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Speaker cone shape

Why are speakers cone shaped, apart from rigidity? To my mind the air being pushed by a cone would radiate at an angle inward toward the axis of the speaker and collide in the centre, which seems inefficient to me, and likely to cause some distortion of the sound. This may also cause interference to adjacent speakers on the same baffle.  Would there be any advantage to having the surface flat, assuming you could maintain rigidity without increasing the mass? There must be modern capable materials out there.
Is the fact that the speaker is cone shaped that causes the volume to change counter intuitively as you move left and right in front of the speakers? What I mean by counter intuitively is when you move left the right speaker sounds louder and visa versa.
chris_w_uk
chris_w_uk OP
52 posts
 
Interesting video. So there are advantages to flat drivers. How much difference you can actually hear is another question.
teo_audio
2,197 posts
 
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.
dletch2
455 posts
 
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.
teo_audio
2,197 posts
 
Don't let people under complicate it either, as that is the insanity of dunning-kreueger come to life in the limit ranges of the minds of all humans, as it is wont to. 

Hence the use of the word 'reasonable'.

The hoary common sense aspect.

A human is projected in and out of and filtered by the confines of a fleshy filter box that is animal based, so problems abound in that area...especially so, when exploring limits. Which was my point. To talk and tackle tech limits - is to talk and tackle human limits. 

Eg, at the limits, a ham sandwich is built out of myriad things we definitely don't understand.  Or one can roll it all back, and just eat the damned thing.
chris_w_uk OP
52 posts
 
I'm beginning to realise there is enough known and unknown to keep your brain occupied for a lifetime :^).

I have just built a set of 3 way units with new 8" Kevlar - 6.5" Kevlar - 4" Silk, and better crossover units. They are rebuilt in a pair of cabinets I already had, I just relined the cabinets with acoustic absorbing material. For some reason, as to which one of you will no doubt enlighten me, they sound even better when the 6.5" are wired out of phase with the 8" & 4".
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