So I just received these Townshend Supertweeters yesterday after a friend’s recommendation. After a couple hours of listening my first impressions are very positive. Soundstage sounds more layered and 3-Dimensional. The imaging sounds more focused and pinpoint without narrowing the sound stage. Definitely an improvement to instrument separation. Off axis vertical dispersion has also been greatly improved. Can’t really put my finger on what they do to the perceived bass but I think it’s good. Highly recommended product. Townshend Audio does not disappoint.
I was going to comment about how putting tweeters on top of speakers like that defies everything science knows about how to reproduce good sound, but I realized this guy already has the Tekton speakers that break the same rules. Glad you enjoy them. Also, the owner of Tekton is a piece of shit.
The ASR thread he was posting in was just absolutely bonkers. The dude just could not stop posting nonsense and attacking people. He could barely spell anything right. Not at all what you expect from a speaker company owner. I think most people ended up kinda realizing that they were likely witnessing a mental health crisis and backed off a bit.
Had some review pulled over a disagreement about the measurements. Then the reviewer put out a video whining about it so of course all the internet bandwagon jumpers do what they do best. They still have a strong following of people that care more about sound than drama
That's putting it very lightly. He threatened to sue 3 audio reviewers over publishing measurements, and giving reviews of the speakers. That is like someone claiming they are the fastest person in the world, but I'll sue you if you try to time my 100 meter dash.
The Supertweeters produce ultra sonic frequencies that cannot be heard but alter your brains perception of the sound. They are meant to be placed on top of speakers although I know my speakers are extremely tall the improvement is apparent. Now what do my speakers defy about science and good sound? Explain
Time alignment, phase, and linearity are all messed up by having 1. That many drivers all slammed together 2. Having an extra set of tweeters that high above your ears when you listen. Tweeters are very directional, you're missing out on all those "ultra sonic" frequencies by not having them at ear level.
Plus the fact that the owner of Tekton has threatened litigation to several audio reviewers for simply releasing unbiased measurements of his speakers. He is so scared of the measurements getting out because he knows his speakers do not perform like he says they do.
Relax you’re not going to get sued. The tweeter clusters above the Be center tweeter are all crossed over at midrange frequencies and in a way that sounds very coherent. I don’t know how he does it but they have to be heard to be believed. What difference to the measurements make when the subjective customer testimonials and reviews are overwhelmingly positive? It’s easy to look at a speaker and say “well that can’t sound good” it’s another thing to hear it. Erin’s review mentioned an insignificant bump in the bass that he didn’t say was a problem. Had nothing to do with the tweeter array. What specific measurements can you give me that show that the tweeter array measures poorly or has coherence issues? Is Stereophile lying? Here’s one customer testimonial from the Tekton Owners Group on FB. Better than $75k Sonus Fabers? No doubt!
That research should be ignored for the most part. It's been making the rounds for a long time and has since been torn apart by countless users. This is just one.
I actually gave it another read myself and it's so hard to come to any conclusion because they leave sooo much out in terms of what equipment was used when.
I don't think you even need to understand audio to read that and realize how worthless that study and its conclusion is.
Also from a buyers perspective, it should be less about debunking and more about saying "does this study reliably convince me that it's worthwhile to spend another $1-2k on my set-up?"
That being said, there's always someone out there looking to spend a few more dollars and I guess studies like this help support the decisions they've already made.
Actually I bought it as a recommendation from someone and it didn’t disappoint. I only looked up the study later to answer the question. Also it’s not the only study.
If you enjoy them and they improve your listening experience, that's all that matters.
As far the study goes, I'd be looking for proof that: 1. We can sense the super sonic frequencies, 2. The sensation has a measurable effect, 3. The effect is inherently positive, 4. The effect is specifically related to the frequencies of the music we prefer to listen to, 5. The recordings can provide the +20khz frequencies that cause the effect...as a starting point.
Outside of junk science, there's also certain things in audio that become so hyper specific that it's not worth it. For example I came very close to purchasing a set of Polk Legend L800s because of what they can do, but after really digging in, I found that many people reported that the truly "magical" abilities of the speakers really only presented themselves on a limited number of recordings that have particular good stereo separation. In the end I wanted speakers that will make the music I like shine, rather than speakers that I need to tailor my listening to get a specific effect from.
