What impact does the cone shape have for sound quality? This may sound strange but for midrange use a shallow cone sounds more open to me while a deeper cone sounds more shut in, it is like the soundwaves reach my ears with different shapes, i can not detect any significant in plain freq response measurements.
Hi,
there would be some difference in polar pattern due to the geometry above frequency where the wavelength is relatively short compared to differences in the geometry. You could do a BEM simulation with the profiles, which assumes perflectly rigid pistons and so on, to see whats the difference to response from the shape alone.
I suspect there is more difference in polar pattern due to breakup than from the shape. Cone breakup is why we have cones and not flat pistons in the first place. Cone shape is to increase rigidity to push breakups to high frequency while keeping the moving parts as light weight as possible. If cone shape is different between two drivers they most likely have very different composition of the moving parts altogether, which results different cone breakup anyway. Breakup would be same on identical drivers only.
For any two different drivers there would be too much variables to really tell what difference you hear would be from, most likely it is not any particular thing but combination of things. If frequency responses are equalized very close together and you still hear difference it is the cone or motor distortion, most likely both as breakup would amplify motor distortion. Cone breakup happens no matter what, even if you equalize it down in crossover or with DSP it still happens, it is acoustic amplifier. Breakup would amplify power amplifier noise for example, if it was equalized down with DSP. It's also highly directional usually. And around crossover frequency and can make quite high DI which affects things in system context.
If you had two identical drivers and could somehow tune cone breakup on the other to single peak at 3kHz on one and 4kHz on the other. Even if they had identical motors the sound signature would be different because different harmonics get boosted acoustically. In a system, they would probably require some tweak in crossover if it happens to be there abouts.
So, you are listening to cone breakup among other things, even if they were equalized flat / same
there would be some difference in polar pattern due to the geometry above frequency where the wavelength is relatively short compared to differences in the geometry. You could do a BEM simulation with the profiles, which assumes perflectly rigid pistons and so on, to see whats the difference to response from the shape alone.
I suspect there is more difference in polar pattern due to breakup than from the shape. Cone breakup is why we have cones and not flat pistons in the first place. Cone shape is to increase rigidity to push breakups to high frequency while keeping the moving parts as light weight as possible. If cone shape is different between two drivers they most likely have very different composition of the moving parts altogether, which results different cone breakup anyway. Breakup would be same on identical drivers only.
For any two different drivers there would be too much variables to really tell what difference you hear would be from, most likely it is not any particular thing but combination of things. If frequency responses are equalized very close together and you still hear difference it is the cone or motor distortion, most likely both as breakup would amplify motor distortion. Cone breakup happens no matter what, even if you equalize it down in crossover or with DSP it still happens, it is acoustic amplifier. Breakup would amplify power amplifier noise for example, if it was equalized down with DSP. It's also highly directional usually. And around crossover frequency and can make quite high DI which affects things in system context.
If you had two identical drivers and could somehow tune cone breakup on the other to single peak at 3kHz on one and 4kHz on the other. Even if they had identical motors the sound signature would be different because different harmonics get boosted acoustically. In a system, they would probably require some tweak in crossover if it happens to be there abouts.
So, you are listening to cone breakup among other things, even if they were equalized flat / same
Last edited:
The first matter to observe is that " sound quality" is not a loudspeaker parameter and hardly has any objective value. Linear and non-linear distortion do exist and have value(s). And believe it or not, even non linear parameters of a loudspeaker can be established (extracted or even measured) through complex high level math. Klippel has been leading in the area:https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/artic...surement-of-loudspeaker-parameters-by-inverse
For the cone shape impact see:https://loudsoft.com/finecone/
For the cone shape impact see:https://loudsoft.com/finecone/