Teac's Tannoy ST-100 super tweeter

Oh you know how we're such suckers for anything that's extravagant, Japanese, and that would make a completely superfluous addition to our mounting collection of, um, unnecessary ridiculous and absurdly overpriced Japanese toys. Enter the Tannoy ST-100 super tweeter, the black truffle of high-end high-range speakers. If a 24K gold "evaporation" titanium dome diaphragm (we'll take their word for it) capable of playing back audio frequencies up to 100kHz -- far outside the range of normal human hearing -- gets the ink flowing in your check-writing pen, be warned: Teac expects you to part with yen;252,000 (about $2,200 US) for a pair of these things, so be damned sure your source plays DVD-Audio and SACD.

[Via AV Watch]

[gschoots @ Aug 1st 2006 9:00AM]

Why there is so much gold involved is a mystery to me, ah well if you are about to shell out so much money it should be at list a bit shiny right?

[Steve @ Aug 1st 2006 9:22AM]

Except Tannoy is not Japanese.

[sockatume @ Aug 1st 2006 9:27AM]

They're missing out on all that sound above 100kHz, though. I mean, that's a lot of fidelity they could be losing by only going up to 100kHz. Why not go a bit higher, to, say, 1GHz? Is that even possible in air? Would it turn into a plasma or something?

[Karen Manokian @ Aug 1st 2006 9:46AM]

Tannoy is british mate!

[strider_mt2k @ Aug 1st 2006 9:51AM]

I am currently developing a super-duper tweeter that, while appearing as a normal LED, is acually reproducing frequecies in that range.
I mount it next to what appears to be a normal tweeter, but is actually a foamed titanium audionic enabler.

You know, for a better listening experience.

Price: If you have to ask...

[Dutch Guy @ Aug 1st 2006 9:53AM]

Are audiophiles really this gullible? I mean.. this is basically buying the emperor's new clothes. Can you hear the supersweet accuracy of those frequencies way beyond human hearing range...

[Mark @ Aug 1st 2006 10:01AM]

Got to say this is a fantastic piece of audio equipment but my question is are they going to be selling in the UK and if so how much.

[Matt @ Aug 1st 2006 10:37AM]

Just ordered a pair. Will tell you how they are.

[mcspacebar @ Aug 1st 2006 10:49AM]

Tannoy is a British company silly.
nice research....

[Steve @ Aug 1st 2006 11:21AM]

I never figured out how this worked, but back in the days when they sold external ‘Super Tweeters” I disconnected the regular speaker and heard nothing. After reconnecting the main speaker and disconnecting the super tweeter there was a difference. The only thing I could come up with is that there were some mixing products. --- Very strange that they did that.

[Jeff @ Aug 1st 2006 11:21AM]

Going to sound like crap because it won't match your other drivers.

[sockatume @ Aug 1st 2006 11:40AM]

Steve: it could just be psychological. You really need someone to blind that test for you. I'm pretty sure that interference effects from a 100kHz signal are going to be vanishingly small compared to position of the listeners and the type soft furnishings in the room.

[Joe @ Aug 1st 2006 12:09PM]

This thing was cool about 6 years ago when it debuted to much fan fare at CES , but never quite took off. Reminds me of the gimmicky Lineaum tweeter that soon found its way onto Optimus speakers by Radio Shack.

[Steve @ Aug 1st 2006 12:28PM]

sockatume, I was goofing around in an audio store, I was standing right at the speaker plugging in and out the banana connectors. My hunch is that a pure 100K sine wouldn’t exhibit this. I think it was mixing products that were audible when the lower product was being produced (audible).

[jjj @ Aug 1st 2006 12:34PM]

What a dumb idea.
Tweeters need to be paired with bigger size HP.
You can't just use "the best tweeter" + "the best boomer".. won't work.

[Alex Brewer @ Aug 1st 2006 1:08PM]

Aren't white truffles the much rarer and more expensive of the fungi. So, is this like, the second est high end super tweeter?

[Chris Gilmour @ Aug 1st 2006 1:57PM]

Lets assume that audiophiles are trying to make their systems reproduce sounds from real-life. It doesn't actually matter whether the human ear can hear up to 100KHz or even up to 20KHz. If there are things in reallife that make noises at that frequency, this speaker should be able to mimmick it.

[zxcasd @ Aug 1st 2006 2:27PM]

One word for you: subharmonics.

Just because you can't hear 100kHz doesn't mean that that 100kHz, in and of itself as a fundamental, and/or combined with other ultrasonic frequencies, can't synthesize other frequencies. If your source can produce frequencies this high, and your drivers can reproduce them, it will indeed add potentially significant data (usually in imaging) to the music.

[Stefan @ Aug 1st 2006 3:15PM]

er, according to Tannoy (a British company...) "...more and more Tannoy products include a very high frequency driver, or SuperTweeterTM, first designed for the 1996 Golden Sound Award winning Kingdom model." So this news comes a bit late.

[James @ Aug 1st 2006 5:29PM]

Tannoy is British, but I believe it is now owned by the Danes.

[evo @ Aug 1st 2006 9:48PM]

...except that no music recording technology records such frequencies (nor would want to), or even if it did, the result couldn't be delivered to a customer in a commerical form because the data storage required would be so large.

It's not like microphones capture individual frequencies like an FFT and then the frequencies are played back to reconstruct the music. Like the human ear, they capture what can be heard, including subharmonics, directly as audio data, so there's no need to produce these high frequences in order to hear the hearable subharmonics.

The only way this would possibly reconstruct anything "real" is if the music were entirely electronic in origin, and the oscillators were capable of producing frequencies that high (which they're not, and assuming the musician wanted to for some reason, which they don't). Obviously, this is neither what's important to musicians, nor is it an interesting genre of music for audiophiles.

[Sean C @ Aug 1st 2006 11:50PM]

for all those questioning the 100Hz-above-human-hearing- factor... With audio there is something called harmonics and octaves. Just because you can't hear that specific frequency doesn't mean it's not affecting the sound. Frequencies interact with eachother to improve definition and overall quality. True, it might not be a dramatic difference, but it is there. That is what makes some sounds more realistic. Those frequencies do exist in real life. The goal of high end audio is come as close to real life as possible.
Back in teh days of digital vs analog recordings, this was one of the big arguements and can still be reflected today in the arguements against mp3 and other compressed formats.

[Nom @ Jun 12th 2007 11:55AM]

I've not demo'd the ST100 but I do have a pair of ST50 Supertweeters which compliment my Definition D700s. When set up correctly they are astoundingly good.
I bought the supertweeters rather than upgrade my speakers to Dimension TD10s and I'm delighted with my choice.
The discernible difference the ST50 make that I'm aware of, is that they conspire with the other drive units to produce a 'live' studio performance from almost all artists.
The bass sounds deeper and more detailed as does the midrange. I understand this is not actually so but it is how it sounds and it is not an audio illusion like Bose.
Good as my speakers were before, the supertweeters improved them.
I also tried them plugging them in to my old DC2000 front speakers which I use for home cinema, again, the difference was shockingly good.