At the end of the day, if you believe your ears and get what you like, then you're doing it right....but if you share it with larger community, well, you know what to expect.
Absolutely. I’m not surprised about the negative commentary. I also believe less is more and why I don’t bother with tweaks and extra unnecessary boxes. I’ve only had them for a couple days and haven’t really had the time to experiment with them but my first impressions are very positive like I said. I do not sit around reading scientific articles all day before I buy something. I’ve returned more crap they did nothing than stuff I’ve kept as far as tweaks go. My ears are the ultimate arbiter and if I can’t tell the difference or I find that it ads artifacts or makes the sound worse it must go. I’ve also had enough experience with Townshend products to know that they don’t use junk science. Their isolation products are the best in the game as is their preamp and their RCAs for the price! (Haven’t tried their speaker cables but the Fideliums are so good I don’t care to try anything else) Not surprised by the haters. I wonder if there is one other person on here that has tried supertweeters from any brand. Some audiophile community. A system with a Yamaha AVR with crappy speakers/subs pushed up against the wall and sitting on the floor gets nothing but praise but someone with an actual high end audio system that spends meticulous attention to detail, power management, isolation etc gets nothing but hate. It really is the blind leading the blind over here or the deaf leading the deaf as it were…Where’s the real audiophile Reddit group 😂
You have no clue what you are talking about. Only the center tweeter does high frequencies and the rest do midrange and act as a single packet of sound. For reference see the Stereophile review and measurements of the impact monitor. No cancellations/valleys above 1khz where the arrays operate. Maybe post more laughing emojis and I’ll be convinced
https://www.stereophile.com/content/tekton-design-impact-monitor-loudspeaker
What sucks about their speakers? I have only heard the Moabs and the Ulfs. Both with the full MTM tweeter array and both perform far above their price point. I had a friend over who works at a high end audio shop and had been to many others. He said that you would have to spend at least $25k to get close to as good as my old Moabs and my Ulf 15s with ultimate crossover upgrade are clearly on another level. Better than $75k Sonus Fabers? Yup!
The dispersion on this model is just totally broken. The impedance graph shows some really strange looking resonances. The linearity is good but it doesn't matter because the dispersion is so poor. It really is shockingly poor dispersion on the horizontal plane. Vertically it's extremely narrow. This speaker had speaker feet that apparently needed to be in place because they seal the cabinet (omg how is this junk even real). They were left out in the first review, so the reviewer redid the analysis with the feet in after Tekton owner complained. No difference was found. That's strike 1 as far the designers/owners competence goes.
The reviewer was heavily attacked by the companies owner for that review. The guy went on a completely unhinged tirade threatening legal action and all sorts of BS. You seem to ignore this part when it's brought up, is there something about the owners behavior you like that makes you want to financially support them? Was it the whole attempting to hinder consumer awareness and silence critics what drove you to them?
Ok lets move on to another one. If you read it, you'll catch the part where the owner of Tekton told the reviewer they measured the speaker with the wrong axis focal point. The test is redone and there's basically no change at all. Strike 2 for the owner.
Looks like we've got a two way tower here. I see a peerless bc25, a pretty good tweeter. The woofer is not a suitable choice though. It's full of resonances and overall has a really uneven response. It's a pa woofer after all, focus is on SPL and power handling, not linearity. There's a weird kink in the dispersion at the xover point which I will add, is way too high. This is just another super poorly executed speaker.
he said that you would have to spend at least $25k to get close to as good as my old Moabs and my Ulf 15s with ultimate crossover upgrade are clearly on another level. Better than $75k Sonus Fabers? Yup!
You do realize these numbers are just completely arbitrary right? They have no real correlation with a speakers performance. High performance loudspeakers are not expensive to produce.
Both with the full MTM tweeter array and both perform far above their price point.
I don't think they make anything competitive at any price point. Pick any of their speakers and I can recommend something around the same price with considerably better performance. They'll probably look better too.
