if listening to classic rock of the 70's and 80's I prefer Paper cone mids. I think electric guitar is best reproduced with the same material it was created with. Typically paper cones in guitar amps
The strings are metal though and that’s where the sound really comes from not from the wood you could literally use plastic for the wood part.. except obviously an acoustic guitar
Hi Chris, I enjoyed your presentation. I would really like to hear more about the use of ribbon drivers as compared to dome and traditional cone drivers for use as tweeter and midrange functions. I believe you.have designed PS Audio’s speakers utilizing ribbon drivers. There is also a manufacturer, Piega, which apparently has had great success in designing a coincident midrange and tweeter ribbon drivers which I understand is very successful at pleasing listeners. Thanks.
Great talk on an interesting topic. Through the years I have experimented with a few cone materials and surround choices. I seem to recall Audax were using a plastic cone material (I think the called it TPX). It was supposed to have good damping. I thought they worked pretty well. In the last speakers I built I used Focal drivers that used a sandwich construction with Kevlar and Aerogel. These speakers seemed to work very well.
Bravo. It's always good to hear an update on materials from someone who knows much of what he's speaking about. Can't wait to hear more about tweeter materials and how they affect loudspeaker musicality. And on the other end of the range, cabinet materials. And certainly, the engineering *witch's brew* factors of crossovers. I'm not intending to design a speaker, but it's good to make educated guesses about why some speaker characteristics annoy me. I think speaker design has finally passed the "dartboard" methods of thirty years ago's "art" to the more engineering approaches of today. It is one big reason we have affordable offerings of "pretty good" speakers blooming everywhere. I learned much from this, especially stuff I'd just never before heard uncovered. Encore!
I remember i asked a question about cone materials and i was sad that my question never got answered (i know i know, Paul gets more questions than he can physically answer). But after a few months Paul said that Chris will answer speaker questions and a year later, here it is :). So thank you!
Very good, concise, easy to understand, and unbiased look at a very interesting topic. I am in the process of designing and building some active speakers, and just learned the hard lesson that sharp filter slopes do not fix the problem of stiff metal cone resonance, and just switched my mid-woofer speakers from aluminum to polypropylene with very beneficial results. Not quite as good definition but much smoother and relaxing presentation.
Japanese were experimenting in the 70's, 80's with all kind of exotic cone and dome materials and used them broadly in the higher end models. They were pioneers in using exotic materials such as fine Ceramics, Graphite, Diamond, Boron, Aramid, Carbon, Titanium, etc. They also achieved damping the metal ones with the special exotic material coatings. Very sad that most European speaker maker started using exotic materials only recently.
Yeah only in the 60s right? the first drive units designed and developed by KEF formed the K1 series of products. They comprised the B1814 bass unit, with a flat diaphragm of polystyrene with aluminium foil laminated to the front and rear surfaces, the M64 elliptical midrange with the same polystyrene/aluminium foil laminate structure, and the T15 tweeter with a dome made from aluminized melinex.
@@realitykicksin8755 Aluminium and polystyrene are not EXOTIC materials at all! Exotic materials are very hard and difficult to cut and work with. In 1969 the engineers of SANYO started to work on a nickel-foam cone type driver that called porus-metal which was technologically way ahead in its time and it took 5 years to develop. And even that one does not count as exotic. If you want to see some early exotic drivers that difficult to make even today, check out the audio-heritage.jp website.
Not sure if I agree with that 100%. Agree Japan are masters with paper cone designs such as the legendary Yamaha NS10 studio monitors. However, European audio companies were the innovators of composite sandwich construction cones such as Focal W-Cone as well as B&W subwoofers which feature Rohacell as an inner core material. All details stated by Chris in this video as the ideal cone material actually describe Rohacell to a "T".
Excellent information in presenting the details on the various material choices that consumers will be considering when making future choices on the newer developments in contemporary speaker options. 👍🏻
Chris Great topic..Soo many cone materials it makes my head spin. listened to quite a few wanting to try new technologies but find myself always going back to some type of paper composite. maybe physiological but just sound more engaging.
Good information - keep it up Chris - I would be interested to hear your comments on geographical effects on speakers over time due to humidity or dryness.
