High frequencies give us space. But it’s the air around the notes that gives us presence.
Years ago, I was auditioning tweeters for a loudspeaker design, and one candidate stood out—not because it was brighter, but because it made the space around the instruments audible. The difference wasn’t in the highs themselves, but in what happened between them. I could hear the space in the room.
We call it airiness, and it lives in the top octaves—beyond 10kHz. These frequencies don’t add much in terms of melody or rhythm, but they provide spatial cues, reflections, and a sense of decay that give instruments their surroundings. When a cymbal dies off naturally, or when a hall breathes after a trumpet blast, that’s air.
To reveal this, your system needs both extension and refinement. A revealing tweeter—like the planars we use on the Aspens, coupled with a low noise floor, and the absence of harshness are prerequisites.
Bring out the air and you don’t just hear the music—you hear the room it was made in.
