What is generally the best material for speaker cones with the least compromise and most benefits?

[Roland68]

I have mustard enough courage to make this comment publicly and I know there will be a whirlwinds of rebuttals, anger and attacks. But I have decide to brace myself to make such comment.

I agree that there is no such thing as perfect transducer as it is an engineering trade off. Paper cones and soft dome cones have certain properties that are superb and some of the best sounding speakers uses such material. Case in point, the MoFi speakers designed by Andrew Jones. They are super speakers. . .however. . .

If I am paying $3k for speakers, I would feel ripped off that it uses paper and cloth as it will give me a cheap feeling. I would like to see a baby unicorn sacrificed for it's horn as parts and material for my speaker.

OK, I am ready for my punishment for insulting paper cones and soft domes, but first get a ticket and get on line to insult me.

You might be lucky if you found such good paper based bass and midrange drivers such as SB Acoustics Satori in a $3000 speaker.
But I think that after this statement you don't deserve to ever have this pleasure. So I wish you, with all my heart, only high-tech materials for the future.

Something I've heard over and over again from speaker developers and chassis manufacturers for 30 years is something like this: It's difficult to develop chassis that are as good or better than paper and there will always be important features missing.
But it's much easier to sell customers some nonsense high-tech material.

 

[CleanSound]

But I think that after this statement you don't deserve to ever have this pleasure.

You did not get a ticket nor did you get in line to insult me. There only one of me, I can't have 3 people insulting me at the same time as it won't be fair to you to not get all of my attention to receive such impeccable insult!

 

[Sokel]

Carbon fiber sandwich composite of course

 

[CleanSound]

But paper isn’t cheap. Perhaps you feel it’s cheap, but it isn’t.

They are not monetarily cheap, nor are they expensive.

And those expensive materials often have resonances that are difficult or even impossible to control, which limits their usefulness or require costly mitigations.

My understanding is that any cone material has a breakup mode, it is up to the designer to take everything into consideration.

 

[Pearljam5000]

What you really need is the Børresen M1
A 4 inch 2-way that costs $100K
And has a zirconium basket

 

[Salt]

All theoretical stuff.
What you need first is a driver that runs linear in the proposed frequency range, disturbances far off so can be cut by X-over, and fitting TS parameters for woofers for the prospected enclosure.
Some liketohave on top as directivity, distortions or maxSPL.
For any proposed purpose there will be at least one driver in this world, if not some more, no matter what material it is made of.

 

[Brian Hall]

What come material you would NOT buy/want? And why?

Diamond encrusted gold leaf coated platinum. Price.

 

[Beave]

I have mustard enough courage to make this comment publicly and I know there will be a whirlwind of rebuttals, anger and attacks. But I have decided to brace myself to make such comment.

I agree that there is no such thing as perfect transducer as it is an engineering trade off. Paper cones and soft dome cones have certain properties that are superb and some of the best sounding speakers uses such material. Case in point, the MoFi speakers designed by Andrew Jones. They are superb speakers. . .however. . .

If I am paying $3k for speakers, I would feel ripped off that it uses paper and cloth as it will give me a cheap feeling. I would like to see a baby unicorn sacrificed for its horn as parts and material for my speaker.

OK, I am ready for my punishment for insulting paper cones and soft domes, but first go get a ticket and get on line to insult me.

Let me do some reading so I can ketchup with your thoughts.

 

[CleanSound]

Let me do some reading so I can ketchup with your thoughts.

that was good enough to skip the line!

 

[Short38]

Balsa!

 

[MAB]

My understanding is that any cone material has a breakup mode, it is up to the designer to take everything into consideration.

Yes they do.
These exotic materials exhibit some enormous breakup modes. They have ramifications. Perhaps see these measurements on Seas’ total midbass driver.

Active DSP DIY speakers, for testing a few ideas

FFLOTSAM (Fabricated From LeftOver Things Studio Active Monitor) Active DSP speakers, for testing a few ideas I had some stuff lying around; a few random Baltic Birch-ply panels, some countertop material, a few cans of partially used brown spray paint, and some not-too clumpy spar varnish (that...

www.audiosciencereview.com

It’s a great driver, but has artifacts at the breakup that include huge fr peak, distortion, and dramatically altered directivity.

 

[Penelinfi]

Camerton Binom - balsa wood with some carbon fibre composite (rev2).
It's pistonic, then BMR, then directly coupled to VC for treble. Apparently. I'd love to listen to one but just the drivers cost more than a Purifi based speaker