing about 60 watts a piece and they will be plenty loud enough.

depends on the install. a single 300 watt woofer yes it woul dbe overkill. For someone who has 4 15s walled off and over 10k its not.

[Jessica]

It's the same issue regardless. Even near the kick panels pointing straight across the car i get "essy-ness" It's definitely centered around 15khz. I've tried pointing right at me, at windshield across the car, it stays the same.

[zxsonnyxz]

I have an entry level Focal set with alu tweets in the a-pillars, and I need to use the -6db (lowest) "option" in the passive x-overs to make it bearable. Sometimes I even turn it down some more on the hu.

Not a very good sounding system, but I get music.

Yeah, i get that tweeters have a really high sensitivity, but damn, all my aluminum tweets just murder "S" sounds. That's why i think it may be my vehicle. Even mounted near the kicks i have that issue. Whatever, i can just e.q. it out of them.

Oh, now that I read it over that post didn't make much sense.

I was about to say more, but I got distracted and that's the outcome, lol.

Even when the tweets are brought down to a suitable volume, they still may be harsh. On certain notes/freqs I get effects similar to that "essy-ness" (don't think it's as high as 15khz though), and it just hurts the ears to a point where I turn the volume down from an otherwise comfortable sound level. I could turn the high-highs down a bit on the hu to lower the pain, but then the rest of the details and propper balance is gone.

I have thought it might come from window reflections, and/or as I don't have time alignment the delay in sound makes it wierd, or maybe the tweeter itself has that effect.

I looked up that RF set and the frequency response graph for the tweeter shows 85db @ 5kzh, 90db @ 10khz, and 95db @ 15-20khz. Maybe that's your problem?

The 1" silkdomes I used in my home stereo build sounds X amount of times better than the Focals, and have a pretty much flat response from 3-15khz. Maybe 1-2db variations.

I feel you on ranting on tweeters, cause it's so easy to ruin the sound by having a harsh or way bright tweeter. Almost every car stereo I've heard have had too much tweet and harsh-ness for my liking. Even my own at times, til I get it sorted.

[ds1919]

Lots of makers make aluminum dome tweeters. They are brighter than myler, silk dome, kevlar etc. It takes a lot of R&D to get them right. Same goes for titanium tweets, and not so much for titanium or aluminum "coated" tweets. I've heard hundreds of different tweeters of all kinds of materials. Personally, my absolute favorite, that I havent been able to replicate since, is the Dynaudio D28-AF silk dome home audio high end tweeter. As luck has it, Dyna will not sell raw drivers anymore. Stupid? Yes.

So anyway, from zxsonnyzx's post, 95db at 15k is friggen a lot! That could possibly be 6db more than the rest of your system. My recommendation is to try the xovers that came with them, because a lot of times they are designed to attenuate or flatten out the tweeter. They were included with the set for a reason, perhaps more than separating freqs. If that doesnt help, I would recommend getting silk domes, some good ones, not cheap stuff, and try them with your active. BTW, 5k xover point is rather high. Good for power, but I wonder how it blends with the mid.

[ds1919]

Focals use aluminum magnesium tweets btw, diff than just aluminum. I like the home kevlar ones better myself, but would not work with the rest of their system in a car...havent tried the berryliums yet, hope to, so I can put an end to those Dyna D28s...

[Jessica]

Well, i run 5k because of the 12db slope, it's seems to be less harsh, and the highs seems more natural letting the mids do the work around 4k-5k. I will try the passive xovers when i get some warmer weather and see if they help. I may just end up investing in silk dome tweeters though. It just sucks to spend $400 on mids to not even use the tweeters. Maybe you guys can understand, i already have a fair amount of funds invested in this direction. It kind of sucks to do an about face a buy a whole new set.

Last resort i could use the fosgate mids for rear fill even though i am not really interested in doing any rear fill at all. Becuase that would mean another amp more wire. Well you guys know how it goes. I'm just trying to get decent SQ out of my front stage. Which should be possible with what i am running.

[Jessica]

Also, I mean by some strange stupid coincidence, i have three sets of alum-tweets. One from my infinity reference set, one from the polk set, and now from my fosgates. You know what they say, Fool me once.... I'm not going to ask for a brand of tweeter because this thread would just get ruined by that. I have heard silk domes i remember liking them. At the same time i like the way that alum tweeters play high hats and cymbal crashes cause to me they tend to give some weight to those sounds. If that makes any sense.