Car audio tweeters are a pretty mixed bag. Virtually every type and quality level exists; cheap paper cones, mylar semi-domes, standard domes made from every material imaginable, ribbons, piezo, even tweeters that only look like tweeters but are actually just domes glued to a piece of plastic to make a 2-way coax look like a 3-way. As a general rule, though, the sound quality is secondary to the cosmetics or mounting method, and as Asian-built tweeters become more and more the norm, the sound quality drops even further in the balance. The reason for the range of tweeter types and general lack of high quality tweeters in car audio, is that it is easy to build a tweeter, but it is extremely difficult to build a good one.
Morel is one of a very short list of speaker manufacturers that has devoted the time and resources to the art of tweeter design and manufacturing. In fact they have become well known in the rarefied domain of exotic high-end home audio speakers for building some of the world's best tweeters.
Morel is also unusual because they are located in Israel. In fact they are the only loudspeaker manufacturer in that country. They were founded by Meir Mordechai, who was born to a family of musicians and wanted nothing else in life except to build the best speakers in the world. Under his leadership, Morel has advanced an impressive range of speaker technologies. They were one of the first companies to use neodymium magnets, aluminum voice coil wire, optimized wire shape (hexagonal), external voice coil technology, ultra large voice coils on midbass speakers, and many other technologies. (Visit their Web site at www.morel.co.il for more of their story.)
So when Morel announces a new tweeter designed to dramatically improve the state of art in car audio, and they name it the "Supremo" - it's time for audiophiles and enthusiasts everywhere to take note.
The Technology
When you are one of the leading speaker manufacturers in the world and decide to design a car audio tweeter from scratch with a "money-is-no-object" attitude, you start by identifying the special problems unique to car audio. You then apply your experience and technology to the problem areas and maybe even invent some new technology along the way. Here are a couple of examples:
Problem 1: Speakers are rarely listened to off-axis.
Most car audio tweeters don't even try to address this point. Often times they are copies of rather successful home tweeters designs and typically have a low profile dome shape that has nice flat on-axis response, but are terrible off-axis.
Morel's solution: build a dome with as close to a half sphere shape as possible to maximize the off-axis response, and solve the problems inherent in using this shape (terrible on-axis response, high distortion, low efficiency, just to name a few).
Problem 2: High resonance tweeters don't work well with car audio woofer/mids.
Car audio woofer/mids suffer from the same location issues as tweeters, this means that the upper midrange suffers off-axis as the sound begins to beam. A typical 6.5" speaker starts becoming directional at about 2200Hz. This means that if you are listening to it 30 degrees off-axis, you may not get much response above 1800Hz (even on the best speakers).
Morel's solution: design a tweeter with a very low resonance so the crossover point between woofer/mid and tweeter can be dropped below the point where the woofer's response has dropped off. (Most dome tweeters need to be crossed over around 4 kHz)
If you carry this process on long enough, you begin to define a product that is uniquely optimized for car audio and, in many ways, unlike anything that has come before.
Supremo Features
*1 1/8" voice coil for a larger radiating surface and lower resonance.
*Underhung gap geometry for higher linear excursions and lower distortion.
*Symmetrically balanced neodymium motor for highest magnet field energy.