Weekly Q&A: Answers | Week of February 19, 2024

The Purpose and Sound of Supertweeters...

Q: I installed a pair of supertweeters. I can barely hear sound emanating from them (Is that normal?), but the soundstage is easily manipulated by the slightest toe-in (Is this normal?)

-Dennis

A: A stand-alone super tweeter is an aftermarket speaker used in conjunction with your main speakers to augment the main speaker’s performance. The super tweeter extends the system’s upper-end frequency response beyond that of the main speaker.

The super tweeter is connected in parallel with the main speaker and usually sits atop it. Flat-topped speakers of moderate height are ideal. A super tweeter includes a built-in high-pass filter that passes only the highest audio frequencies to the super tweeter, and sometimes the filter frequency is adjustable. A level control is often found on super tweeters.

For several years I used the Enigma Acoustics Sopranino electrostatic super tweeter. It offered selectable high-pass filter frequencies of 8kHz, 10kHz, or 12kHz, along with two level settings. Its fre…