how exactly does a tweeter work? i can understand how a woofer works-a magnet and cone that produces vibrations which creates sound. but a tweeter doesnt have a cone. on my klipsch speakers there is just a whole where the tweeter should be. this is a horn loaded tweeter, but how does sound come out of it? what would happen if a speaker did not have a tweeter, but instead just a cone?

Your Klipsch tweeters are horn-loaded drivers. They still have a membrane that vibrates, but it is located out of view at the rear of the horn. The horn helps form the soundwave and makes the drivers very efficient.

how do the axioms differ? does the metal 'ball' that can be seen on the axioms vibrate? i actually opened up one of my klipscsh because it broke and the horn had copper wire rapped around it but no magnet.

There's a magnet in there somewhere, trust me. That's how all speakers work. The copper wire coil (a.k.a. voice coil) is attached to the diaphragm which is what vibrates to produce sound. The magnet is located around the voice coil. When current moves through the copper wire, it produces a magnetic field. This dynamic magnetic field interacts with the fixed magnetic field of the magnet. As the current throught the wire fluctuates, the diaphragm vibrates in and out, producing the sound you hear.

Here's a page that explains how horn drivers work:
http://www.dccaudio.com/gpage.html

the "ball" is the dome of the tweeter, they are dome tweeters. unlike cones, but there are cone tweeters as well on the market. theyre just really cheap junk for the most part. the tweeter in the axioms is like a woofer, but just think of it like the dust cap covers the whole cone. I dont know exactly what your talking about when you took the klipsch apart. but it sounds like you might be talking about the voice coils when you say the wire.

And yes the tweeter vibrates, if it didnt, it wouldnt make any sound. i have torn apart woofers (out of a tv) and i know how they work, but i havent ever torn apart a tweet but id imagine its basically the same. if you go to the dynaudio website they have cut in half drivers that will illustarte it for you. you have to watch the video that is playning at the top of the page HERE

Dynaudio. We know about gratuitous use of Flash animation...

Nice illustration of tweeter innards, though. Too bad you can't pause it. I guess a screenshot would work...

right click and deselect "play"

Not so much. It pretty much just says that cones are crap.