A few thoughts...
A little over 10 years ago, I built my first pair of speakers with a ribbon tweeter. It was the G2. I immediately fell in with the "air" and transparency of this ribbon. There weren't many speaker builders using ribbons at the time. But I was hooked.
Just prior to that, I had also built a pair of Ellis 1801's and fell in love with the Seas Excel W18 midwoofers. Since Dennis Murphy designed the crossover for the 1801's, I emailed him to say that I thought that the G2 and the W18 would be a wonderful combination. He emailed back to say that if I built a speaker with that combination, he would be happy to do the crossover. How could I turn that down? That speaker became the Veracity HT1, our very first design. Since not that many other speaker builders were using ribbons at the time, this design generated a lot of buzz. Speaker building was just a hobby for us at the time, but we kept getting emails from people asking if we could build a pair for them (and we did).
A few years later we were developing an MTM design (the HT2's) and a new ribbon called the LCY allowed closer spacing of the woofers than did the G2. So we began using this tweeter as well.
When we began work on the SoundScapes, RAAL just came on the horizon. We were experimenting with a lot of drivers for this new flagship design and thought it would be a good idea to throw RAAL into the mix as well.
At first, I was not all that impressed with the RAALs. It just seemed like something was missing. But the RAALs stayed in the cabinet as we evaluated quite a few midrange drivers. The more I listened, the more I realized that everything in the music was there, just exactly as it should be. But, more importantly, there was nothing there that shouldn't be. These tweeters did not call attention to themselves at all, but they allowed all the music to come through. This is the mark of a truly great driver. Its as if they aren't even there and all you hear is the music. They are totally smooth, detailed and accurate with no hint of a sonic signature of their own.
I often wonder what I would have thought had the first pair of ribbon tweeters I heard were the RAALs. I would not have heard the "air" that initially attracted me the G2 (and later the LCY). So perhaps I would have passed on the use of ribbons. Fortunately that did not happen. And fortunately, I listened to the RAALs long enough to realize how incredibly good they are.
We were so impressed with the custom RAAL tweeter we use, in fact, we modified all of our ribbon-based designs to use RAAL tweeters, making us one of the largest users of RAAL ribbons world-wide. (I was recently told that we now purchase more RAAL ribbons than RAAL's US and Canadian distributors combined.)
As for retro-fitting older speakers with the RAAL ribbons, that is really not a workable option for the G2 and I don't know if it makes much sense for the LCY either. The G2 is taller than the RAAL. So not only would the cabinets need to be re-routed, but we would have to figure out how to fill the extra area once required by the G2. For the LCY, the cabinets could be re-routed since the LCY has a 110mm diameter and that is the exact width and height of the RAAL we use. But in both cases, new crossovers would be required as well. So it makes more sense to simply build new speakers.
Should owners of speakers with G2 or LCY tweeters lust after the RAAL tweeter? I don't think so. My personal pair of SongTowers have the LCY tweeters installed and even though I could certainly make the swap, I have never been motivated to do so. The G2 and the LCY are both great tweeters in their own right or we would never have used them in the first place. So I wouldn't give it a second thought. Of course, if you are considering upgrading speakers, I would highly recommend the RAAL in any new speaker you might consider.
- Jim
