Im a DIY guy and I have bought many types of drivers and the differences can be wide and varied even to the ears. I prefer teaming polypropylene woofers with ribbon tweeters for an extremely warm and "musical" experience...
Diaphragm materials can definitely make a difference in speaker performance. I have two 1 3/4" diaphragm compression drivers from Celestion that use the identical magnet, phase plug, and CCA voice coils, but one model uses a mylar diaphragm (CDX1-1745), and the other uses a kapton diaphragm (CDX1-1747). While they measure relatively similar in on axis response, the tonal qualities of the two are so different they don't sound like they are from the same brand, let alone series. I also have two 12" Tannoy raw paper cones (7600-0826 and 7600-0957) that are identical in size and profile, but the fibre composition between the two is different, with the 0826 cone being 9 grams lighter, and noticeably softer than the other cone (0957). Even if I add a 9 gram mass ring to the lighter 0826 cone, it measures and sounds tonally different than the stiffer 0957 cone.
Excellent video !! When I read some papers written by engineers, I discovered a number of points I found to be of the utmost interest. First, the acceleration put on the cone or dome of a driver can amount to 10 Gs ( 10 times the acceleration of normal gravity ). The second point relates to the first, that most material will remain pistonic ( will not deform ) only for an average of 3 octaves depending on mass, material and diameter. Since human hearing is 20 hertz to 20 000 hertz ( 10 octaves ), this means we need at least 3 different drivers to adequately reproduce the whole spectrum of music. So as you can imagine, the material, its weight, form ( thickness, with corrugation or not ), and a lot of other parameters will certainly affect the sound of a drivers. And if we add the cabinet and crossover design and quality, we have an infinity of possibilities. Thanks !!!
Cone breakup, resonance peaks, ringing, settling time, weight/efficiency, etc., are elements of cones and surrounds of different materials and design. Designing a speaker system is not about a single best material as much as it is choosing the best elements in an overall design. It's a juggling act and ultimately the reason for so many different speaker topologies and materials.
Great video. As a speaker manufacturer, I will put it this way: all a speaker is, is material, geometry, and assembly process. That’s what it boils down to. OF COURSE the material matters, it’s what the driver IS. I think the misunderstanding stems from an idea that all drivers with material A sound one way, and all drivers with material B sound another way. This is not true at all. But, there are characteristics, or at least combinations of characteristics, that are unique to any material. If you made a paper driver, it is not possible to make an alu driver that sounds exactly the same. The cone material is part of the whole, and as soon as you change anything, you change the whole. What you hear is the sum of parts, geometry and assembly. No, you don’t necessarily hear the material in the way that you can say “this one is alu, this on is paper”, but they will not sound the same. Once you listen to enough speakers, I do believe it is feasible to make generalisations though. If 9 times out of 10 speakers you like have soft dome tweeters, it makes sense to start focusing on speakers with soft domes. It’s certainly more feasible than to listen to every speaker on the planet. /Otto, Dynaudio Academy
Many of these general characteristics associated with specific materials seem to no longer be true . For instance when aluminum alloys were first introduced as a driver material the formulations were somewhat more limited. Since then working with the material and new alloys being developed the characteristics indeed have changed. Having been in a bicycle shop for my entire career this certainly is true. Those first aluminum alloy bicycles were pretty much a wet noodle . The the next generation became overly stiff and harsh riding. What change ? Well both the tube geometry and the alloy formulas along with the joining technique. Since then the art has been refined and the material was worked with to obtain desired characteristics. Every material used has been worked with and refined over time in a similar manner. As mentioned it's a sum of the elements that makes the whole speaker. How those elements are summed will depend on the material. After all there is no perfect material or end design. If this was true....well many poeple would be without a career. I was listening to Brian Eno's On Land last night. I have a hodgepodge of amplifiers and speakers going to sum into a two channel system. The sound stage in that recording just fills the room creating an entirely new space outside the room boundaries. This was all built around my Bose 301seris II that has Advent fried egg tweeters with a new crossover. Two more pairs of small speakers and a subwoofer. Very much due to how the parts summed up ...including the room. Should this have worked....of course not. Why does it then? Two years of experimentation with all the elements to get them to sum with good results.
