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Townshend Maximum Supertweeters

Yes, Maximum. I don’t come up with the names, I just review the stuff, okay? ;) And I got em because everyone keeps telling me I should, and once again they are right. Whew! That was easy!

Kidding! We will now laboriously delve into why you cannot live without these tweeters, that you can’t even hear.

For sure I can’t. My hearing rolls off somewhere north of 15k. If that. These things extend to 90k. Why? What difference can it possibly make?

Who knows? And since when has that stopped me?

So out they come and what have we here? Two heavy black bricks, with a screen on the front and a couple binding posts on the back. In between the posts is a little knob you use to turn them off and set the levels. On the bottom are rudimentary rubber dimple feet. Guess I was expecting Pods or something, this being Townshend. No such luck.

They go on top of the Moabs. Well there is already a BDR Shelf on top, and a HFT dead center right where this thing is supposed to go. Moving HFT even an inch changes the sound so executive decision, the Maximum Supertweeters go just outboard of the HFT. They are first just placed there not even connected, just in case this somehow messes with the sound. It doesn’t.

Okay so now you need to know my system is all messed up. No, not the usual mess I mean really seriously messed up. No turntable. Chris Brady has the bearing for some resurfacing and stuff. So we are slumming with the heavily modded Oppo. Not to fear, Ted Denney sent me some of his latest Atmosphere X (review to come) which with the right tuning bullet the Oppo now sounds....digital. Oh well. KBO.

The usual: Demag. Warmup. Listen a while. Hook em up. What level? Who knows? Moabs are 98dB. How ya gonna know anyway? How can it even matter? How do you even set the level of something you can’t hear? Level 3, good as any. Plug em in. No change. Not the slightest peep out of these things. Total dud. Knew it. Sit back down.

What the...? No way. There is not the slightest hint of top end coming from these things. They may as well not be there at all. Except the whole presentation is somehow different. Top to bottom. No way!

I get up and turn the black magic off. Sit back down. Crap. Flat, grainy, digital. Turn em back on. Deep, liquid, analog.

No, not analog like my turntable. They are just supertweeters after all not magic. But way more analog than it was. More dimensional, more solid, more liquid detailed. More black between the notes, and in the black it is now easier to hear the natural acoustic decay. I do NOT want to go back to listening to CD without this! I cannot wait to hear it with my table.

And I haven’t even had time to get them dialed in yet!



128x128millercarbon
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 

Of course I'm still using them. Haven't yet got around to experimenting with different placement but that is because of being so happy with them right where they are. 

We did have one interesting experience recently. A younger audiophile was here and when I played the XLO demagnetizing tracks and it got up into the highest frequencies it was hurting his ears. I couldn't hear a thing, but it was loud to him! I said we can always turn the supertweeters down if needed.

But then playing music he said it was fine. This to me jibes with the science that shows we have a lot of hearing cells devoted to very high ultra-sonic frequencies that are for time and transient information not sine waves. Hearing tests and measurements are all sine waves. Simplistic at best. Human beings don't hear that way and this backs that up. His ears found sine waves painful while the same super tweeter level with music was just fine.

They do improve imaging and the perception of "real" all across the audio band. Really fascinating stuff.

roxy54's avatar
roxy54
7,651 posts
 

millercarbon,

I'm sure that I'm getting boring with this, but try to ake the time to get the placement right, because you will be rewarded.

drpie's avatar
drpie
57 posts
 

@millercarbon 

I just didn't see them in your system)) 
What cables do you use with superwitters? Do the stands affect their performance?

roxy54's avatar
roxy54
7,651 posts
 

Superwitters?

millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 

Supertwitters continue to be a problem around here. I recommend just ignore them.

 

Roxy54 on the other hand is some kind of super audiophile. Feel free to keep bugging me. It can take a while sometimes but in the end it usually works. Like I just took some string and duct tape and rubber bands and got the super tweeters lined up with the tweeter tweeters and yes indeed, much to my surprise the incredibly good focus got incredibly gooder-er. Only listened to Linda Ronstadt so far but omg she is so in focus and palpably there now! Before she was centered and solid but kind of diffuse and taller, probably because the supertweeter was on top it was stretching things higher. Just a guess. 

They are on the outside right now. The way they are set up it is real easy to fine tune angles and position fore and aft. I will mess around with that a while and then maybe try them on the inside. 

This has me thinking this might be one of the reasons people like the Be tweeters so much. They get a lot of the ultra-sonic extension benefits and it is right there not a foot off one way or another. Whatever. This is nice. Thanks and feel free to bug me any time! 😉

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