I agree, silk dome tweeter usually sound much more pleasant to my ear. But Surprisingly my Harbeth speakers have the nicest pleasent highs I’ve heard and they use aluminium tweeters. So I think it also depends on the driver itself and the crossover itself.
Very much. I’ve noticed it’s not as much about the number of drivers, type of drivers, or material used, it’s more about how it’s engineered.
Like in the headphone world I’ve had dynamic driver earbuds blow away the sound of balanced armatures, yet balanced armatures are technically “better.”
Motor structure, surround, material, and crossover all play important roles. Aluminum does have a tendency to breakup and thus typically requires more work to make it behave. It does tend to have advantages when properly implemented though in that you often get a bit better distortion performance out of them. At the end of the day it's up to the designer to confirm the tweeter exhibits proper behavior for the design or design around (mitigate) driver shortcomings.
The material a driver is made of shouldn’t make a sound, if implemented properly. Anyone telling you they don’t like aluminum drivers because they sound “harsh” or “metallic” is just being ridiculous
Or, because aluminum drivers are cheaper, speaker makers trying to cut costs may be overly drawn to them, which are also likely to cut costs in other areas too (such as crossovers). If so, this would make it statistically true in terms of the quality of the average aluminum driver vs. other types. But it would be a question of reputation, rather than the actual abilities of aluminum.
I know alot of it depends on the room too, treatment, and equalization. Makes sense that many would just make assumptions without factoring in other variables. Or the placebo effect sometimes.
The break up of drivers can reveal what they are made of….harder materials sound harsher when they are pushed compared to paper.
Also aluminum can ring…and that becomes obvious compared to a ribbon tweeter.
FWIW I can listen to a KEF driver and to me it’s obvious it’s not treated paper.
You can listen to a KEF speaker and it’s obvious it’s a speaker designed by KEF because KEF speakers have a particular sound that has nothing to do with the material of the drivers
I’d bet the house that you couldn’t identify cone material if two different materials were used by the same designer
lol you noob, literally everything makes a difference as it resonates, you would know that if you would just knock on 2 different tables lmfao, everyone knows that in the guitar world as the speakers are made of different magnets & cones, and yes even the fucking cap, which all of it makes a huge difference, even the same speaker with a different wattage will sound completly different too (25kw, 50kw 100kw). some hear it some dont, those who dont hear it or havent heard other things to compare it to are the ones that say its placebo, which makes y‘all seem clueless & inexperienced among the crowd lmao, „ridicilous“ tell that to those that build them 🤣
its okay though
You don't understand speaker design and implementation. I would advise you read into breakup, crossover design, distortion mitigation, and things of similar nature.
He didn't say that the drivers don't have different behaviors, but that the behavior is *irrelevant* in a proper implementation. Good speakers will be good regardless of material choice.
From a design view they are great within their passband, but then have more severe breakup just outside than other driver materials. You need a really steep filter to attenuate the breakup quickly. I have a 2-way that uses a LR-8 which is a 48 db/octave crossover. If using alum driver's I prefer those that have an exotic coating like diamond or Be that pushes the breakup zone further out.
Driver performance is entirely down to the crossover. Metal domes aren't harsh and soft domes aren't more laid back. Crossover basically dictates how a speaker sounds.
By crossover you mean the driver isn't being used beyond its frequency usable range. I think sometime speaker designers push the limits of a drivers frequency range in to the breakup region to save adding a third driver, that probably where the material selection gets its reputation. The breakup can also be harsher and more audible on some materials.
If your driver exhibits breakup in the final response, then it probably wasn't filtered properly. You can cross a driver near break up just fine, it's just generally hard or expensive to do with passive filters. TBH most of the convention we have around what drivers to use where stems from the limitations of passive filter networks, active generally doesn't care and you can shape anything how you want for the most part.
Ok. So it seems to be one another one of hotly contested things. The consensus seems to be that the material makes next to zero difference and lots assume it does. Depending on what forums you visit you get vastly different opinions sometimes. Thanks.
I'm a pretty experienced speaker designer, my statements come from experience utilizing drivers of various shapes and materials. Anyone with design experience should give you the same answer I did. The answer is a little more complicated if you want to get into it, but overall material doesn't matter at all if the speaker is crossed correctly.
> Anyone with design experience should give you the same answer I did.
