"Beryllium bite"

microstrip said:

IMHO we can not separate the performance of the tweeter from the crossover and overall speaker balance. Generalizations made around the the material of the dome only shows what is our current toy, or is just a consequence of an exceptional ecstasy with some tweeter in a past audition.

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The Focal professional speakers I have are fatiguing, but I came very close in putting a pair of Stello's in my mastering room. I really like the sound of the Utopia series.

Well, I have no money for Wilson or Magico. But I have a pair of goodsounding studio monitors in my living room with beryllium-tweeters.
Not fatiguing at all, I can listen to music for hour's.

...sorry my english

Kind Regards

Agreed - I had some Yamaha NS-1000's in ebony years ago. I loved those speakers, but after long listening sessions - they would fatigue me. I didn't even know what I had at the time (got them overseas in a trade with another military member). I would call it an afterglow, the sibilance was definitely there also. These, however, were one of the first speakers to use beryllium. I would thing the tech has improved vastly since then ( as a matter of fact - I know it has, I've heard several modern speakers that use beryllium that sound terrific!)

microstrip said:

IMHO we can not separate the performance of the tweeter from the crossover and overall speaker balance. Generalizations made around the the material of the dome only shows what is our current toy, or is just a consequence of an exceptional ecstasy with some tweeter in a past audition.

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I agree. I do not believe it is the material the tweeter is made of that causes fatigue. It is the overall balance and frequency response of the tweeter/speaker. Beryllium doesn't "ring" any more than titanium or aluminum tweeters. The resonance of all these materials is far out of the range these tweeters operate. I have been equally disappointed by tweeters of these materials as I have from some soft dome tweeters that have made my ears bleed while other speakers using any of these materials were fine to listen to.

Quite so, in general it is the engineering, not the material, that matters in that a well engineered unit will sound better than a poorly engineered unit, whatever the material.
OTOH most engineering metals have more or less the same specific stiffness, that means their stiffness is proportional to their density which also means 2 domes of the same weigh will have more or less the same stiffness in Aluminium, magnesium, Titanium (or steel for that matter), whereas Berillium has a very high specific stiffness, so a Berillium dome the same weight as, say a Titanium dome, will be very much stiffer and resist breakup to a much higher frequency.
Frank

GaryProtein said:

I agree. I do not believe it is the material the tweeter is made of that causes fatigue. It is the overall balance and frequency response of the tweeter/speaker. Beryllium doesn't "ring" any more than titanium or aluminum tweeters. The resonance of all these materials is far out of the range these tweeters operate. I have been equally disappointed by tweeters of these materials as I have from some soft dome tweeters that have made my ears bleed while other speakers using any of these materials were fine to listen to.

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