Great info! Trade offs and optimization is the name of the game in many engineering endeavors. Suggestion; When shooting this close up, lower the camera and shoot more straight so the camera doesn’t look down on you as much, gives a more natural image. Also makes eye contact with camera more natural (which isn’t easy)
I'm with you Chris .. I prefer the characteristics of paper for MF ranges.. aluminium is excellent for LF work. What always bugs me with speaker design is the fact that no matter how advanced materials and technology become there will still never be the perfect speaker system . When I design a speaker I consider several basics ... they are how realistic are they sound ... I'm entirely objective .. I regard trumpets violins drums of all kinds and pianos as the ultimate challenge. And I've found small paper cone drivers with a phasing plug and well damped cone termination are the way to go . As for HF drivers I've always been a ribbon fan ... there was one case where I did use a very different type of dome tweeter and here I used a Dynaudio Esotar .. these are fairly expensive and very delicate but they really do sound excellent.. ( they are pressure driven btw ) Thank you Chris for your interesting and stimulating discussions keep them coming ! Much appreciated 😀
Quoting from an older post of mine, (when Paul had made a video on about the same matter): "I believe reproduced sound can NEVER get rid of the "signature" of the materials of the vibrating surfaces that emit it. Pretty much like the musical instruments themselves: Their sound is affected by the materials they're made of. The quest towards "neutral sound" by loudspeakers is rather like the search for the holy grail: Only if you can, magically, make the air move to make music, WITHOUT using a material as a mediator of this movement, only then is the sound pure from any possible colourations. Perhaps the most uncoloured sound (and really-really uncoloured) is the sound of a plasma tweeter and then, of an electrostatic loudspeaker membrane, moving well within its limits of good performance. If you pay close attention to all other speakers, your ear can finally pick up the characteristic nuances that the driver (and cabinet) materials impart to the sound (even though, occassionaly and under stressful playback material, for the best ones of them). This holds true even for very expensive loudspeakers. Listen to big, all-aluminium ones: They will all ring a little, from time to time! Plastic (carbon fiber ones): they will get a tiny "plastic" hue in their sound. Perhaps the most benign "material signature" is the one that comes from wood (in its various forms) and paper (basically, the same material). It's usually more strong and persistent in time but for some reason (perhaps having more to do with our biology and evolution for millions of years close to sounds produced or affected by wood), they're better tolerated. Perhaps that's the best reason why paper cones and wooden boxes are still widely used in loudspeaker industry. Loudspeaker engineers have done marvellous work through the decades to clear their products from sonic signatures (basically by reducing, suppressing, or spectrally isolating/exiling them) but, in my opinion, the war has not been completely won yet... " Today, I would add: For a cone that aspires to reproduce music (art), designers/engineers should rather forget about using one material alone. Different material cone "sandwitches" is rather the way to go. More complex than pure cone surfaces (scaffolded cones) should be employed, perhaps, too, so that stiffness/ deformation resistance are better performance-related.
There are little tricks that a person can do to existing speaker cones to improve their performance in specific ways as well. It really does become and art form all on its own. There is a process called speaker EnABLe (that is the proper spelling and case) which can drastically reduce the reflections on the cone itself and help flatten the response and increase the articulation and detail. It is a painstaking process which can take many hours per driver, but is absolutely amazing. And something that can be done by anyone with a steady hand.
Good on ya Chris , nice explanations Though the video is 5 minute I bet there's a lot of time preparing for these videos, can't be easy finding time while developing the new PS speakers. Are we going to see a three way book shelf from PS Audio ? Would like to know why more manufactures don't include tweeter, woofer, small mid 50 - 150 mm drivers in a compact box.
Good summary. Internal damping is critical. Anyone with a good ear can hear the degradation of stiff cones such as metal or ceramic. Chris neglects to mention voice coil design - this is a very important aspect. You can get away with damped less stiff cone materials (that sound better but have limited bandwidth) by using domes and properly supporting the cone with a large VC. Same for large woofers - a 4 inch voice coil provides a lot more support than a 1 inch VC.
An interesting perspective Chris. Can you talk about cone suspension and excursion sometime as I guess that has an equal number of design compromises! Excellent videos.
Ideally you want to minimise cone excursion as it means more distortion , therefore larger bass drivers in larger boxes to shift more air. Complience imo is related to the box size you want to use, but again less complience means its more damped-so less linear unless you have the magnetic strength to keep it moving in a linear action over the frequencies you need.
I find that the best sounding cone materials are the infinity c.m.m.d (ceramic metal matrix diaphram). So warm and breakup frequency is way above the crossover. Frequency response is almost equal at a large listening angle. Distortion is very low (if below its limits of course). I changed my speakers a million time, but keep reinstalling my interludes because every replacement i tried didnt sound as good.
My Pioneer S-1EX speakers with the beryllium dome tweeter mounted concentrically inside a beryllium midrange cone out performs most everything I’ve heard under 30g’s (using a pair of REL G1’s).
