Speaker cone shape

Hmm, seems to be a can of worms then?

Biggest can ever.

Loudspeaker design involves 7 branches of physics to be mastered at some high level to make a world class speaker...and they are all incomplete, like all reasonably considered branches of physics.

The loudspeaker may be one of the most common devices known to humanity, with a huge range of available designs, types and whatnot... but that does not mean it is simple. Oh no. Not at all.

When John Dunlavy of Duntech and then Dunlavy loudspeakers was asked about why he got into loudspeaker design at such a late age (approx 50) he said (I paraphrase) ’because it is the most difficult thing I know of’.

This was a man with about 30 patents to his name, some in black science and tech for quite some time and some might still be classified. Eg, a little thing called the spiral backed antenna is his design, and it is now everywhere. Originally designed for satellite use, IIRC.

There's all kinds of resonant modes in a given cone shape. If it's a standard typeish round cone, you can pretty well tell which modes it's experiencing when looking at the FFT plots/graphs with an educated eye.

This is a fairly deep subject. When exploring it, it is easy to hit the weeds. Meaning... lots of arguments, discussions, and complex nebulousness to be explored.

Don't let people under complicate it either, as that is the insanity of dunning-kreueger come to life in the limit ranges of the minds of all humans, as it is wont to. 

Hence the use of the word 'reasonable'.

The hoary common sense aspect.

A human is projected in and out of and filtered by the confines of a fleshy filter box that is animal based, so problems abound in that area...especially so, when exploring limits. Which was my point. To talk and tackle tech limits - is to talk and tackle human limits. 

Eg, at the limits, a ham sandwich is built out of myriad things we definitely don't understand.  Or one can roll it all back, and just eat the damned thing.