Speaker cone shape

I just had a look at Vienna Acoustics, even those are not completely flat, but very nearly, well that's how they come across in the images.

They say: "The plane surface of the spidercone offers the advantage of precise, piston-like movement. Any diaphragm should move in and out as one unit, not as a quivering mass of uncorrelated vibrations. It should move as a perfectly-solid piston. The flat cone is extremely stiff, with bracings of a height of 18 mm (bass) and 14 mm (mid), yet light, respectively, further reinforced by glass fibers in our new X4P mixture."

Phase Technology.  Flat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJuYUrc5kEE

Interesting video. So there are advantages to flat drivers. How much difference you can actually hear is another question.

Hmm, seems to be a can of worms then?

Biggest can ever.

Loudspeaker design involves 7 branches of physics to be mastered at some high level to make a world class speaker...and they are all incomplete, like all reasonably considered branches of physics.

The loudspeaker may be one of the most common devices known to humanity, with a huge range of available designs, types and whatnot... but that does not mean it is simple. Oh no. Not at all.

When John Dunlavy of Duntech and then Dunlavy loudspeakers was asked about why he got into loudspeaker design at such a late age (approx 50) he said (I paraphrase) ’because it is the most difficult thing I know of’.

This was a man with about 30 patents to his name, some in black science and tech for quite some time and some might still be classified. Eg, a little thing called the spiral backed antenna is his design, and it is now everywhere. Originally designed for satellite use, IIRC.

You are thinking air movement as opposed to pressure wave. Sound is not moving air, not in a linear movement sense. Cones do provide rigidity, naturally, in the axis of movement which potentially allows them to be lighter. Unlike Eric, I am quite fond of some ceramic drivers, however, there are pluses and minuses like almost every driver.


Don’t let people over complicate a ham sandwich. There are a lot of things that go into a world class speaker, much tech buried in drivers, some in capacitors, some in cabinets, some in acoustics (not as much as you would think for many companies), and yet, Wilson speakers was started by a staff writer at an audio magazine. No one, Dunlavy included knows everything, hence why he used off the shelf drivers, and his speakers were relatively traditional construction, just well optimized for his particular design goal (time/phase alignment) and tightly controlled in manufacturing.