Great to hear from Dynaudio! As a proud Dynaudio owner I surmise that Dynaudio understands speaker material importance (and overall speaker design) better than anyone.
The most important factor is the voice coil diameter. I have found that most driver switches often also come with a change in voice coil diameter. Larger voice coils will by default, have less distortion and more agility leading to tighter reposes. The biggest factor is when a small coil is paired with a particularly heavy material. This just serves to exaggerate the problem of the small voice coil. The larger the voice coil, the more it can power through with brute force.
The voice coil is obviously a crucial element -- and I really wish we could get a driver designer on here -- but I hate to bring it all just to one thing. It's part of the whole. But of course, having a robust driver design typically means a substantial voice coil.
Of course materials make a difference. The chosen material is ONE part of an engineering solution. Unfortunately, the marketers love to claim that the use of the latest "unobtanium" makes their speaker primo. Unfortunately, many speakers with exotic stiff materials have major issues, some created by the use of said materials.
You have no clue how much I love this video. I’ve been preaching this forever and the amount of “audiophiles” that have told me I was the idiot amazes me
Thanks for the video. Of course parts matter. It affects the performance and therefore the sound. It’s one of the reasons I purchased Arendal 1723 towers. Their build quality is outstanding and well worth the price IMO. I love the sound of the beryllium tweeters in my Revel M126Be bookshelves. Paradigm’s high end use beryllium in the tweeter and midrange. I also like the look of quality finished cabinets beyond the impact on sound. I shop for equipment that sounds good, is well well built with quality parts and looks good.
Indeed -- all these materials can be put into play. As for ribbons and AMTs, the materials can vary there, too, but their principles are much different than typical dome tweeters -- and so is the measured response.
Dayton makes a few drivers with the same design besides a difference in driver materials. If you look at their respective spec sheets, they have very different characteristics.
Fully agree with this. In fact I have long suspected the main reason I prefer Dynaudio head and shoulders above any other speaker brand, is the proprietary magnesium-silicate speaker cones they use. They claim is has the most optimal known tradeoff across stiffness, lightness and damping... and my ears 100% agree. Their silk dome tweeters with metal coating are an excellent compromise as well. They make the upper octaves of a piano sound like a real piano and not like breaking glass.
I just had a discussion with a former designer about that. While materials certainly affect the sound, skilled designers can actually use materials in such a way to trick listeners into thinking they're listening to the qualities of another. So, materials do make a difference, but I wouldn't fall into the trap of automatically assuming that something uses a certain material that it'll sound a certain way.
@theyard-ottawasindoorbikea5865 I think you misunderstood what he said. He said it doesn't matter what's in it, it's the results that counts. Who cares if the drivers are berrilium, diamond or paper. If it sounds bad, it's bad even if the tweeter is berrilium. If it sounds good, who cares if it's a paper tweeter. Go watch his video because it looks like you didn't even listen to it.
@@mathieuattanasio7610 here is the quote "I think materials nowadays comes largely down to marketing. I really do. I think maybe once upon a time there were differences, maybe they were even audible" No matter how you want to spin that. It is incorrect. He does go on to say that differences can be measured but isn't sure they translate to the audible human realm... but anyone who's listened to enough speakers can easily rebut that. It was a bad take. No way around it.
How someone can’t know this is beyond me. The one thing that might make this pointless is that a good designer will know and account for these issues in their crossover.
This issue with trying to account for all these problems in the crossover is that if you do that, you'll have an incredibly complex crossover and that can lead to other issues. All the good designers will say that it's fundamental to get the behavior of each driver as close to ideal as possible, resulting in much less work that the crossover needs to do. BTW, I agree that how someone really into hi-fi doesn't know these things -- if they're in hi-fi reviewing, it's that much worse -- is beyond me, too.
