KLINGER FAVRE Audio writes: “Our “D” line and Studio 17 are equipped with a dome tweeter. (you know… this little black dome looking like the eye of some creature and that babies really love to press…). Generally, it is a light membrane, glued to a voice coil that will move in a magnetic field, following by the impulse sent by the amp. In our case, the membrane is a treated Silk Dome, and the voice coil is made of a copper wire wound on an aluminum support. This ensemble constitutes a very light moving mass capable of fast acceleration, thanks to the colossal magnetic field that we create between the polar pieces, especially by a clever drawing and high-quality materials (neodyme-fer-bore magnet).”
“The silk dome is only held by its suspension. No need of a spider for short lenght frenquencies. Rear wave is lowered by a foam dome set behind the silk and vented within a hole in the motor.
Then comes the bronze…. our tweeter is more efficient when set in the middle of a wave guide, as it places the tweeter further back in the enclosure, it aligns it correctly to the boomer to get a nice phase adjustement.
All the more, this piece was designed to limit trebles diffraction on the side of the speaker. You can guess that this piece must be rigid and massive to avoid it from ringing like a bell. Otherwise, we would modify sound rendering. Our aim, is to creat perfect stability for the tweeter to work and express.
once more, we had to make prototypes and tests, to find the right material. Brass, Stainless Steel, aluminium, composite plastics, wood,all of them do have a recognizable sound signature. And the most neutral of all turned out to be the bronze.
Problem: over time, Bronze gets a Patina which doesnt please everybody. The only durable solution we have found to avoid patina is very luxurious: to perform electrolysis of 5 microns of gold. And to our surprise, this light addition of gold gives us extra sound satisfaction.
Since we are making this bronze piece, it has become one of our visual signature.”