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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: RAAL “Water Drop” tweeter for Macondo.
Post Subject: The Water Drop Tweeter: eventually!!!!Posted by Romy the Cat on: 2/23/2007

Ok, I removed the series cap from the amp output and made it as it should be – pure parallel. To my great satisfaction the little “dirty inflictions” that I got in Vitavox are gone and now the S2 as clean as it should be. I presume in the former setting the Vitavox voice coil spoke with the Water Drop’s filter. How they are completely isolated. Since the Vitavox do not need to break any barriers at HF I put back are 5 years the 3uF Vitamin Q into the game – it will die this way and am not touching it anymore. I do believe that any more interesting MF I ever seen…

Now was the time to finalize the Water Drop settings. This time is not mystery. The first order did not work out for me – too much masking of the Vitavox.  So, the second order….

There was a quandary in there. Alex made my tweeter with one brilliant implementation - a transformer with adjustable gap and consequentially with variable inductance of primary. It is so seductive and so contagious: you just hang a cap, then turn a precisely calibrated wheel and your have any filter you want. Since I need to attenuate the tweeter (line source) for a few dB I began to experiment with my usual techniques – to move the tweeter up on the transition slope.   It was not successful.  With dropping inductance less than .1H the tweeter turn to be “noisy”. I do not know why but it became juts unpleasant – hard, zippy and noisy. I ended up as I initially thought 0.17H and 1uF that make 12kHz against 7.5R tweeter. In this setting the Water Drops just phenomenal – clean, transparent, free for any noise or hardness, absolutely perfectly mixed with Vitavox, in fact make the Vitavox even better. The Water Dropped Vitavox sounds kind of hipper-fragile and overly-vulnerable and LOVE it. It has that absolutely acoustic “strings crash” that very few drivers have.  When upper frequency stresses the Vitavox just “explodes” with thousands bubbles of air.  The S2 did it without the Water Drop but with this tweeter (and it never happened with any other tweeter I tried) those exposure have glorious despairing act, kind of reminding the 4th July fireworks and that magnificent slow decay of the last biggest shot…

Everything was great but now there was time to play the Hi-Fi tricks was over and it was time to set the playback to play music. Since I was not able to attenuate the tweeter on the slope I put cheap 8Ohm L-pad before the tweeter crossover and killed some dBs… The HF was not really excessive but there was a filling of overly openness that I slightly rolled off. When everything was dialed perfectly it was … as it should be. Te very good thing in addition is that the problem that I was bitching to Alex is gone. With excessive volume for the  tweeter the upper HF sounds overly soft and slightly compressed (S2 has more “dynamic crash” them Water Drop). However, when the volume from tweeter is correct the effect dos not manifest itself, and the combined sound runs strong and muscular to the end.

 How it sound? Do you know that feeling… Pretend you live in very dry continental climate and you stepped outside of your home during a coolest winter night, you are dressed juts in one t-shot nut because air is very dry you feel not cold… Then you lift your eyes look up and see milliard stars one the pitch black sky… That feeling of the space and that feel of cold…..the cold that do not bother you… it kind of reminds me the Water Dropping effect. No wonder this damn tweeter is called the Water Drop… something that it dose hard to explained – it should be experienced….

Then I spent approximate an hour in absolutely orgasmatick experience, listening just a few notes. (I was lucky on electricity all day long). In 1975 Friedrich Gulda recorded with Wiener Philharmoniker Mozar 21th concerto lead by Claudio Abbado. The performance is stunning - easily the best 21th that I heard, but the opening, when Gulda entered with piano, is totally out of this world. For years I have fantasies how I would play it if I was able to play and I developed a freakish demand how it should sound. I always though that that it should be as Friedrich Gulda did only larger, should come from nowhere (or everywhere), and it should not be attached to any “Erath” substance… When I played it today it was so spooky, so psychedelic and so different then usually that was playing again and again, changing the depth of Water Dropping and observing how the sounds of entering piano get converted into Sound of Abstract Mystery, the Mystery about witch worth to spend life thinking. It was not exactly how I was visualizing it… it was better, I kid you not…

It was so wonderful and so gratifying that I, as I said in email to a friend of mine, am strongly considering getting another one as I would like to know that I have a spare one sitting in the box, waiting until I kill my current one as I an not wiling to stay without this tweeter…

Thanks Alex…
Romy The caT

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