pros and cons: beryllium vs ribbon tweeters in sound and emotions terms

Folded ribbon tweeters I’ve heard in recent years delivered a very relaxed and non fatiguing sound, almost to a fault if one expects recordings to have a bit of an edge to it from time to time. 

Which folded ribbons are these?

I lived with Dynaudio speakers with the superb Esotar2 tweeter for eleven years. After I sold them and bought a much less expensive pair of ADAM Audio ARTist 5 active monitors to tide me over, I was surprised to find that ADAM's folded ribbon tweeter was even more lifelike, present, and revealing than the Esotar2. Certainly no lack of bite there. It's hard to tell how much of the improvement comes from the tweeter itself and how much from the removal of the passive crossover between amp and driver.

Note that "folded ribbons" are actually air motion transformers, a completely different technology from ribbon drivers.

As Mapman said, I think it depends on how the tweeter is integrated into the complete design. I've heard good and bad examples of both kinds of tweeters.

My current speakers have ribbon tweets, and they've been implemented nicely. And they sound that way. At least IMHO!

IME, ribbon tweeters can present a laidback impression, while BE tweeters can present a more forward attack if not matched closely w/ gear.

ccolby most recently I’ve listened carefully to affordable Goldenear Aon 3 speakers with folded ribbon tweeter and liked those a lot. Have heard various others over the years including ribbon tweeters in Magnepan which is a totally different beast..

I’ll go out on a limb and say that I think ribbon and folded ribbon tweeters in general tend to be more "forgiving" of problems upstream than most any metal tweeter or the best soft dome tweeters, like the Esotar.

I’ve heard some cases where other soft dome tweeter designs may be more forgiving as well.

The soft dome tweeters in my OHM speakers for example are definitely somewhat more forgiving then the Esotars in my Dynaudios.   Again part of that is the overall design and target sound I think perhaps as much as the tweeter alone.

I believe my Triangle Titus XS speakers use a Titanium dome tweeter. These normally are somewhere between the Esotar and OHM soft dome tweets in terms of overall attack, but with a quality signal tend to be somewhat laid back and smooth as well.

At least to my 56 year old ears.

When I was younger I could hear clearly to 20khz. Only to 12khz or so these days like most people my age. An up side is that as you get older, your ears become less sensitive to anything nasty that might be happening at high frequencies, often a result of noise and distortion rather than music, which is mostly just "air" above 12Khz or so.

I had Heil AMT speakers in my late teens and midfi electronics. A decent first try but not one that stuck with me.