As soon as things like metal and glass and such are introduced into a speaker-cone, I just have to think about all the metal and glass parts that are in instruments like... obviously, brass and such, but also just electric guitars and their amplifiers (tubes etc.). That's all great for creating a bunch of noise, like notes, harmonics and feedback, but if you want precision and clarity I wouldn't want to mess with that in a Hi-Fi speaker cone. Then I'd rather go for the wooden approach, which includes paper, I suppose.
good to have some one who nos what he is taking about ,you have to have built speakers and crossover to realy understand why speakers sound and image the way they do,damping at the back of the drive can change the way a speaker sounds and as a diyer you can try this that manufactures would never make because they dont look great.keep up the good work till next time gareth uk
Really good topic. Thanks, Chris. Last time I auditioned speakers I listened to Wharfedales for the first time. I liked them much more than comparable Elacs and others, and decided I was hearing the woven Kevlar cones. I accept Paul’s premise that cone materials have their own tone characteristics. As a result, when I built my first DIY speakers (single full-range driver) I picked a Kevlar/paper mix cone, along with other properties I wanted ( high sensitivity to match my low-wattage Pass DIY amps), neodymium magnet, cast rather than stamped basket among others). By luck or design, I’ve really liked them. I added a Martin Logan subwoofer after several months and will probably try different drivers in time, but I think I’ll tend to favor paper or composite cone materials, and doubt I’ll try metal or solid plastic.
Hi Chris, you did already much better in your camera interaction. Compliments! Tech wise very interesting. But for me you even may go deeper into the matter in next video's. But that's just me, beeing a real techy, who has already quire some knowledge and insight on this. But I also understand that you may have to limited this to serve a wider audience.
Excellent video and I hope PS Audio can be a new leader in speaker R&D. It occurs to me that speaker driver R&D was more sophisticated in the past. My old JBL 18TI with finely shaped titanium tweeters and polypropylene woofers from the mid 80s, that I bought in my teens, still sound awesome and I’m using them in my gym. Now you might realize that JBL is a Harman licensed brand and “R&D” is done by semi-retired Japanese audio engineers who got a job in some Chinese contract manufacturer focused on low cost using mainstream drivers. Hope PS Audio is not going that route.
Fat Rat The gym is a licorice free zone. Running on a treadmill while enjoying eating licorice would be great if I wanted to enhance the size of my fat deposits.
You gave a great presentation on the structural and functional considerations of the various cone materials, but you did not address a very important matter: the tonal characteristics of these materials. The cone must accurately reproduce, within its functioning frequency range, the tonal character of the multitude of musical instruments in recorded music, and this is an enormously tall order that some materials fill better than others. I'd love to see you come back and address this topic overall.
I'm with you on this but it would be an entire series, least not forget crossovers. I'm considering replacing the drivers in a pair of old Mission 753i. There's nothing wrong with them but I've got this itch to try and wring more out of them.
@@charlottejet4338 A factory speaker system has to be seen as an entire unit, and if you change one part, it effects the function of all the other parts, this due to the crossover being carefully designed to make the drivers work together as a whole. Replacing drivers requires starting over from scratch, with all new drivers, newly designed crossover, and then the box likely is not appropriate to align the bass or mid driver. Sure, you can just through new drivers into an old speaker system and it will work, but not correctly.
Speaker Builder No, it may not be optimized, but you cannot say that a speaker cabinet will not improve with better drivers. If the driver has similar parameters it will usually work fine. I will agree that the crossover should be reworked in some cases. I do not agree that crossovers are carefully designed (in mid cost speakers), in many cases they are optimized for cost of construction, not quality. It is not too hard to improve most OEM crossovers.
You make a good point, He did address that in engineerese. If there was a material with perfect dampening to go along with infinite stiffness and no mass you would get the tonal characteristics you mention. Reality dictates that he manipulate the imperfections of materials in such a manner that the tonal characteristics are good enough for a big enough customer base to be profitable. You or I may be annoyed by some characteristic that he didn't feel was worth fixing. Here is where the DIYer can have some fun. Profit and suiting a large customer base are not factors. Labor does not need to be minimized. A person with decent facilities, skills and a good ear can make a speaker that suits him that he could not otherwise afford.
Coool.. I'm diggin this new series of videos. You said you'd personally err on the side of less stiff and well damped? How do you feel about carbon fiber?
Does dome/cap material matter? Trying to fix a bass guitar 12" speaker and think a wire issue where it meets at the coil, but that dome is not coming off easily... likely will have to cut it off. Checking eBay first for 80mm caps and seems a few options in materials.