I think that's the very central point and you kind of gloss over it. Different tweeters have different performance characteristics, as a sort of truism. But a speaker designer will select the parts, design the cabinets, the crossover, waveguides, and so forth in order to create a complete system which hopefully performs correctly. Once a transducer has been integrated into a complete system, it no longer matters what the material was, in the dumb way that I usually see people discuss tweeters, like "metal dome tweeters sound harsh and fatiguing". This is not true at all -- they will sound to you exactly like their frequency response indicates which can even be completely flat and sound perfectly natural. You can look at the on- and off-axis frequency response plots to figure how well the system works, in the end. Audio is full of folks who mostly use secondary characteristics such as the materials used, in order to try to guess what the primary characteristics such as neutrality/flatness of frequency response. But the primary characteristics are directly observable and these days it is fairly routine to test speakers with a Klippel Near-Field Scanner.
@@anttilankila1250 I more or less agree, but with some materials you'll never be able to iron out flaws to sound exactly the same. Note that I said "some." For example, I'm not sure you could ever get a soft-dome tweeter crossed over at, say, 2kHz, to play at the same SPL as some ideally pistonic metal dome over the same range. I think you'd see distortion and compression artifacts show up in the measurements no matter how hard you try. Same for the bass -- can you get the same performance from a soft polypropylene cone? I don't think so. The materials matter to get certain performance characteristics out. They're certainly can't be made equal by even the most clever engineer.
@SoundStage!Network Hey Doug, great topic! HOWEVER, I think you needed to take this discussion just a bit further. ;) That is, WHAT implications does this have when applied to Multi-Driver loudspeaker systems, such as a typical 3-way loudspeaker that uses a separate woofer/midbass, midrange, and tweeter driver, with a crossover filter dividing network applied to each driver that only allows each one to play well within its most linear passband, which therefore should avoid or mitigate any of their unique inherent nonlinearities? Let's say that each respective individual driver (transducer) provides extremely smooth and linear frequency/amplitude response within its intended passband, and any potential anomalies such as resonant peaks, stored energy "ringing", and/or cone & diaphragm break-up modes are only present well outside each drivers' intended usable passband. IS IT IMPORTANT for ALL of the Pistonic Diaphragms of these Individual Drivers in this 3-way loudspeaker to be made of the Same Material in order to be perfectly "Timbre-Matched" and/or to achieve the most accurate/natural/life-like sound??? i.e. ALL of the drivers have diaphragms that are either made of compressed wood pulp/fiber & binder, polypropylene, carbon-fiber, woven glass-fiber, aluminum/magnesium/titanium/beryllium, ceramic, silk/fabric/Aramid fiber, "textreme", or a unique multi-layered composite "sandwich" construction, etc? IOW, IF NONE of the individual drivers in this 3-way loudspeaker exhibit any significant nonlinearities that you spoke of, does a "mismatched" combination of different diaphragm materials really matter, and will you actually discern this mismatch of materials as being detrimental to the natural and life-like reproduction or "accuracy" of the speaker??? For many years as a hobbyist/enthusiast I've designed and built my own DIY loudspeaker systems for home, home studio, and car audio using both passive crossover filter networks as well as "active" systems using multi-channel DSP and amplification. As just one example, in my car audio system that uses a high-end multi-channel DSP for individual driver level adjustments, fully configurable crossovers, time alignment (digital delay), phase matching, and PEQ, I use the Purifi PTT6.5 aluminum cone drivers for the midbass, a ~4" Dynaudio Esotar2 430 poly cone driver for the midrange, and the beryllium dome BlieSMa T25B tweeters. I'm a long time amateur drummer/percussionist and saxophonist with a home recording studio. And when I play my own recordings of my instruments that I am obviously intimately familiar with, this combination of what most would call "mismatched" drivers exhibits the most life-like and "accurate" sound I've ever experienced. The same can be said for my DIY active studio monitors, which use doped paper cone Ciare HW251N 10" woofers, and a BMS 5CN162HE 5" polyester cone midrange with a concentric 1.5" titanium diaphragm compression driver... Wildly different diaphragm materials, but incredibly dynamic, life-like, and "accurate" sound...at least to my ears. So I'm very interested in your take on this, or a professional loudspeaker designers' input.
