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

Showing 5 responses by jasonbourne52

Don't forget the Quad 63 with its flat ESL panel driven concentrically by delay lines to approximate a point source. Now made in China by the IAG group!
Manger makes flat diaphragm drivers that use the "bending wave" principle for phase coherence.
Back to cones: how about the Walsh soeaker? Omnidirectional and phase coherent! I have a pair of the older Sound Cylinders and they do produce a 3-D room-filling sound field unlike the typical box speaker! Astounding is the best word to describe them! 
A company named Phase Tech made speakers using FLAT woofers. In fact, the owner/designer invented the first dome tweeter!  
Lincoln Walsh was a pioneering expert on radar design back in the Forties! I think he may have invented the perfect speaker!