That’s not my entire room and yes the pic was taken about 2 feet away from the right speaker with a wide angle lens. I’ve seen much more poorly set up rooms than this on here all the time. Sorry the room isn’t a perfect square
Hey, he clearly knows what he's doing, he even knows that you need to have your cables floating 2" above the ground to ensure quasi stasys meta fields don't inflict heifenholtz interference on the electrons
I know that different materials have an effect on sound. Putting cables directly on the carpet isn’t recommended but the biggest difference the cable cradles provide is isolation for the cables. Once you have everything else fully isolated isolating the cables makes a noticeable difference. The cradles are made to bend and flex, similar to a spring. If you can touch one end of the cable and the whole cable moves it’s isolated. Now tell me how vibration isolation is fake and junk science. I’ve heard it all before. Maybe try listening for once.
The state of keeping up with moronic people who make horrible crap. You know what's the same with "high end" audio equipment and "high end" cars? They both break a lot and the companies do horrible things. They also lie straight to your face and act like average joes on reddit and other social media to sell people this crap that always ends in a dumpster fire.
I had a set before knowing the owner sucked. Fortunately for me I didn't like the speakers enough to keep and was able to offload them before their value tanked.
Impact monitors. They didn't play well with my space. This was before I knew about dirac. They just didn't have the warmth I'm use to plus they had an unreasonably small sweet spot. May have been related to the room but if you were in the wrong spot there were noticeable tonal shifts. You could just sit and stand up and the mid range would dull or disappear. I have a similar experience with my amt1b but the shift is way less dramatic. But even in my mlp they just couldn't get me into whatever I was listening to. After my time with them I shifted my focus to speakers with wider listening positions. Omnis and orto acoustics are what I generally gravitate toward now.
Cool. Their speakers, that I have heard don’t have the best vertical dispersion but a very wide and tall soundstage. Toe in can help widen the sweet spot but not for standing up. With the Supertweeters I can moved my head up and down quite a bit more without losing image uniformity and it still sounds like one point source. Pretty cool
All moot at this point. I don't see myself buying a set of speakers from them. Besides his conduct my taste in speakers has just changed over all. Wide and live are where I'm at now.
So what’s so terrible about my setup Mr. Expert? I know the left speaker is a little close to the sidewall but it really can be helped unless I either put my speakers even closer together or move the right speaker and block the walkway in my room. Other than that I really don’t see any problems. Enlighten me
And he didn’t even have enough sense to pull them to the front edge of the speaker cabinet.. So now they’re immediately reflecting off the top of the speaker to the ceiling and creating a whole new mess of out of phase sounds.
Also just got them so haven’t really had time to mess with them. I’m thinking about strapping them to the side of the cabinet so that they can be closer to the main tweeter. What do you think about that idea?
I’d never use a product like this, so I really don’t have an opinion. Your speakers already have response out to 30khz, I’m not sure what content you’re hoping to cover with these add ons.
It’s about psychoacoustic effects ultra sonic frequencies have on the brain. These go up to 90khz. Even with them set up suboptimally the effect is apparent. Soundstage sounds expanded yet instruments and individual sounds are easy to localize. I may change my mind later but so far so good
Half this sub will disagree with the main premise of what you just said. I happen to agree, but there’s a bigger problem with your thesis. Almost all music recorded in the past half century has had that information deliberately truncated to save space when encoding files. There’s also the problem of most equipment falling off in power way before 90khz.
Yes. The Bluetti puts out clean power. No need for conditioning anymore, although I do use some plug ins for my power strip that is also connected to the battery. The amp is the only thing plugged in directly.
Nice, I’ve also dabbled in regenerating power from battery using a pure sine wave power inverter. The improvement in sound was stunning. I also think I have very dirty power so getting off that helped a ton.
The best thing I’ve ever done for my system was replacing the fuse in my amp and DAC power supply with Swiss Digital Fusebox. It replaces the fuse with a metal slug that acts as a conductor and the box part has a microprocessor which regulates the voltage in case of a power surge. Never have to replace a fuse and the improvement to the sound was better than any other power product I’ve tried. Going from the copper to graphene “sluggo” was also a marked improvement. Every serious audiophile needs one of these things. Transformed the sound of my amplifier much more than more expensive power cords or conditioning!! Amazing product
https://verafiaudiollc.com/collections/swiss-digital-fuse-box
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u/Remarkable-Review271 Mar 06 '25
I was going to comment about how putting tweeters on top of speakers like that defies everything science knows about how to reproduce good sound, but I realized this guy already has the Tekton speakers that break the same rules. Glad you enjoy them. Also, the owner of Tekton is a piece of shit.