Which Tweeter preferred- dome natural material, Beryllium/Metal or Planar Ribbon? Why?

@mofojo I’m sure i can’t give you a top 3 of each, but from what I’ve heard:

Top AMT: Beyma and Mundorf

Top Ring: Scanspeak. Even their relatively inexpensive Discovery R2604 is a stellar performer, and has made it into a number of megabuck speakers, Krell, Magico, YG and Sonus Faber (if memory serves) and some incarnation makes it into modern Polk speakers, and for good reason. Even the cheap units have very low distortion and stunning frequency response that flies by 20 kHz.

Top BE: Scanspeak Illuminator D3004, basis of Magico’s tweets.

I’ve not heard Satori’s Be tweets so I can’t really comment on it. I have heard another brand... Transducer labs? And was really not taken by it. TL has a big following including by at least one speaker maker I respect but I just don’t dig it.

I’m not a fan of the Focal inverted dome’s for lack of natural air. To me a good tweeter absolutely vanishes. The Focal’s make their presence known.

I do want to say again though, that we pay far too much attention to tweeters given what a small part of the energy of a speaker they actually reproduce.  Many listeners can't even tell if a tweeter stops working. The price is often out of proportion with their value, and yet, yes, I spent 2x as much on my tweeters as my mid-woofers.  😂

After 40+ years I am totally satisfied the the incredible sealed-ribbon tweeter that Raidho uses (and Borresen Acoustics) in its D series (old used D2s for me). (Mid/woofers ported, but a small floor-stander 'box' design.)

I liked my oldest, 16-yr mains, ML SL3 electrostatics, but the treble performance of the Dynaudio silk Esotar II was much better for the five years I owned the Sapphires, nice speakers but not the D2s I was fortunate to acquire. I do feel silk is very good for a dome, metal not so much, and diamond tweeters-ugh, never took to the B&W 800s a bit, too harsh for my ears.

The Heil AMT type sure offers some good examples and probably some so-so, like all styles as others have noted. Implementation of the design counts.

The best I've ever heard were plasma at the CES show 40 years ago.  They were that memorable.  

The AMT tweeter with a SET amp are pretty magical

Great tech and review source is Hifi Compass.

My personal favorite is the Viawave Srt-7. 

Tom

The best I’ve ever heard were plasma at the CES show 40 years ago. They were that memorable.

I’m afraid I’ve heard them, in a cramped hotel room of course, and wasn’t that impressed. It would be nice to hear them again in a more ideal setup.