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Seas metal tweeters good?

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This is a personal opinion, please be warned !
I tried a few newer tweeters made of metal, berilium and the likes and found them to be a bit harsh and giving some listener fatigue on long listening sessions. They usually have a near perfect frequency response, very linear without any peak but didn’t find any metal tweeter with musicality a soft fabric dome like a SB or a Morel MDT can offer.
Didn’t try any with a tube amp though which could be a better match.
 
I've found the Seas metal domes to be OK crossed over plenty high enough, but if pushed to higher excursions they go harsh and fatiguing very quickly. The Genelec 1032 is a great (bad) example of this IMHO.
 
Depends entirely on their upstream crossover, amplifier and source. OP, are you looking for a drop in replacement for something else you already have, or are you planning to design something new around them?
 
^^ Yes, I'm certain that more than half of the 'metallic tweeters are harsh' is due to inappropriate cross over. Let's face it, a mid-bass running too high a cross over point can suffer cone break up that can be blamed on the tweeter.
 
Seas h398 are in one of my favourite speakers.
But they can be hard to cross over properly
If done right they are certainly better than soft domes.
But many poor metal tweeters, and poorly crossed over metal tweeters exist.
Beryllium over rated in my opinion.
Have you considered the peerless DA32TX00, one of the best out there and flexible in terms of crossover, even down to 1.1khz !

A trick taught to me ages ago for getting the crossover right. Was to measure them in cabinet and set the level by drawing a straight line across the peaks of the ripple, rather then the average/middle
Usually end up 1~1.5db lower, but works well.
Probably down to most diffraction causing dips rather than peaks.
 
Grog said:
If done right they are certainly better than soft domes.
But many poor metal tweeters, and poorly crossed over metal tweeters exist.
Click to expand...
Soft domes are far more forgiving, because their break up characteristics beyond their passband are more benign. Same goes for mid and mid bass units with super stiff diaphragms. Sure, you can tune the filters with subjugate / notch / shunt circuit to tame the unruly peaks, but I think that has a deleterious effect to music because you are sharply attenuating the signal over a narrow band to compensate for driver non-linearity.

The thing that many don't account for is shifting attributes. As the driver ages, ferrofluid becomes thicker, and filter component values drift, a perfectly matched crossover may no longer be. As usual, YMMV.
 
A lot of this really is personal preference. I've had many speakers with soft domes over the years, and never really liked the treble quality of any of them very much. I've been happier, on several occasions, with the HF of speakers containing metal domes, including Harbeth C7s - whose tweeters were by Seas, and very close relatives of the H400 that the OP asks about.
But the best tweeters I've owned, to my ears, have all been ribbons - Dali, Apogee and Raal.
The ones in the auction seem overpriced, TBH. They are probably 20 years old, and as James says above, nothing lasts for ever. The asking price of £80 is probably more than they would have cost new, and there's no reason to think they're superor to modern equivalents such as the H1212 and H1147, which are no more expensive.
 
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Hi folks. The OP here. That’s some food for thought! Thanks for your comments. I’m playing with a pair of goodmans magnum k2. Three ways, so the tweeter would be crossed over fairly high. I think.

I had a pair of monitor audios that had metal tweeters years ago, and I really liked the imaging and spatial information, air, ambiance etc. With those. Shame about the slow bass and recessed vague mids.

I’m thinking that these goodmans, although not bad at all the tweeters in them, if they had that kind of sweet sparkly airy think I like, then these could possible float my boat for a while. Until I get another itch!

Sorry if I don’t comprehensively acknowledge all that’s been said, I’m tired right now, but it’s about time I thanked yous all and said something to life things along, so this is my best effort. For now.

other tweeters that interest me are goodmans own alnico ones. They’re earlier than the early seventies magnums I’ve got. The earlier magnums supposedly sound better and have paper cone tweeters. Probably a completely different thing altogether I’m guessing. Probably won’t have that extension I’m looking for. Might be a bit rolled off?

maybe I just need to build myself some adjustable supertweeters!

Anyhoo, I’m havering (Scottish for “rambling on in a vague manner”) so I’ll duck out gif now. As I said, I’m completely knackered!

i look forward to speaking to use on this some more, down the line.
 
James said:
Soft domes are far more forgiving, because their break up characteristics beyond their passband are more benign. Same goes for mid and mid bass units with super stiff diaphragms. Sure, you can tune the filters with subjugate / notch / shunt circuit to tame the unruly peaks, but I think that has a deleterious effect to music because you are sharply attenuating the signal over a narrow band to compensate for driver non-linearity.

The thing that many don't account for is shifting attributes. As the driver ages, ferrofluid becomes thicker, and filter component values drift, a perfectly matched crossover may no longer be. As usual, YMMV.
Click to expand...

after a lot of research, i found the main audible differences come from soft domes being a non-pistonic, (actually DML) device, rather than a pure pistonic element, a soft dome tweeter is in break-up for most of it's working range, it's just that there is so much breakup that all the peaks average out.
the faceplate/loading on a pistonic hard dome tweeter can be very hard to get right, you see a lot of hard domes with badly rising response on axis, or wonky off axis responses.
for a good hard dome tweeter the break up peak is at around 30khz, which doesn't worry me too much!

you are very correct on ferrofluid, even when new, it changes significantly even with just a few degrees temp variation!
the very latest ferrofluids are better, but still not good. as far as i understand there are very few if any manufacturers using these latest FerroFluids.

in many ways a tw without FF is better, although the variation in voice coil resistance (and thus Xover alignment) is not ideal, I find it better than the huge shifts in damping from temp variation in ferrofluid.
 
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