Hi Chris, thank you for your information. I have Speakercraft ceiling speakers through out the house ( AIM 8 Two )... The cone woofer is made out uf resin reinforced fiberglass, where as the tweeter dome is made of 1" Treated Silk... What do you think about the materials ? Would you recommend to change the speakers with higher quality materials that would make a big difference in sound ? Thank you, Luis
Hi i would like to buy in cieiling speakers for atmos..my bed layer speakers has kevlar cone and silk soft dome tweeter..i would like to timbre match my bed layer speakers as close as possible ..as they dont have the speaker from the lineup..im looking at buying ceilling speakers with same materials at least..but i keep getting kevlar cone speakers but with titanium dome which is too different..so now i got 2 options ..1 is carbon fiber cone and second Polypropylene Cone ..both with silk dome tweeter .what would be the closest pick to kevlar cone and which one would blend more with eq ?
From someone that believes in the mighty woofer. It's more than just having the right materials for Manufacturing a woofer. It's also about the construction. I've had my hands on lots of different raw speakers. Some materials work better for certain types of music, and environments. Some speakers will sound better at lower volumes because of the mass and density of the materials, but will quickly become distorted when pushing some bass that's backed up by some power. The best thing to do is listen to some speakers at the volume you'll typically be listening to them, and at the distance you'll be from the speakers, and with your music not the sellers. More than once I've taken some AC/DC or Judas Priest to test some speakers and played it at levels that frightened the sales people. I love pro sound.
Great subject! I prefer paper or paper blend...vocals are so choice. Kevlar, fibreglass and aluminum cones always add too many crossover parts in my opinion. P.S. Are those your speakers in the background or Buchardt's ?
I have been curious since "paper" or some kind of "paper weave" are used quite a bit for cone material, why we haven't seen the use of Hemp as a cone material. It is the strongest natural fiber. it seems that would be far superior than wood/paper for cone material, yet affordable. Has this been tried yet?
Too little attention is paid to reduction of mass in midrange drivers and tweeters. It's been my experience that despite other flaws, low mass dome and cone materials yield the greatest information retrieval and low level detail. It may be why many people prefer the sound of well made fabric domes such as silk over metal dome tweeters. Well made silk dome mids or tweeters are lighter and more fleet of foot... despite their lower rigidity, respond to the nuances of music with greater speed. In the same way an electrostatic or ribbon speakers are excellent at detail retrieval because of their low intrinsic mass.
Not that I don't like your video, but it wasn't more that just a summering up of different cone materials. What I really liked to know, is what you use and why. In my case I have a titanium tweeter as it's wronfull dooing matches some of the music that I enjoy and I have loved that top edge since i had a JBL 4406. Bas/midrange is some kind of fiber filled paper, as paper has it's advanteges. And for the subwoofer it's plastic (mineral filled polypropylene). I would have prefered aluminium, but the price was also important and my choosen driver has a huge magnet, +/-12mm linear cone travel. I'm very satisified.
Yes, hemp cones can be excellent and offer excellent damping for a paper cone. There are a few examples used in the guitar/MI industry, though they aren’t terribly common. There are relatively few manufacturers of speaker cones left in the US, though Loudspeaker Components and RDM, come to mind. I certainly love the company and what I’m doing here.
HELLO MINE GOOD FREND!IS THIS THE ARTICLE YOU WERE LOOKING FOR... The Eminence Cannabis Rex 12" hemp cone guitar speaker gives you classic American tone with a big bottom end. The 50W Cannabis Rex has a powerful, chunky tone to it that's perfect for blues, country, rock, and jazz. You'll love how touch-sensitive the response is, with excellent sustain too. So put one of the world's most-played speakers in your guitar amplifier, with the Eminence Cannabis Rex 12" guitar speaker! TRHANEK YOU AND THUMBES UPE!
Respect dear Criss. I can get readymade material for drivers here. I want to experiment with one. One thing bugs me that, What should be the measured Inductance of the coil for a 15 inch sub.. preferable range.. for 4 ohm driver.
What a question....a speaker ability to reproduce music.............all depends of the ingredients and their application and the know how.( some forgotten or banned for economic reasons)...........and what they are designed for.......Tone and microdetails/ music lovers( high senitivity/ high impedance ) or High End loving audiophiles.....Low impedance , low sensitivity , power hungry .....and high powered amplifiers with super high damping factors..............two different worlds ...
I tend to prefer paper cones for woofers like my original Advent speakers. I never liked the plastic woofers like the ones in the Infinity RS1B's. I have some BES speakers that have a styrofoam diaphragm. They sound too thick.
This is a very informative video, and I appreciated the info, but did anyone else get the impression that this guy very much favored Jim Carrey's character "Stefano" from Lemony Snicket's?
@Fat Rat Was Brian amongst those purported seven... My point being, Brian, IMO, respectfully offered some advice to Chris & shooting him down for such just isn't cricket, as the English may utter. It isn't like he (Brian) was trolling or accosting Chris - I, for one, welcome his civility.