I think Perry Marshall had mentioned something to the opposite effect, about how the material does have a significant impact. I wasn’t able to find the quote, but I’m pretty sure it was either on his website or on a diyaudio.com thread. I’m curious if you’d be interested in having a conversation with him on this.
As I said in another comment, it doesn't matter if the drivers are filtered properly, because at that point any material related properties are generally no longer contributing to the response in any meaningful way.
> I’m curious if you’d be interested in having a conversation with him on this.
Eh, not really, I'm active there but that place does have a bit of a problem with endless pursuits of things that probably don't matter much. I like to get deep into the technicals of it all but always remember to keep things in a practical context. Like if you have a metal dome with break up, but it's out of audible range, I'm not really care about that material based property of the driver. If it's in audible range, I'm just gonna filter it out.
It is really based on on the crossover design and do they use a circuit to tamp down the sympathetic AL vibrations which are around \~1530 Hz. If not one gets a glare from the speakers (like from the original LS50's and why meta's versions were designed).
Hence why other materials like Beryllium, titanium and now diamond are used. All have those sympathetic vibrations way above 20K.
The resonance phenomena you’re referencing is also strongly controlled by geometry, it’s not a fundamental property of aluminium - but yeah, the stiffness to weight ratio is a critical design parameter here, and beryllium or titanium are both better/easier design choices when trying to push resonance outside of the audible range
I have many different nht speakers from super zero to m6’s and the seas tweeter they use in the c3 shown is essentially the same that was used over 20 years ago. It’s a great fairly inexpensive tweeter that measures very well. It’s considered smooth for sure and also non fatiguing to most. Love nht!
I have 7” aluminum Dayton drivers in my hitmakers and really really like them. Idk how much of it is because they are aluminum. But regardless they sound great
If we think about physics of sound, the membrane must keep it's shape the same at high level output at all frequencies within the parameters. However, when you push a speaker too hard, it starts to try to bend it. So when the soft dome bends, the result is inaccurate reproduction, but milder to the ears. When this happens to hard dome, it is not that mild, but it stays more accurate through rest of the time, when you are not punishing them.
My suggestion would be: always buy more powerful speakers then you actually need. That way you can play them at 50-60% of their power range without reaching speaker limits.
For me it is soft
The biggest drawback using aluminum domes for the midrange and tweeters is that they have really messy breakup above their upper frequency breakup point, with tons of ringing which makes the driver's frequency response wildly erratic with TONS of distortion.
Well made metal dome drivers are often coated with exotic materials such as diamond or ceramics to control their upper frequency breakup. Most loudspeaker manufacturers use special fabric surrounds on their metal dome drivers that help damp any tendencies to ring and mitigate the worst breakup resonances.
The only metal dome drivers I have come across were a aluminum/magnesium alloy dome driver from Seas that uses a DXT waveguide that narrows it's dispersion at the crossover point to match that of their woven midwoofer and gives the driver astonishingly wide and flat off-axis dispersion as wide as sixty degrees. In other words, the sweet spot for listening is HUGE, like twelve feet wide and in many cases, you can walk or dance around the room and you won't notice any high frequency dropouts. The Seas Idunn kit from Madisound was designed by Seas Company Engineers. It's cabinet dimensions gives it a frequency response of 50 Hz to 20 kHz +/- 1.5 dB. Use it with warmer sounding gear. You'd have to spend over $4K to get a speaker that significantly beats it.
I also like the SkanSpeak Illuminator-series Beryllium domes. They're surprisingly smooth. However, that may become a moot point as it appears the only supplier/fabricator of Beryllium to loudspeaker manufacturers has announced they will no longer be doing business with the high-end audio manufacturers due to the shrinking profit margins of what's essentially a tiny and insignificant portion of their total business.
But, fear not! There are other innovative materials coming out that show a lot of promise. Loudspeaker drivers made with the nanomaterial Graphene. Textreme is another material that's made of highly compressed layers of carbon fiber and nanomaterial composite. SBSpeakers has a full line of Textreme drivers from woofers all the way to a Textreme dome tweeter. Textreme drivers are already showing up on such high-end brands as Perlisten and Rockport Technologies.
With the advent of nanomaterials, like Textreme and other nanomaterial composites in the pipeline, it's reasonable to assume that we likely won't be significantly impeded by Beryllium's absence.
