I've had my Townshend Maximum Supertweeters for several years now, and I still like them :-)
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!
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!
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- 133 posts total
Here is a perfect example of some people liking the addition of gross distortion to their systems. These distortion synthesizers have useful output down to 10 kHz which is audible and will make a system sound brighter. If you have good loudspeakers, falsely brighter. But people who do not know what they are listening to prefer this. However, it is a fine way to destroy accurate imaging. But, most audiophiles do not know what accurate imaging is. They have never heard it. They hear an instrument over here and a voice over there and they think that is all there is to accurate imaging, not. It is very difficult to describe. The term holographic is used incorrectly. You can not see around (through) an object, well maybe millercarbon can, but you can hear around an object. With the best imaging there is space around the instruments and voices and they appear in perspective to one another and not just overlapping. Accurate high frequency ques are important for this to occur and an overlapping supertweeter will distort them. But, you don't know what you are missing if you did not have it in the first place, very few systems do. Brighter will always seem to sound better within limits. It is a trap which takes you father away from the absolute sound. The addition of complexity to loudspeakers is always a bad thing. The Dahlquist DQ10 is a perfect example. From a tonality perspective they were wonderful but there is no way you can get them to image properly. They were very complicated speakers. We tried with a friend's pair for 3 years before he gave up and bought Acoustats which he used for the duration of his life. "Want your digital to sound like analog?" Give me a break. Red Book CDs are quite capable of producing 10 to 20 kHz and that is all you are hearing if you are 19 years old. If you think what happens over 20kHz matters you have some learning to do. This is just like guys arguing over who's car is faster at speeds you can not drive at even on most tracks, not to mention most guys would wet their pants in a car going faster than 160 MPH. Speeds you can't drive at and frequencies you can not possibly hear and have zero effect on the audio band. Mysticism does not belong in audio. It is not a religion. |
mijostyn Here is a perfect example of some people liking the addition of gross distortion to their systems. These distortion synthesizers have useful output down to 10 kHz which is audible and will make a system sound brighter.Nice try, but a proper tweeter is not a "distortion synthesizer" and it no more "synthesizes" output than any other speaker driver. ... people who do not know what they are listening to prefer this. However, it is a fine way to destroy accurate imaging.How do you know? You don’t know any details about the specific components. Of course, I recognize that you think you know how something sounds just by looking at it, but thinking something and knowing something are two different things. ... most audiophiles do not know what accurate imaging is. They have never heard it.I think most audiophiles are lot more knowledgeable and experienced than you suspect. The addition of complexity to loudspeakers is always a bad thing.That depends on the speaker. The Infinity IRS is a complex system that sounds great. I’ve also heard simple single-driver systems that sound awful. The Dahlquist DQ10 is a perfect example. From a tonality perspective they were wonderful but there is no way you can get them to image properly.Actually, the DQ-10s could be improved enormously with the addition of Dick Sequerra’ supertweeter. "Want your digital to sound like analog?" Give me a break. Red Book CDs are quite capable of producing 10 to 20 kHz and that is all you are hearing if you are 19 years old.Huh? There is much, much more to proper playback than just keeping response extended to 20kHz. Mysticism does not belong in audio. It is not a religion.It’s odd that you would state that after promoting some of your faith-based beliefs, much as if you were a wanna-be mystic. |
- 133 posts total