"Would there be an advantage to domed woofers"?
If it gave the behavior the designer wanted, then yes.
My guess is that there would be a tradeoff, where the dome diaphragm is probably stiffer and remains pistonic to a higher frequency, but then has nastier behavior when breakup finally does set in, compared to a more traditional curvilinear cone. Few choices in loudspeaker design are without tradeoffs.
Morel and Dynaudio make woofers whose voice coils are quite large in diameter relative to their cone diameter, so they end up being quasi-dome woofers. Both companies also specialize in tweeters that can be crossed over unusually low, and this may be an adaptation to the characteristics of quasi-dome woofers made from paper or polymers.
I think Accuton uses a concave dome profile for their ceramic-diaphragm woofers, and this would be consistent with their philosophy of maintaining pistonic behavior as high up as possible. I think Cabasse used to make shallow-dome-profile honeycomb-sandwich woofer cones, but I don't know what material they used.
Duke
If it gave the behavior the designer wanted, then yes.
My guess is that there would be a tradeoff, where the dome diaphragm is probably stiffer and remains pistonic to a higher frequency, but then has nastier behavior when breakup finally does set in, compared to a more traditional curvilinear cone. Few choices in loudspeaker design are without tradeoffs.
Morel and Dynaudio make woofers whose voice coils are quite large in diameter relative to their cone diameter, so they end up being quasi-dome woofers. Both companies also specialize in tweeters that can be crossed over unusually low, and this may be an adaptation to the characteristics of quasi-dome woofers made from paper or polymers.
I think Accuton uses a concave dome profile for their ceramic-diaphragm woofers, and this would be consistent with their philosophy of maintaining pistonic behavior as high up as possible. I think Cabasse used to make shallow-dome-profile honeycomb-sandwich woofer cones, but I don't know what material they used.
Duke