Hi-Fi companies and Hi-Fi marketing are lost touch with the nature of sound reproduction and so deep in disassociation with the means of Real Audio that they are forced to pull out of own asses new and new ways “to sell”.

the level of treatment of the prospective customers as a potential idiots

Gregm wrote:

It's better than a Marten Supreme because the mid is cut off @500Hz whereas Marten cuts it off at 1,3kHz  "where the ear is at its most sensitive". Note: they must be referring to latest technology ears -- not the traditional ones (i.e. the ones most people on this site probably use). Whatever, if you say so. That 2,5" ceramic must be doing a hell of a job playing well at 500-600Hz up to I-don't-know-where (5-6 kHz ?)... Anyway there it is for your casual perusal.

It is a good question that I also asked when I saw this speaker.  Afterall, everything being equal using the same materials for the drivers is more optimal from a coloration standpoint.  My guess is cost.  They already had splurged for that hellishly expensive midrange and they want to keep the speaker priced in a range with the Wilson Watt/Puppies of the world.  Add the diamond tweeters and now you are looking at $40,000+ speakers.  This Supravox tweeter was perhaps the best they could find and still kept the price in the (more or less) real world.

Personally, if the diamond midrange is as good as they claim then I think it makes sense to push it as low as possible.  Of course going too low and you run into distortion and dynamic limitations.  I have found that speakers with a wide bandwidth midrange often sound quite good because the coherence through a critical range is good.  My guess is that they can run this mid easily to 5Khz without issues.  Perhaps even to 10Khz before the dispersion really starts to suffer.

I would not dismiss this speaker out of hand because it does look like a serious attempt to make a good sounding "conventional" speaker.  I see nothing wrong with them touting that they give you more expensive parts for the money.  It also throws a bit of mud in the face of other really expensive speakers when you see what the drivers cost (and that is retail prices which for sure the manufacturers don't pay), which I find kind of funny.

It reminds me of when Bobby Palkovic from Merlin tried to convince me that his $10,000 two-way speaker was justified in the price because it was so expensive for him to build.  I calculated that there was only about $600 per speaker in materials...

Has anyone heard the Marten Design Coltrane Supreme to know what the diamond mid and diamond tweeter sound like?  I have heard Lumen White speakers with Diamond tweeter and it wasn't bad at all with Ayon Reference 52B monoblocks.  The Avalon Eidolon Diamond sounds boring with a Pass labs setup.

morricab wrote:

It is a good question that I also asked when I saw this speaker.  Afterall, everything being equal using the same materials for the drivers is more optimal from a coloration standpoint.  My guess is cost. Personally, if the diamond midrange is as good as they claim then I think it makes sense to push it as low as possible.  Of course going too low and you run into distortion and dynamic limitations.  I have found that speakers with a wide bandwidth midrange often sound quite good because the coherence through a critical range is good.  My guess is that they can run this mid easily to 5Khz without issues.  Perhaps even to 10Khz before the dispersion really starts to suffer.

So, if I had two diamond-coned drivers, one 2,5" & one 1", I would be spending a lot of money to cover a region only from upper-mid to bats (the tweet reaches its limits ~100kHz). To be safe, I would propose over 4-5kHz. Furthermore, it's difficult to mate that hard ceramic with anything else after it... what would be the MF of choice?? Probably another similar ceramic, since it's available. But then, you're stuck with the rest of the frequency spectrum. For mid-bass I would like driver that provides some tonality and also contributes to the spacial restitution; this is usually a paper, and its characteristics must differ from, say, the upper mid unit -- obviously, each is dealing with a different FR. The smaller the soundwave, the better suited is the hard ceramic.

Admittedly this is no scientific observation -- just little experience trying to "systemise" Accuton's regular mid + tweet in a system. It is also what invariably comes to mind whenever I listen to speakers which use small ceramics as mids & the equivalent tweets, including the diamond ones. I have nothing to back it up, except for Caballe sounding as if she lost a LOT of weight, the cello sounding like a viola, and the violins made mostly out of plastic (sometimes glass).

morricab wrote:

I would not dismiss this speaker out of hand because it does look like a serious attempt to make a good sounding "conventional" speaker.  I see nothing wrong with them touting that they give you more expensive parts for the money.  It also throws a bit of mud in the face of other really expensive speakers when you see what the drivers cost (and that is retail prices which for sure the manufacturers don't pay), which I find kind of funny.

morricab wrote:

Has anyone heard the Marten Design Coltrane Supreme to know what the diamond mid and diamond tweeter sound like?

morricab wrote:

It is a good question that I also asked when I saw this speaker.  Afterall, everything being equal using the same materials for the drivers is more optimal from a coloration standpoint.  My guess is cost.  They already had splurged for that hellishly expensive midrange and they want to keep the speaker priced in a range with the Wilson Watt/Puppies of the world.  Add the diamond tweeters and now you are looking at $40,000+ speakers.  This Supravox tweeter was perhaps the best they could find and still kept the price in the (more or less) real world. Personally, if the diamond midrange is as good as they claim then I think it makes sense to push it as low as possible.  Of course going too low and you run into distortion and dynamic limitations.  I have found that speakers with a wide bandwidth midrange often sound quite good because the coherence through a critical range is good.  My guess is that they can run this mid easily to 5Khz without issues.  Perhaps even to 10Khz before the dispersion really starts to suffer. I would not dismiss this speaker out of hand because it does look like a serious attempt to make a good sounding "conventional" speaker.  I see nothing wrong with them touting that they give you more expensive parts for the money.  It also throws a bit of mud in the face of other really expensive speakers when you see what the drivers cost (and that is retail prices which for sure the manufacturers don't pay), which I find kind of funny. It reminds me of when Bobby Palkovic from Merlin tried to convince me that his $10,000 two-way speaker was justified in the price because it was so expensive for him to build.  I calculated that there was only about $600 per speaker in materials... Has anyone heard the Marten Design Coltrane Supreme to know what the diamond mid and diamond tweeter sound like?  I have heard Lumen White speakers with Diamond tweeter and it wasn't bad at all with Ayon Reference 52B monoblocks.  The Avalon Eidolon Diamond sounds boring with a Pass labs setup.

Defiantly, why not? I do not think that anyone has an answer to it ironically, as I can see it, the problem here is not with diamond tweeters themselves.  We do not judge the diamond tweeters but rather the implementation around the diamond tweeters and here is where the problem I see lays…

Any company that I know of, and the sound or products am familiar with, since they went for diamond tweeters (after they formerly used other tweeters) got very unfortunate results. The Avalon Eidolon is just one of the long line of them – how wonderful was the original Eidolon and how bogus become the late Avalon production. This list would go on but does it mean automatically that diamond tweeters are some kind of ultimate evil? Not really and I see in all of it a bigger fish to fry.

The last few years audio industry invented a new definition of hi-fi sound and the majority of selling and writing cretins are aggressively hammer-in the notion of this sound into the vulnerable mind of morons-audiophiles. They the supply demands kikes into the game and as result tweeters are not used to care a proper TTH pattern but rather to imitate the glory of SS application form beginning of 70s.