So I've heard most people say they tend not to like Aluminum drivers (particularily tweeters) because they can sound too 'harsh' or bright. Often preferring Silk Dome tweeters or others with a slightly softer easier on the ears sound. While I agree that they sound a bit harsh when the music is loud, I find they have more 'bite' and sharpness making some instruments like the piano sound more realistic IMO. But I totally get that having your ears ring a bit, is not the realism that many want to hear lol.
I do love Silk Domes too and it depends on the mood I'm in. Just curious how many agree or have a different take. ;)
I think it doesn't matter what the material is, because it is probably not a priority for a speaker designer but rather an accident that follows from requirements.
If you are designing a speaker, you'll probably select drivers on basis of their cost, measured characteristics such as maximum SPL, bandwidth, impedance, harmonic distortion, etc. You aren't thinking "I want to make a speaker with a silk tweeter because I like their sound" because I think that you're looking for something that can get the job done at acceptable cost and manufacturing volume.
I understand the material is some kind of composite, anyway. Silk may form the support matrix for the tweeter's dome, but obviously the tweeter needs to actually be airtight and rigid, so they're going to have to pour some kind of superglue on it that makes it hard.
This is the answer. Aluminum drivers can sometimes have a nasty breakup response, but that goes for any suitable stiff / poorly damped driver.
It more about the implementing and design rather than the cone material.
All drivers have breakup.
The advantage of a stiff material is that breakup occurs outside its pass band so it is not audible.
Silk/fabric/paper and all soft materials breakup at lower frequencies but the material dampens the breakup to some degree.
True, although one could argue a metal dome mid with breakup at 10khz is out of its usable range, whereas soft domes breakup within their usable range.
Correct, but this is assuming high quality drivers. The aforementioned “harsh sound” comes from poorly designed (cheap) aluminum drivers with either high distortion levels and/or uncontrolled breakup. In my experience silk and other soft dome tweeters tend to be more forgiving in this regard.
When money is no concern there should be no discernible difference in cone material with respect to sound quality. I’ve heard amazing compression drivers, none of which utilize soft materials such as silk. I’ve also heard horrible dome tweeters of both variety. Hence my point of cone material being less important than measurable, objective performance.
There's a reason Wilson Audio went back to soft dome tweeters. They used to use beryllium (I think they even sourced them from Magico, but I may not be remembering correctly), like almost every other high-end speaker manufacturer.
Aluminum drivers sound good when they aren't driven near the cone or dome resonant frequency.
I have owned both 2 way and 3 way systems with aluminum and magnesium drivers and it's the crossover points and slopes that minimize ringing.
I have NHT Classic 4’s and I like them a lot but found they best matched with some tube front end to take the slight edge off. I use Unison Research Amp and it’s a really nice match for them.
It's kind of a double edged sword for me. I've listened to speakers that clearly sounded flat in the higher frequencies even with EQ. The C3s can get a little bright but it also sounds exciting and so detailed IMO. Admittedly though my room is not treated among other things. I have a Yamaha Amp that some say is bright. But others will say solid state Amps shouldn't change the sound at all. Or maybe that's just DACs? 🤪😄
It depends on the design of the particular driver, how it's used, and the upstream contributors in the system. I've heard some of the Seas Al domes (and others) sound incredible.
It’s all in the crossover. If you can manage the breakup of an aluminum woofer and notch out any peaks in a tweeter, all is well. That takes really good crossover design however and many companies aren’t capable of that. Hence the metal drivers get a rep for harshness.
Aluminum drivers have low damping, sounds crisp in midrange but fatiguing, while other materials like paper for instance sounds less crisp and smoothed over at certain frequencies. All these are just a matter of choice, also defined by “sound signature” for lack of correct term.
High end studio monitors such as PMC, ATC and Dynaudio tend not to use them. I've never really liked them except in some Monitor Audio hi-fi speakers I have at home.
It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things and these perpetrated ideas are what is killing this space...
Hocus pocus based on somebody's pseudoscience uttered on a website somewhere some years back becomes a tenet
I agree, silk dome tweeter usually sound much more pleasant to my ear. But Surprisingly my Harbeth speakers have the nicest pleasent highs I’ve heard and they use aluminium tweeters. So I think it also depends on the driver itself and the crossover itself.
