How do different cone materials affect sound?

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[maze]

Good video, I particularly like how you educate without deciding for people what is best.

[taineasy]

In my 40 years of making my own LF and LMF cones I have found that treated pulp produces the best overall tone and provides superior damping. Coatings can range from polymers to aquaplas depending on the frequency range you are trying to reproduce. For very LF (below 300hz) Aquaplas or a semi-soft polymer works best for me while for low-mid a polymer coating similar to that used by KEF works best.To improve piston linearity the coating should be somewhat thicker to the center of the cone. Have also found that thinner pulp is better for mid's as they require less damping and require more detail. Have had not success getting metal cones to produce a natural sound (lots of detail at the expense of tone). We use two types of coating on mids: one is a stiffening agent and the other is for damping. The damping is never applied uniformly on the cone.

[azmike]

Paul, you are very astute with presenting explanations in a way we can all understand!
Bravo! You are bringing so many others along so that we may all benefit from your knowledge. Much appreciated!

[Enemji]

I don’t play to bring the house down, but to relax, and for that purpose, I find paper the best.

[hi-fidude]

Paper for woofers, paper or silk for midrange and silk or mylar for tweeters. Nothing else comes close for the perfect tone. Metal drivers for the most part sound too piercing, not the soft sound that I prefer.

[paultopace]

Thanks for actually answering the original question. I have A one off special production run of Aluminium cone 5" woofers. So far I have not heard anything that beats them. And I also agree that paper cones present music nicely. Even paper tweeters.

[emo.]

Other parts of a speaker including the spider, surround, and even the basket also contribute to the sound of the speaker. The electrical resistance of the coil increases as the coil heats up, coloring the sound even more.

[thomshere]

Great Video! Just like all the others! Seriously, I think your such a cool guy for taking time from your family and life for doing this for us! I have learned so much from you!

[eaustin]

Great information! Thanks for some real insights into the nuts and bolts of speaker design.

[Justwantahover]

My speakers are paper cone woofer, cloth dome tweeter and aluminium foil coffee can seal for the pointy triangular whizzer piece added to the tweeter. It's an isosceles triangular piece about a half inch long glued to the tweeter dome. The whizzer makes the treble sound amazing, and you can hear the "shing" in the aluminum but it's quite pleasant and the cymbals sound like metal and sound like they are being "hit" instead of sounding like a "hissing air hose" (like the tweeters sounded like originally). (Whizzers designed by trial&error.)

[stevemcdonald]

the very best bass reproduction I have ever heard in a woofer is the JBL L100S from the 70s..what a deep and sweet sounding woofer..made from paper, with some strange rough sandpaper material on the outside..no doubt clumsy and slow, but somehow they got it almost perfect

[mariusloubeeka]

Hi Paul, you forgot to mention a third important property: inner damping, how good the material suppresses resonances. But it is often opposing stiffness. The German DIY loudspeaker magazine Hobby HiFi recently showed that cone material is not the most important thing in a speaker. Mechanical losses that immensely affect sound quality are predominantly caused by a lossy suspension and voice coil former materials.

[nickparkin]

I have a pair of Vintage Zenith 49cz852's and they sound absolutely stunning. They are 12" and are made of felted paper. They have 3/4" voice coil with vintage enamel wire, and a ribbed cone. The sound is just stunning. The clarity, dynamics, imaging, and timbre is unlike anything I've ever heard. I don't think by modern standards they have the best properties but they sound just mind blowing and thats what matters. I run them full range in an open baffle and they can play down to 80hz and up to 14Khz. I add a tweeter with a 1 uf cap to accentuate the highs.

[carmatic]

i have always assumed that, rather than trying to adhere to the ideal of perfect cone stiffness and inevitably failing, the higher end drivers are subtly designed to intentionally flex at different frequencies in a controlled manner, in order to have more control over the sound output

[harryme]

Paper . EG....some of the vintage JBL and Altec paper cones sound very nice indeed.

[SmokinOak]

Now that's about as thorough of an explanation you can get.

[davidperry]

For dome tweeters, Beryllium is the best you can get and diamond dome tweeters are a close second. Beryllium dome tweeters resonate very well above the human hearing range. For a midrange or a mid-woofer paper, kevlar, or carbon fiber are excellent materials. For a woofer, paper, carbon fiber, or polypropylene are excellent materials.

[linandy]

I seem to always like treated paper the most. I'm currently enjoying some very inexpensive Sony bookshelf speakers with mica impregnated paper drivers. They just sound very good with my amplifier from the mid 70s.

[Tom_Losh]

I can understand the desire for the 'unobtainium' zero mass, infinite rigidity material for a speaker cone so that it can follow the electrical signal as perfectly as possible.

What I don't understand is the most common 'shape' of speaker cones. I mean, that I understand it from a rigidity standpoint, but not from an orientation standpoint.

Since one is (assumedly) trying to "imitate" a "point source" wouldn't a cone facing the opposite direction (or a partial hemisphere, as in many tweeters and some midranges) present better physics for that? Could that possibly increase the accuracy of the sound field generated in the midrange?

Thanks for the interesting topics, Paul. I may not agree with all of your points in all of your videos, but you always give me something to think about - and possibly a totally different viewpoint to consider.

Take care!

[loudspeakerchefOriginal]

Beside structural integrity, diaphragm materials are also chosen for their timbre sound quality. This is why two drivers with different cone materials can have the same breakup frequency but will not sound the same. Each material has its flavor aside from measurements.