Thanks for the very long and detailed response. In fact, shortly after this video launched, I thought about doing one that speaks to at least part of what you're discussing: Does having the same diaphragm material throughout the drivers matter? Stayed tuned on my thoughts about what I've learned about that...
I will chime in here with our experience: First off, I don’t believe that just because you use the drivers outside of their breakup frequencies, they sound the same. There are other differences in the sound of the materials than simply how it resonates. It’s just often being put forward because that’s the most obvious one. So I don’t subscribe to the idea that if you use the driver below it’s break-up, the material doesn’t matter. It still matters. But… that’s table stakes. Not using a metal cone midrange at it’s resonance peak is not optimising, that’s simply proper use. Even properly used, materials still matter. When matching drivers, what matters again is the actual performance, not the materials. Materials required to reach a certain sound character at 10 kHz is not necessarily the same materials required to match that character at 100 Hz. Getting this to match is part of the art of making a loudspeaker. Related to this: The filters required to use a specific driver has it’s own effect on the overall sound. Using higher order crossovers to lower a driver’s resonance peak comes with it’s own set of compromises. Again, you won’t reach the same end result, because you basically end up with a completely different speaker. I think the most important realisation when you design loudspeakers is to accept that there are no inherent truths. It’s all a balancing act, and more than anything the end result depends on your ability to balance all the various compromises that make up a loudspeaker. If you search for perfection, you will fail. Your job is to make each compromise have as little audible effect as possible, because a “no compromise” speaker does not exist. /Otto, Dynaudio Academy
It's absurd that armchair know it alls would think they know more than engineers who spend their lives researching this stuff. If they can't hear the difference - it's probably a sign that their ears don't work.
If some, among those who "should have known better" claim that the material isn't so important, it's probably, because they know, that it is possible to make a pretty good membrane, of many different materials. Some membranes will demand more powerful magnets, lighter coils, will need more of special treatment.. will be more expensive, but it IS possible. So - material matters, but there are workarounds for the most ☝😀 I've seen very "exotic" drivers, with cones made out of ( as they claim ) extremely stiff and pricy stuff, BUT implementation of technique that would have made them properly, stiff - was, for some reason, neglected 🤷♂️ Speaking of materials - The new DALI headphones - have paper cone ! - THAT is NOT a good thing ( unless the company, deliberately, did it - to make the customers buy new 🎧 after a couple of years...) 😱
do not think that would be helpful for consumers, the list is going to be too long for simple one type materials, then we have alloys, mixed materials and doping. we also have cone shapes an surrounds other moving mass that effects sound. engineers probably have an idea about how it could be explained but we normals can not understand that.
Hi. Although that seems intuitive to do, it's really not. How the driver and, in fact, the entire speaker will sound has mostly to do with all the design choices made when creating it. The materials will impart their signature, but how the signature blends into the rest of the system is anyone's guess. This leads to something else: it's a mistake people make that just because a driver uses a certain material, it will sound a certain way. Sometimes yes, oftentimes no.
Yep, they're not perfect. This is what i don't understand about audiophiles. They try to make it perfect, and comes out perfectly boring and drab. The BEST Thing is to make them as Loud as possible, LEARN how To Operate an EQ, and turn it down a wee hair. Then sit back And ROCK!