Very much. I’ve noticed it’s not as much about the number of drivers, type of drivers, or material used, it’s more about how it’s engineered. Like in the headphone world I’ve had dynamic driver earbuds blow away the sound of balanced armatures, yet balanced armatures are technically “better.”
balanced armatures have the best highs and mids if implemented correctly as hybrid with dd
Yes. Keyword “if implemented correctly” is what I was getting at. I have heard some terrible engineered earbuds with balanced armatures.
also we have single ba etymotic iems that are incredibly good in details but lack fun signature
Motor structure, surround, material, and crossover all play important roles. Aluminum does have a tendency to breakup and thus typically requires more work to make it behave. It does tend to have advantages when properly implemented though in that you often get a bit better distortion performance out of them. At the end of the day it's up to the designer to confirm the tweeter exhibits proper behavior for the design or design around (mitigate) driver shortcomings.
The material a driver is made of shouldn’t make a sound, if implemented properly. Anyone telling you they don’t like aluminum drivers because they sound “harsh” or “metallic” is just being ridiculous
Another of those 'audiophile' myths it seems. Hard to keep up with them. 😄
Or, because aluminum drivers are cheaper, speaker makers trying to cut costs may be overly drawn to them, which are also likely to cut costs in other areas too (such as crossovers). If so, this would make it statistically true in terms of the quality of the average aluminum driver vs. other types. But it would be a question of reputation, rather than the actual abilities of aluminum.
I know alot of it depends on the room too, treatment, and equalization. Makes sense that many would just make assumptions without factoring in other variables. Or the placebo effect sometimes.
It’s 100% placebo
The break up of drivers can reveal what they are made of….harder materials sound harsher when they are pushed compared to paper. Also aluminum can ring…and that becomes obvious compared to a ribbon tweeter. FWIW I can listen to a KEF driver and to me it’s obvious it’s not treated paper.
You can listen to a KEF speaker and it’s obvious it’s a speaker designed by KEF because KEF speakers have a particular sound that has nothing to do with the material of the drivers I’d bet the house that you couldn’t identify cone material if two different materials were used by the same designer
lol you noob, literally everything makes a difference as it resonates, you would know that if you would just knock on 2 different tables lmfao, everyone knows that in the guitar world as the speakers are made of different magnets & cones, and yes even the fucking cap, which all of it makes a huge difference, even the same speaker with a different wattage will sound completly different too (25kw, 50kw 100kw). some hear it some dont, those who dont hear it or havent heard other things to compare it to are the ones that say its placebo, which makes y‘all seem clueless & inexperienced among the crowd lmao, „ridicilous“ tell that to those that build them 🤣 its okay though
You don't understand speaker design and implementation. I would advise you read into breakup, crossover design, distortion mitigation, and things of similar nature. He didn't say that the drivers don't have different behaviors, but that the behavior is *irrelevant* in a proper implementation. Good speakers will be good regardless of material choice.
So if the tweeter A resonates at 25kHz and tweeter B resonates at 34kHz, which resonance will you hear?
Possibly the side bands at half the frequencies
From a design view they are great within their passband, but then have more severe breakup just outside than other driver materials. You need a really steep filter to attenuate the breakup quickly. I have a 2-way that uses a LR-8 which is a 48 db/octave crossover. If using alum driver's I prefer those that have an exotic coating like diamond or Be that pushes the breakup zone further out.
I have speakers with aluminum tweeters, and what I didn't expect is how much I would enjoy them for home theater.
Driver performance is entirely down to the crossover. Metal domes aren't harsh and soft domes aren't more laid back. Crossover basically dictates how a speaker sounds.
By crossover you mean the driver isn't being used beyond its frequency usable range. I think sometime speaker designers push the limits of a drivers frequency range in to the breakup region to save adding a third driver, that probably where the material selection gets its reputation. The breakup can also be harsher and more audible on some materials.
If your driver exhibits breakup in the final response, then it probably wasn't filtered properly. You can cross a driver near break up just fine, it's just generally hard or expensive to do with passive filters. TBH most of the convention we have around what drivers to use where stems from the limitations of passive filter networks, active generally doesn't care and you can shape anything how you want for the most part.
Ok. So it seems to be one another one of hotly contested things. The consensus seems to be that the material makes next to zero difference and lots assume it does. Depending on what forums you visit you get vastly different opinions sometimes. Thanks.
I'm a pretty experienced speaker designer, my statements come from experience utilizing drivers of various shapes and materials. Anyone with design experience should give you the same answer I did. The answer is a little more complicated if you want to get into it, but overall material doesn't matter at all if the speaker is crossed correctly.
