Horses for courses with speaker cone materials

[StanleyB]

Talking to a friend the other day, we ended up discussing various properties of sound reproduction depending on the speaker cone material.

Some of the conclusions we agreed upon:
1. Paper - fast and efficient. Questionable accuracy.
2. Titanium - shrill and piercing in the tweeter department.
3. Metal - outstanding when used for tweeters
4. Ceramic - OK for disco. Motorola springs to mind

Anyone else ever sat down and wondered about these things, or do you just fork out for the boxes and the brand name?

STan

[hifi_dave]

I don't have preconceptions. I listen and then judge.:scratch:

[StanleyB]

It's not about preconception, but about the observations made after listening to a wide range of speaker drivers.

Stan

[hifi_dave]

I don't think you can pre-determine what the materials will sound like, it's as much to do with how they are used.

[Marco]

I tend not to judge anything in hi-fi on the individual material aspects of components or parts used, preferring instead to judge the sum of the parts in terms of application, and thus the final 'recipe' as a whole.

However, as far as speaker cone material is concerned, the Tannoy Monitor Red 15" drivers I'm using at the moment are the best implementation of paper cones (or any cone material for that matter) I've heard so far :)

Stunningly real and lifelike, with gorgeous rich tone, effortless scale and dynamics, coherent and time-aligned like the most coherent and time-aligned things imaginable, and naturally musical to a fault, comes to mind :cool:

I've yet to hear a metal or ceramic dome (or dome-type) tweeter I could live with. The ones I've heard so far sound much too false, edgy, and 'brightly lit', to my ears.

Marco.

[hifi_dave]

Marco,
What are the tweeters made of in your Tannoy's ?

[Marco]

Dunno, matey - they're horns (pepperpots)... Not sure what they're made of exactly.

What I can tell you is that the tweeters have amazing natural detail and clarity, but never seem to 'push' it at you in a very obvious 'listen to how impressive and showy this is' kind of way, as portrayed by many modern 'high-end' speakers.

I think a lot of the results I'm getting are down to the exceptionally high quality of the crossovers I've got with the Reds (featuring rare paper & oil NOS caps). This has become obvious during some of my comparisons recently :)

Marco.

P.S Any idea where Dave (DSJR) is? He's been very quiet over the last few days...

[hifi_dave]

I believe the domes are Duralumin, an alloy of Aluminium. Which goes to prove that you haven't judged the sound of your speakers on the materials used. If you had, you might not be enjoying them as much as you are.:cool:

I believe that it's the implimentation rather than the material involved.

[hifi_dave]

Marco,
I'll e-mail the old sod now and see what he's up to. I believe he was rather busy with proper work but he does seem to have gone very quiet.:scratch:

[Marco]

Nice one, Dave. I always enjoy his contributions :)


I believe the domes are Duralumin, an alloy of Aluminium. Which goes to prove that you haven't judged the sound of your speakers on the materials used. If you had, you might not be enjoying them as much as you are.


Indeed! :eyebrows:

I hadn't even thought about it, TBH. Interesting to know, though.


I believe that it's the implimentation rather than the material involved.


As is ever the case with almost anything in hi-fi!

Marco.

[hifi_dave]

Just heard back from DSJR. As suspected, he's been very busy with 'proper' work, nothing to do with Hi-Fi.:scratch:

He's also got a newer laptop so watch out, he's faster than ever. :eyebrows:

[DSJR]

200 bloody updates since Windows XP version 0 and I still haven't installed Office 2003 and all its service packs yet!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, I have a little more real work coming in September and another interview this week for some more - strictly on a casual basis until I have more experience. Voluntary work doesn't count as "actively seeking work" either. Could I do an OU degree and consider teaching or am I just too damn lazy to get the work and study done? Time and desperation will tell....... After this, audio is way down the list right now ;)

I think cone materials don't matter as long as the designer knows what he's doing and implements the inevitable compromises properly. For instance, Harbeth's "Radial" plastic cone is lightl years away from the doped Bextrene plastic used in 1970's speakers and these are very different from the later wave of Polypropylene. All "plastic," but very different apparently in specs.

Metal cones are incredibly linear in the midrange but really take off when they reach resonance at around 3-5KHz - right where our ears are most sensitive. Musical Technology's way of dealing with this was to use steep crossover slopes (OK as the designer knew what he was doing) and to bring the crossover frequency down to 1.2KHz or so - too low for many of the cheaper metal dome tweeters available then and a coarse harshness was the result - from the tweeter getting distressed. Harbeth showed me this as an experiment on some prototype C7's way back, the harshness disappearing when the crossover was set more "comfortably."

Just my tuppence worth. It's all about jiggling compromises around and getting the whole thing to "gell." Decent designers can do this really well and the best ones can get a consistent sound quality from all manner of different drivers and cabinets IMO.

Paper cones are similar. the old Tannoys being dependant on the fibre mix apparently. As for the pepperpot waveguides, by the seventies the tooling had worn out and judging by some horrendous pics posted online, I'm not surprised that Tannoy saw fit to use "dust covers" over the front of the tweeter outlet/voice-coils. It's been said that removing them has a beneficial effect on tweeter performance and thereby sound quality.