Excellent video from Vandersteen Audio regarding their pistonic drivers - made from carbon fibre and balsa wood! th-cam.com/video/T2pvz6RDBCE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=PLU4HAokno9Gp0th
There's no best material. Paper can have variability with humidity. Metal can dissipate heat better, etc. They all have pro and cons but good speaker designs minimize the impact of their differences such as appropriate crossovers and tweeter/woofer combinations. It not the material that matters but how you use it and in the end they all can get the job done. The electromechanical design of the motor probably has a bigger impact than the driver material in the performance and that's beyond consumers understanding so marketing over exaggerates the material importance to persuade buyers.
I agree that there's no material that's best across the board for every situation, but I think designers have determined that there are certain ones that are better and they do tend to group around them.
@@dougschneider8243 I have seen just about everything used. Aluminum, titanium, magnesium, paper, Polypropylene, nylon, fiberglass, carbon fiber, Kevlar just off the top of my head. Mostly now are a composite of several materials. Cost point, availability, manufacturability are the reason for choosing. A more expensive speaker may use a more expensive material because of the perceived marketing but does not make it better. Mostly about differentiate your product from everyone else and marketing. With such a saturated market gimmicks are in abundance
@@dwaynepiper3261 What you're saying is true -- and, certainly, companies can use materials as gimmicks. And the most expensive materials aren't necessarily better just because they're more expensive. However, many of the materials used do have benefit -- and like you say, composites often get used now -- which was really the point of this video.
I try to find info about the motor system, but is usually not explained well on many speakers. Aside from basic info like improved excursion or used bigger magnet or voice coil.
Driver cone material definetly matters at the egineering level of the speaker but not much at the consumers level. I've heard beautiful paper cone drivers and metal and poly...and absolutely terrible speaker drivers made of those same materials. Was it the cone material ,magnet structure ,coil , surround , basket ? Not a clue . Not much can be said by judging the cone material but by how it was implemented in the complete design . People do like flashy looking cones though!
@@dougschneider8243 I simply meant that there's not much to be judged by cone material alone. I personally would not be able to differentiate cone materials by sound signature ( cheap tweeters maybe). If your buying individual drivers or complete speakers ,cone material alone will tell you practically nothing.
I'm really interested to see responses to this. As I said, I think it's a "dumb" topic because it should be so obvious to anyone who's into hi-fi. But...
Great video and these things are all verifiable in the myriad of testing channels/outlets out there. That claim that it was purely marketing by Andrew Robinson made me drop off the subscription… really like so much about the gear he tests but that claim is so erroneous it’s unforgivable.
@@TheOriginalKnottian Hi, thanks for the feedback. I'd heard from a speaker designer he had said tat and I couldn't believe it. I had trouble finding where, but I Google searched and als found instances where people had said similar ridiculous things. Hard to believe in some cases.
Hi. I'm having trouble agreeing with that. Imagine using rubber for cone or dome material. It's not stiff at all, it's very heavy, and, all other things being equal, would have low sensitivity.
Regarding speaker sensitivity, there are many factors that determine speaker sensitivity, magnet and voice coil Configuration, Cone mass, Suspension mass and stiffness and more…😊
Doug, I can fix/remove the slap back echo of your room (or tell you which plugin to use to do it - it's not difficult) and also give you a more "close mic'd" radio DJ vocal sound. Shoot me an email if you're interested.
Hi Mark. Good to hear from you. We debate sometimes on whether we should take the room out more. Have the plug-ins. As an audiophile, I don't mind hearing the microphone not really touched. But I may put it closer and experiment. Thanks.
There's no "the best" for anything. Materials have strengths and weaknesses -- paper is no different. Also, you'll rarely see paper used for high frequencies.
Driver materials matter in regard to stiffness to mass ratio and resonant or break-up modes. But you do not hear differences due to metal cones vs paper cones. The physical characteristics are DIFFERENT for every driver that has a different diameter size, surround, motor, spider, shape and so on. So you do not HEAR different types of materials , you hear the specific characteristics of the total driver design, which is the frequency response, phase, group delay and THD parameters.
