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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!



millercarbon
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
That is why I can’t wait to hear with my turntable. Digital does indeed have the so-called brick wall cutoff. Yet it does indeed work with digital. Analog has no such restriction. Really looking forward to it.

Also look forward to the day more people put as much effort into trying to read and understand as they do trying to not read and understand. Not picking on you, you might well be truly trying to understand. Even though you seem not to have read the linked article, which would answer at least some of your questions.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I am just an exceptionally good reader. The following lines from the paper linked above caught my eye:

The inner hair cells clearly relate to the frequency analysis system described above. Only about 3,000 of the 15,000 hair cells on the basilar membrane are involved in transducing frequency information using the outputs of this traveling wave filter. The outer hair cells clearly do something else, but what?

Did you get that? Only a small amount of our hearing comes from these frequency responding cells. We seem to understand their function. The vast majority of cells however, we do not understand their function at all. How is it audiophiles are anything less than fascinated by this???
mapman's avatar
mapman
23,619 posts
 
Yes most hifi over the years including digital is designed to work well from 20 hz to 20khz the standard range usually considered appropriate for human ears. Anything above that is even more of a potshot than that extreme already may be.

A lot of potentially fatiguing noise can occur naturally in that range so that is something worth considering case by case....how much better sound versus noise as a result.

Also if the device has response down to 10khz then it would seem best applied in systems that can use a boost in that upper range which with music is where "air" occurs. The result would likely be a sense of more "air" and perhaps a tad more "pierce" in that case which many might find desirable in some cases.


https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8b/4a/6f/8b4a6fd7b8d65711eed41850a194284e.jpg


A sound meter and some white noise played into the device should be all needed to determine the effects at least in the typical human audio range up to 20khz.

I would think some using it might want to consider an active crossover for it to blend it in properly for best/flat response similar to adding a subwoofer.

As mentioned above, another consideration is more high frequencies will always result in a smaller soundstage (higher frequencies are more directional) unless the device artificially disperses the high frequencies in some way. Whether that is a good or bad thing also will vary case by case.

Focal speakers tend to deliver more "air" than many in my experience, so would tend to think a supertweet with Focals in general is not the best pairing. Maybe  still perhaps for some of us with older ears who are most likely to benefit from a 10Khz+ frequency boost?
pjb255livecom
31 posts
 
Miller Carbon. Maybe my question wasn't well phrased; I'm not questioning our ability to hear ultrasonic content, or the effect it might have on the 20-20k frequencies. My question asks "isnt (all) the ultrasonic content stripped out in the A-to-D conversion, and if so how would a supertweeter recover what was stripped out"?
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
It is a tweeter. A passive transducer. All it can do is convert whatever signal is already there into sound. Why would you even think to say, "recover"?
pjb255livecom
31 posts
 
Understood, and agree. Convert is a better term here than recover. My assertion is that a supertweeter could only provide an improvement when the mastered sample rate exceeds 44.1, where the filtering can be applied more gently and allow some of the hypersonic frequencies to remain. It couldnt provide any improvement with 44.1khz-mastered CD's, because there is no hypersonic signal content on the CD. Analog - totally different story, but i do digital 100%, and most high res digital is a misrepresentation, so I'm not seeing how supertweeters provide any enhancement at this time for an all digital setup.
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