Let's talk speaker cones...

[300Z]

Did some search around and haven't really seen any significant posts on the subject so...

What is the correlation between cone profiles and materials to the actual sound that we hear? What difference exactly does a cone profile make assuming the same material is used? Straight, curvilinear? Soft, hard cones?

Cheers

Leo

[aphexist]

The diaphragm is usually manufactured in a cone or dome shaped profile. A variety of different materials may be used, but the most common are paper, plastic and metal. The ideal material would be stiff, light and well damped. In practice, all three of these criteria cannot be met simultaneously, and thus driver design involves tradeoffs. Paper is light and well damped, but not stiff. Metal can be made stiff and light, but it is not well damped. Plastic can be light, but typically the stiffer it is made, the less well-damped it is. As a result, many cones are made of some sort of composite. This can either be a sandwich construction or simply a coating to stiffen or damp a cone.

- from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudspeaker

[JimS]

Did some search around and haven't really seen any significant posts on the subject so...

What is the correlation between cone profiles and materials to the actual sound that we hear? What difference exactly does a cone profile make assuming the same material is used? Straight, curvilinear? Soft, hard cones?

Cheers

Leo

There has been a lot of discussion on the mission possible forum related to choosing drivers for various speaker design goals. Try some seaches there or reading through a few of the threads on driver comparisons. Here are two of the more detailed ones with measurements.

http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthread.php4?t=11700

http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthread.php4?t=25877

[300Z]

Thanks for the input.
Someone pointed me to some article linked from Zaphs page that was pretty cool.
Geometrical Stiffness of Loudspeaker Cones.

Cheers

Leo