Hi, I can't agree 100% with you. I agree with the part about the total performance of the driver, but if you're using a cone or dome with a nasty breakup mode - that's why I used tweeters for an example -- that resonance that's a result of the cone or dome is going to be heard in some fashion. Maybe it's a massive peak or maybe there are resonances spread across a wide range of frequencies -- the point is, those behaviors will contribute to what you hear.
@ Well, I have been in this industry for 25 years and I am certain about how loudspeakers work. The break-up modes you refer to come out as THD or harmonics that are not present in the original signal. So according to your response, we agree. But people do not hear materials, you hear the physical characteristics of that material combined with the total system in combination with it. You are hearing modulations of air not a cone made of paper vs fiberglass vs aluminum.
@@johnjackson7295 I would agree with what you're saying. Where we differ, I think, is the wording. What you're saying is that we're hearing the result of materials and other design choices. Agree?
@@dwaynepiper3261Yes, but… those compensations also has an effect on performance. It’s not possible to design a paper and an alu cone driver to perform identical. ANY change in a driver, whether it’s a change in material, geometry, or assembly process, has an effect on sound. Even the glue will affect the sound, audibly and measurably. The important bit is to understand that it’s not like all paper drivers sound one way and all alu drivers sound another way. In that sense, you don’t hear the material, you hear the result of the material. But not all results are possible with all materials, and for that reason, the material matters. And I do believe it is possible to exclude certain materials if you know which result you are after. However, just because you chose the right materials, you are not guaranteed the right result. /Otto, Dynaudio Academy
Im a DIY guy and I have bought many types of drivers and the differences can be wide and varied even to the ears. I prefer teaming polypropylene woofers with ribbon tweeters for an extremely warm and "musical" experience...
Diaphragm materials can definitely make a difference in speaker performance. I have two 1 3/4" diaphragm compression drivers from Celestion that use the identical magnet, phase plug, and CCA voice coils, but one model uses a mylar diaphragm (CDX1-1745), and the other uses a kapton diaphragm (CDX1-1747). While they measure relatively similar in on axis response, the tonal qualities of the two are so different they don't sound like they are from the same brand, let alone series. I also have two 12" Tannoy raw paper cones (7600-0826 and 7600-0957) that are identical in size and profile, but the fibre composition between the two is different, with the 0826 cone being 9 grams lighter, and noticeably softer than the other cone (0957). Even if I add a 9 gram mass ring to the lighter 0826 cone, it measures and sounds tonally different than the stiffer 0957 cone.
I can believe it!
Done just for fun.
Excellent video !! When I read some papers written by engineers, I discovered a number of points I found to be of the utmost interest. First, the acceleration put on the cone or dome of a driver can amount to 10 Gs ( 10 times the acceleration of normal gravity ). The second point relates to the first, that most material will remain pistonic ( will not deform ) only for an average of 3 octaves depending on mass, material and diameter. Since human hearing is 20 hertz to 20 000 hertz ( 10 octaves ), this means we need at least 3 different drivers to adequately reproduce the whole spectrum of music. So as you can imagine, the material, its weight, form ( thickness, with corrugation or not ), and a lot of other parameters will certainly affect the sound of a drivers. And if we add the cabinet and crossover design and quality, we have an infinity of possibilities. Thanks !!!
Cone breakup, resonance peaks, ringing, settling time, weight/efficiency, etc., are elements of cones and surrounds of different materials and design. Designing a speaker system is not about a single best material as much as it is choosing the best elements in an overall design. It's a juggling act and ultimately the reason for so many different speaker topologies and materials.
Well said!
Great video. As a speaker manufacturer, I will put it this way: all a speaker is, is material, geometry, and assembly process. That’s what it boils down to. OF COURSE the material matters, it’s what the driver IS.
