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Looking for input: Best material for mid range cone

I had a surprise last night when I switched speakers in my system.  I've got a few pairs, but had been listening mainly to some Ascend Sierra 1, which have a polypropylene cone with a soft dome tweeter in a bookshelf design.  Anyway, I've got a pair of Tannoy Precision 6.1's, and swapped them in.  

The sound was noticeably different.  Piano sounded better, vocals had a finer quality as well, and the whole sound seemed a little more lively.  Now the Tannoys have silver interior wiring, a titanium tweeter in a coax design and are only rated for 75 watts. The cone material is some kind of pressed paper fibre.  And they are voiced to somewhat push the midrange.  But the sound was compelling.

I'm just wondering about cone material because some old Paradigms with Polypropylene were really not up to snuff, but they were quite old.  Any thoughts?
213runnin

Showing 1 response by shadorne

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shadorne
7,467 posts
 
Polypropylene not so good above 1Khz.

Basically most speakers have too large a mid range for the bandwidth they carry (results in beaming)

Stiffer materials can measure extremely well (detailed) and have wide bandwidth often extending higher in frequency but tend to have resonances or ringing (poor timbre hashy sound).

Softer materials with weave or fabric or pulp paper mash can be great because of internal damping (get very clean background or exceedingly good timbre)however they suffer from linearity issues (limited bandwidth due to breakup)

In a three way softer materials for cones can work extremely well. In a two way stiffer material is often the best compromise to coverthe audible range in only two drivers.
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