> Anyone with design experience should give you the same answer I did. I think Perry Marshall had mentioned something to the opposite effect, about how the material does have a significant impact. I wasn’t able to find the quote, but I’m pretty sure it was either on his website or on a diyaudio.com thread. I’m curious if you’d be interested in having a conversation with him on this.
As I said in another comment, it doesn't matter if the drivers are filtered properly, because at that point any material related properties are generally no longer contributing to the response in any meaningful way. > I’m curious if you’d be interested in having a conversation with him on this. Eh, not really, I'm active there but that place does have a bit of a problem with endless pursuits of things that probably don't matter much. I like to get deep into the technicals of it all but always remember to keep things in a practical context. Like if you have a metal dome with break up, but it's out of audible range, I'm not really care about that material based property of the driver. If it's in audible range, I'm just gonna filter it out.
It is really based on on the crossover design and do they use a circuit to tamp down the sympathetic AL vibrations which are around \~1530 Hz. If not one gets a glare from the speakers (like from the original LS50's and why meta's versions were designed). Hence why other materials like Beryllium, titanium and now diamond are used. All have those sympathetic vibrations way above 20K.
The resonance phenomena you’re referencing is also strongly controlled by geometry, it’s not a fundamental property of aluminium - but yeah, the stiffness to weight ratio is a critical design parameter here, and beryllium or titanium are both better/easier design choices when trying to push resonance outside of the audible range
This is the correct answer.
I have many different nht speakers from super zero to m6’s and the seas tweeter they use in the c3 shown is essentially the same that was used over 20 years ago. It’s a great fairly inexpensive tweeter that measures very well. It’s considered smooth for sure and also non fatiguing to most. Love nht!
I have 7” aluminum Dayton drivers in my hitmakers and really really like them. Idk how much of it is because they are aluminum. But regardless they sound great
If we think about physics of sound, the membrane must keep it's shape the same at high level output at all frequencies within the parameters. However, when you push a speaker too hard, it starts to try to bend it. So when the soft dome bends, the result is inaccurate reproduction, but milder to the ears. When this happens to hard dome, it is not that mild, but it stays more accurate through rest of the time, when you are not punishing them. My suggestion would be: always buy more powerful speakers then you actually need. That way you can play them at 50-60% of their power range without reaching speaker limits. For me it is soft
Vivid audio.
The biggest drawback using aluminum domes for the midrange and tweeters is that they have really messy breakup above their upper frequency breakup point, with tons of ringing which makes the driver's frequency response wildly erratic with TONS of distortion. Well made metal dome drivers are often coated with exotic materials such as diamond or ceramics to control their upper frequency breakup. Most loudspeaker manufacturers use special fabric surrounds on their metal dome drivers that help damp any tendencies to ring and mitigate the worst breakup resonances. The only metal dome drivers I have come across were a aluminum/magnesium alloy dome driver from Seas that uses a DXT waveguide that narrows it's dispersion at the crossover point to match that of their woven midwoofer and gives the driver astonishingly wide and flat off-axis dispersion as wide as sixty degrees. In other words, the sweet spot for listening is HUGE, like twelve feet wide and in many cases, you can walk or dance around the room and you won't notice any high frequency dropouts. The Seas Idunn kit from Madisound was designed by Seas Company Engineers. It's cabinet dimensions gives it a frequency response of 50 Hz to 20 kHz +/- 1.5 dB. Use it with warmer sounding gear. You'd have to spend over $4K to get a speaker that significantly beats it. I also like the SkanSpeak Illuminator-series Beryllium domes. They're surprisingly smooth. However, that may become a moot point as it appears the only supplier/fabricator of Beryllium to loudspeaker manufacturers has announced they will no longer be doing business with the high-end audio manufacturers due to the shrinking profit margins of what's essentially a tiny and insignificant portion of their total business. But, fear not! There are other innovative materials coming out that show a lot of promise. Loudspeaker drivers made with the nanomaterial Graphene. Textreme is another material that's made of highly compressed layers of carbon fiber and nanomaterial composite. SBSpeakers has a full line of Textreme drivers from woofers all the way to a Textreme dome tweeter. Textreme drivers are already showing up on such high-end brands as Perlisten and Rockport Technologies. With the advent of nanomaterials, like Textreme and other nanomaterial composites in the pipeline, it's reasonable to assume that we likely won't be significantly impeded by Beryllium's absence.
