# Hiquphon OW



## Oliver (Jun 25, 2007)

Hiquphon tweeter:

shinjohn


quote>
updated, 4/25/07)
Review Summary Notes
- There was one standout performer during the initial listening session that everyone seemed to agree upon: Hiquphon (OWI-fs & OWII). Everyone liked the detail, air, tonality, and incredible dispersion of the two. Amazing off axis response. I'd say the OWII is the best tweeter I've had the opportunity to own. OWI-fs being a little less sharp/airy at the top end,but capable of reaching a little lower down in frequency.
quote>


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## CAMSHAFT (Apr 7, 2006)

expound please.....


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## Oliver (Jun 25, 2007)

Nothing to say , other than, if you can fit a large tweeter [you can't do any better ].


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## CAMSHAFT (Apr 7, 2006)

Ahh yeah we like the OWIfs once we took care of the 10k peak. I thought it definitely belonged in the conversation of the best tweeters. And my rib for the day....its still no M330D


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## otis857 (Feb 12, 2008)

Ive read a few great reviews on these tweeters, but where in hell can you find them? Ive scoured the internet to no avail. Any dealers in the states?


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## shinjohn (Feb 8, 2006)

otis857 said:


> Ive read a few great reviews on these tweeters, but where in hell can you find them? Ive scoured the internet to no avail. Any dealers in the states?


http://www.ellisaudio.com/hiquphon.htm


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## CAMSHAFT (Apr 7, 2006)

shinjohn said:


> http://www.ellisaudio.com/hiquphon.htm


Thats the place.....great guy to deal with!


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## Oliver (Jun 25, 2007)

original review/with the competing tweeters

http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7256


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## mvw2 (Oct 2, 2005)

...just curious why this was brought up as a seperate review thread...


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## Oliver (Jun 25, 2007)

mvw2,

My bad, it was in General when they were discussing the OWs'.

Then the ninjas put it here[ deserves to have new life breathed into it, me thinks ]


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## mvw2 (Oct 2, 2005)

Lol. It just seems out of place with no original content. I do like the tweeters though. I figure they're the only thing that will replace my Seas tweeters.


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## less (Nov 30, 2006)

Well, heck - here is some original content.

I picked mine up after reading the glowing reviews from this meeting of the minds... they were just too hard to resist after hearing so many people agree on something. We all know its rare to get a bunch of audio buffs to agree on anything universally... so they must be good!

After several email "conversations" with both Dave Ellis from Ellis Audio and the man himself, Oskar, I settled on the OW1-fs as first choice. I like to listen to my music very loud sometimes and I don't want to worry about toasting a tweeter when I do. While it had been a long time, in my youth I had to toss quite a few of the old ADS 1" whisper sound domes along with a fair number of the little 4" midbass drivers in their model 200 satelite speakers. (BTW - those are still wonderful sounding speakers - but you need to cross them pretty high)

I really wanted something different and reading the web site there were a few options - gold or silver domes - a lathed strip on the faceplate with foam fill - 2mm smaller face plate and probably some other things I can't think of. In the end, I bought the plain old OW1 fs. Mostly the reason was pricing. If the faceplate could have been shaved more - 'I'd have done that in a heartbeat... but no go.

Pricing was nice but not if you go through Hiquphon directly. Buying from Dave Ellis' web site (ellisaudio.com if I remember correctly) saved a fortune vs going factory direct as our exchange rate with the euro is pretty poor. Grand total - with a whopping $5 shipping was $224 I think. That is a very small price to pay when you: a.) compare it to other high end speakers and b.) read up on them and find out the passion and care with which they are made. 

One of the things that really attractedme to these buggers is the fact that the company is owned by Oskar Woendrig (sp?) and he is oneof those unique breed of men who got an idea to make the finest tweeter in the world, garnered the resources and then, many would say, accomplished just what he set out to do! Today, the Hiquphons are found in some of the finest high dollar systems available - sometimes with a tweak or two in the cosmetics here or there... but the basic internals are always the same. 

The whopping $5 got them shipped via US Mail - 3 day. They arrived on time and in good shape and I was excited to see what I;d gotten myself in to. The domes were nicely protected by a little sticker preventing dust and other damaging that can happen prior to installation which was a nice little addition. The nicest part though was the frequency response plot on each driver and the fact that Oskar himself had matched these drivers assuring that they were within a very tight .5 db match to their companion across their entire spectrum. Mine were so close that the lines (when holding them both up to the light one superimposed over the other) were indistinguishable!

The build is conservative but solid. They are plastic all the way around and come stock with just three mounting holes. There is a fairly large cavity in the rear allowing better lower frequency response and overall balance. They were not built for in car use at all - with the connectors positioned on the rear of an already fairly deep driver, but they were top quality with holes actually inset into the driver and a handy circular rim allowing a solid connection without much trouble... watch the plastic though... it will melt if you rest your soldering iron tip there at all.

