Tweeter

Until the late 1960s, the loudspeakers for high-frequency reproduction were exclusively small cone speakers, characterized by good sensitivity and strong directionality. Consequently, the speaker designs emphasized the upper range to compensate for the tweeter’s limited angular dispersion or utilized multiple tweeters. Both solutions, for different reasons, did not deliver high-quality results.

In 1966, Amar Bose patented the dome tweeter, which introduced significant angular dispersion despite modest sensitivity. Among the first speakers to feature this new type of tweeter, we pay homage to the Acoustic Research 10 π and 12 π with the ¾” dome tweeter—an astonishing yet mechanically delicate innovation.

In 1974, Raimondo Sbarbati developed Italy’s, and perhaps Europe’s, first 1” dome tweeter, achieving such satisfying results that it was used for years by renowned European companies. Over the subsequent decades, the speaker manufacturers have worked extensively to enhance the power handling and reliability of these tweeters without significant performance improvements.

However, the advent of digital measurement systems, which allow tweeters to be analyzed in the time domain, led to marked improvements. New, more sophisticated parameters have surpassed old benchmarks. The study of new treatments, bonding techniques, magnetic circuits, and an almost obsessive pursuit of damping control enable us today to create tweeters approaching perfection.

To allow RS tweeters to operate at the lowest possible frequencies, we have adopted rear resonance caps that, when appropriately connected to the air volume behind the membrane, lower the tweeter’s resonance below 500 Hz, enabling a cutoff frequency well below the crossover frequency.

The chamber created by the rear dome and its associated ducts is designed to minimize resonances and is then dampened with sound-absorbing material to reduce the impedance peak at the tweeter’s resonance, thus allowing for simpler, less invasive crossovers. The damping material received a calibrated damping process, to significantly improve the transient response.
Every element of the tweeter design concurs in the quest for the purest sound, the ultimate target for RS Speakers.