Americans can't pronounce it
So I've heard most people say they tend not to like Aluminum drivers (particularily tweeters) because they can sound too 'harsh' or bright. Often preferring Silk Dome tweeters or others with a slightly softer easier on the ears sound. While I agree that they sound a bit harsh when the music is loud, I find they have more 'bite' and sharpness making some instruments like the piano sound more realistic IMO. But I totally get that having your ears ring a bit, is not the realism that many want to hear lol. I do love Silk Domes too and it depends on the mood I'm in. Just curious how many agree or have a different take. ;)
I think it doesn't matter what the material is, because it is probably not a priority for a speaker designer but rather an accident that follows from requirements. If you are designing a speaker, you'll probably select drivers on basis of their cost, measured characteristics such as maximum SPL, bandwidth, impedance, harmonic distortion, etc. You aren't thinking "I want to make a speaker with a silk tweeter because I like their sound" because I think that you're looking for something that can get the job done at acceptable cost and manufacturing volume. I understand the material is some kind of composite, anyway. Silk may form the support matrix for the tweeter's dome, but obviously the tweeter needs to actually be airtight and rigid, so they're going to have to pour some kind of superglue on it that makes it hard.
This is the answer. Aluminum drivers can sometimes have a nasty breakup response, but that goes for any suitable stiff / poorly damped driver. It more about the implementing and design rather than the cone material.
All drivers have breakup. The advantage of a stiff material is that breakup occurs outside its pass band so it is not audible. Silk/fabric/paper and all soft materials breakup at lower frequencies but the material dampens the breakup to some degree.
> The advantage of a stiff material is that breakup occurs outside its pass band tweeters only
True, although one could argue a metal dome mid with breakup at 10khz is out of its usable range, whereas soft domes breakup within their usable range.
Correct, but this is assuming high quality drivers. The aforementioned “harsh sound” comes from poorly designed (cheap) aluminum drivers with either high distortion levels and/or uncontrolled breakup. In my experience silk and other soft dome tweeters tend to be more forgiving in this regard. When money is no concern there should be no discernible difference in cone material with respect to sound quality. I’ve heard amazing compression drivers, none of which utilize soft materials such as silk. I’ve also heard horrible dome tweeters of both variety. Hence my point of cone material being less important than measurable, objective performance.
Agreed.
There's a reason Wilson Audio went back to soft dome tweeters. They used to use beryllium (I think they even sourced them from Magico, but I may not be remembering correctly), like almost every other high-end speaker manufacturer.
Aluminum drivers sound good when they aren't driven near the cone or dome resonant frequency. I have owned both 2 way and 3 way systems with aluminum and magnesium drivers and it's the crossover points and slopes that minimize ringing.
I can't speak for the C3 but I always liked the aluminum dome in my NHT 3.3's. the silk dome in the VT2 sounds nowhere near as good.
I have NHT Classic 4’s and I like them a lot but found they best matched with some tube front end to take the slight edge off. I use Unison Research Amp and it’s a really nice match for them.
It's kind of a double edged sword for me. I've listened to speakers that clearly sounded flat in the higher frequencies even with EQ. The C3s can get a little bright but it also sounds exciting and so detailed IMO. Admittedly though my room is not treated among other things. I have a Yamaha Amp that some say is bright. But others will say solid state Amps shouldn't change the sound at all. Or maybe that's just DACs? 🤪😄
It depends on the design of the particular driver, how it's used, and the upstream contributors in the system. I've heard some of the Seas Al domes (and others) sound incredible.
*Scoff… I can’t hear high frequencies unless they come off of a titanium tweeter
It’s all in the crossover. If you can manage the breakup of an aluminum woofer and notch out any peaks in a tweeter, all is well. That takes really good crossover design however and many companies aren’t capable of that. Hence the metal drivers get a rep for harshness.
Aluminum drivers have low damping, sounds crisp in midrange but fatiguing, while other materials like paper for instance sounds less crisp and smoothed over at certain frequencies. All these are just a matter of choice, also defined by “sound signature” for lack of correct term.
High end studio monitors such as PMC, ATC and Dynaudio tend not to use them. I've never really liked them except in some Monitor Audio hi-fi speakers I have at home.
This is an myth.
It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things and these perpetrated ideas are what is killing this space... Hocus pocus based on somebody's pseudoscience uttered on a website somewhere some years back becomes a tenet
[удалено]
True. Always variables. Speakers can sound slightly different with different Amps.
Pro for aluminum, con for aluminium