On to the sound... at first, I just popped these guys in as a direct replacement to my Rainbow Cal 26 silks... up on the dash in the Apillars with a crossover of 2.5K. In talking with Dave Ellis, he said I could even go as low as 1.8k if it was in my best interest for the vehicular environment - as long as I used a nice steep slope. I tried it like that for a very short time and went back fairly quickly to the 2.5 mark and there was a definate improvement - no matter what slopes I used. 

After a week or two of tweaking around on the eq and canging the angles of the apillar mounts I started becoming frustrated since it was just too bright and no amount of eq or phase changing was helping things. Moving them to the kicks made an immediate improvemnt in everything across the board... I think these have a bit too much presence for a dah - apillar mount. However in the kicks, I was able to get a nice stable stage at eye level and little rainbowing. More importantly to me, the tonality fell right into place with everything sounding much more natural. 

Still though, I hadn't gotten every bug out. In talking to my mentor on the phone one day he suggested going up to an xover point above 3k... so using my Clarion the first option was 3.15k which is where they are set today. A bit more tweaking and retuning to the EQ as well as expirementing a bit with my mids, lead me to heaven.

The end result is a high end that sounds very natural, never strained or brittle. There is a nice sense of air and both my staging and imaging are far very good. Perhaps the biggest improvement between the Cal26 silk and these is the Hiquphons ability to clearly articulate every little nuance of the music. <insert the line about hearing things I've never heard before here> but in addition to that, these tweeters made things that used to sound very confused come clearly into focus.

I've had these for 3 or 4 months now and upgraded my midbass to a Focal Utopia 7W2 and finally my system has come together to truly produce first class sound! Its a very rewarding experience when you have never been to a competition or had an "expert" work on your system in tuning or building anything... its all hand done by me (with some advice from a lot of good people here and on other boards) and it sounds great. Oh, and someone told me that they wouldn't sound good at all on typical rock and roll. In my experience that just isn't true. I listen to a wide variety and old rockisn't my favorite anymore, but when the mood strikes... lookout! I thought they did a nice job on rock overall - but they won't mask hiss and terribly recorded music too well.

Incidently the person who I consider my mentor got interested in the Hiquphon about the same time as I picked up mine. He tossed a pair into his Civic and used the same midbass... and apparently he was in the money at the Spring breakers here a while back. This guy typically hates two way systems, so I think this pair impressed and surprised him a bit. I still wonder how I would do in a competition and maybe some day I'll find out... but for now its pretty sweet just enjoying a system that does pretty much everything right 

If you can fit these tweeters in and are looking to use your kick panels to house them, this is imho the best bargain on the market. They'd probably do fine in the pillars of a car that had a lot of dash space and a softer acoustical treatment up from... I am all plastic and glass and they are just too much for it.

Hope this helps anyone considering them! I think you'd be hard pressed to find anything better - especially for the money.

Thats my story... and I am sticking to it!

Less/Jim


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## freeride1685 (Oct 3, 2007)

i am curious if anyone has had a chance to evaluate the OWIII and OWIV....can anyone suggest something about these models vs the ones discussed?


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## jets88 (May 12, 2008)

Here's a bit of info for you. Not sure if this is what your looking for, but here's a link where you can find the response curves of the different models. Also in the FAQ section there's a comparison of tweeters, all except the OW4. Hope this helps.

http://www.hiquphon.dk/page1.html


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## typericey (May 13, 2006)

@ less - nice original content you got there.


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## MaXaZoR (Apr 1, 2007)

Like many people here who have had glowing reviews, I picked up a pair of OWII's last month. After a week of soft listening, I was amazed on how well they sounded off-axis. Everything was very crisp and sound reproduction was amazing. This weekend I listening to some music driving on a road trip contiplating on building some enclosures to get the tweeters a little bit more on-axis, again no bad reviews on a wide variety of music that I've listened to. Yesterday one of my tweeters stopped working, after some basic troubleshooting the cause turned out to be the tweeter itself. I called the place I bought it from, and too my dismay they have no warrenty! I now have to wait for them to ship the tweeter back to Hiquphon to find out the cause before they will send me a new one. After listening to them I know that they have been the best tweeters I've heard, but I can't justify spending that kind of money on a company that won't warrenty their products.


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## npdang (Jul 29, 2005)

a$$hole said:


> Hiquphon tweeter:
> 
> shinjohn
> 
> ...


Oh let's not forget... Zaph states quite explicitly that off-axis top end dispersion doesn't matter!!


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## 60ndown (Feb 8, 2007)

a$$hole said:


> Nothing to say , other than, if you can fit a large tweeter [you can't do any better ].


anyone who heard my van at the bbq heard ow2s 

but alas i heard tweeters in other cars that i liked better


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## Oliver (Jun 25, 2007)

NP , what are your current favorites {tweeters}?


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