Comments on Profile Post by EagleWings

Heard plenty of modern beryllium tweeters from the Upscale inventory. You better use a warmer sounding source or tube amp. Then again, I'm quite treble sensitive.

Thanks man. This is for a friend who is building a set of DIY speakers. He is trying to choose between soft dome and Be. He has a warm and smooth DAC (Pavane) and a tube pre. He is curious to know if Be combines the strengths of metal and soft dome tweeters.

If 0 is soft done and 100 is aluminum in terms of timbre, beryllium would be a 65 IMO.

If you don’t know Be tweeters sound, it could be a gamble. Also, different Be implementations are done different and sound different, so there’s no guarantee unless the tweeter is a known quantity and well regarded. Many are just Be coated as well, which is not the same as full Be. Also, some full Be tweeters can shatter and Be is toxic so needs to be protected by a permanent grill - it should have this.

Personally the only Be tweeter I’ve heard I was not a great fan of, but this was a fairly niche product (Reference 3A) and it may have just been the crossover/FR that I didn’t like. Almost too airy or sandy or something.

Yeah, implementation is maybe more important than the material. I've had the full spectrum of experiences with Be. From can't stand it for one full song, to enjoying 10 straight hours with it. +1 for Be if you are careful about which tweeter is chosen.

It’s a pass from me. Softdome or some ribbons.

I heard the Usher "Tiny Dancy" with the BE driver and I really enjoyed it and almost purchased a set. I think it is a Danny Ritchie design. I seem to dig his stuff.

Diamond tweeters!

I'd go Be over softdome and Accuton diamond over the other tweeters I've heard. But XO components and slopes probably matter more than the tweeter anyway. I've heard nasty sounding caps that made softdomes sound sharper than Al domes. And you can use extra smooth caps for Al domes.

The 25mm Bliesma Be dome seems like a good value.

I've only heard one speaker with Be tweeter, apart from Focal, and was like 3 years ago, the TAD CR-1 (and the mids are Be too). It sounded very different from the Focal Be tweeters, much smoother and refined...but it was "too good" and stood over the bass quality (carbon/aramid woofers). (1/2)

Maybe using "worse" warmbutt caps and resistors in the tweeter/mid xovers but great parts for the woofers would "glue" everything together perfectly, but that's a tradeoff too. Nothing is perfect, personally, I would take a tweeter made of the same/most similar material as the mids and woofers. (2/2)

Even the tweeter surround plays a big role, looking at the datasheet of the Bliesma mentioned by @Serious, it says: "narrow surround for less soft dome coloration", so it is more "Be" sounding than the Satori or Scanspeak Be tweeters with wider suspensions...lots of variables there

Depends on the tweeter, really. I can't stand Focal stuff, but SB was pretty great. Bliesma 34mm Be dome is something to look out for if you want to cross over low.

With that said, I don't think that they're that better than other premium tweeters. RAAL are pretty cool, if you have a mid that goes high.

Confined to the Be-based tweeters in Usher Be10's, they don't seem to exhibit the timbre issues I've seen others have with metallic domes. The implementation was quite smooth. I had the "diamond" set as well, and installed those permanently as they had a little more clarity and "silk" factor. I like the latter more, but wouldn't be afraid of the former if known to behave well.

Thanks everyone. This was extremely helpful.

Just found this, incredibly interesting read: https://manualzz.com/doc/31639817/the-whole-truth-about-beryllium-diaphragms

Based on my exp. different tweeter tech. really do have their sound sig and not sure some change in the chain could smooth this out - how the speaker sounds fundamentally.. I'd be careful with these, make sure you like it.

I personally do not like Focal HPs (no idea about the 3k models) because of I don't like the flavor of berillym driver distortion. This might be completely different for you, I can't say really. It seems that paper cone (it might be even some composite with paper and tselluloos) woofer and silk dome tweeter are my kind of drivers.

I appreciate Genelec metal tweeters but I am aware of their hint of metallic distortion and I imagine some might dislike these. At least they don't have holes in FR as some Ribbon tweeters have. Genelc tweeters are damn resolving which is a big plus (this is relative).