I think the misunderstanding stems from an idea that all drivers with material A sound one way, and all drivers with material B sound another way. This is not true at all. But, there are characteristics, or at least combinations of characteristics, that are unique to any material. If you made a paper driver, it is not possible to make an alu driver that sounds exactly the same. The cone material is part of the whole, and as soon as you change anything, you change the whole.
What you hear is the sum of parts, geometry and assembly. No, you don’t necessarily hear the material in the way that you can say “this one is alu, this on is paper”, but they will not sound the same.
Once you listen to enough speakers, I do believe it is feasible to make generalisations though. If 9 times out of 10 speakers you like have soft dome tweeters, it makes sense to start focusing on speakers with soft domes. It’s certainly more feasible than to listen to every speaker on the planet.
/Otto, Dynaudio Academy
Great words, Otto!
Many of these general characteristics associated with specific materials seem to no longer be true . For instance when aluminum alloys were first introduced as a driver material the formulations were somewhat more limited. Since then working with the material and new alloys being developed the characteristics indeed have changed. Having been in a bicycle shop for my entire career this certainly is true. Those first aluminum alloy bicycles were pretty much a wet noodle . The the next generation became overly stiff and harsh riding. What change ? Well both the tube geometry and the alloy formulas along with the joining technique. Since then the art has been refined and the material was worked with to obtain desired characteristics.
Every material used has been worked with and refined over time in a similar manner. As mentioned it's a sum of the elements that makes the whole speaker. How those elements are summed will depend on the material. After all there is no perfect material or end design. If this was true....well many poeple would be without a career. I was listening to Brian Eno's On Land last night. I have a hodgepodge of amplifiers and speakers going to sum into a two channel system. The sound stage in that recording just fills the room creating an entirely new space outside the room boundaries. This was all built around my Bose 301seris II that has Advent fried egg tweeters with a new crossover. Two more pairs of small speakers and a subwoofer. Very much due to how the parts summed up ...including the room. Should this have worked....of course not. Why does it then? Two years of experimentation with all the elements to get them to sum with good results.
Great to hear from Dynaudio! As a proud Dynaudio owner I surmise that Dynaudio understands speaker material importance (and overall speaker design) better than anyone.
The most important factor is the voice coil diameter.
I have found that most driver switches often also come with a change in voice coil diameter.
Larger voice coils will by default, have less distortion and more agility leading to tighter reposes.
The biggest factor is when a small coil is paired with a particularly heavy material.
This just serves to exaggerate the problem of the small voice coil.
The larger the voice coil, the more it can power through with brute force.
The voice coil is obviously a crucial element -- and I really wish we could get a driver designer on here -- but I hate to bring it all just to one thing. It's part of the whole. But of course, having a robust driver design typically means a substantial voice coil.
Of course materials make a difference. The chosen material is ONE part of an engineering solution. Unfortunately, the marketers love to claim that the use of the latest "unobtanium" makes their speaker primo. Unfortunately, many speakers with exotic stiff materials have major issues, some created by the use of said materials.
I agree. The key, though, is that these material do make a difference, exotic or not. To say otherwise is foolish, IMO.
Man.. Way back when I was young. We had a spkr set named the Martin Lab MkII - Paper drivers and phenolic tweeters. Phenomenal!!!
listen to the engineers not the marketing people.
You have no clue how much I love this video. I’ve been preaching this forever and the amount of “audiophiles” that have told me I was the idiot amazes me
When I read "You have no clue..." I thought, Oh, he's going to rip me a new one. But glad we agree.
Thanks for a very good explanation of how different speaker cone materials influence the sound profile of speakers.
Glad it was helpful!
And likely there will be more on this topic.
Thanks for the video. Of course parts matter. It affects the performance and therefore the sound. It’s one of the reasons I purchased Arendal 1723 towers. Their build quality is outstanding and well worth the price IMO. I love the sound of the beryllium tweeters in my Revel M126Be bookshelves. Paradigm’s high end use beryllium in the tweeter and midrange. I also like the look of quality finished cabinets beyond the impact on sound. I shop for equipment that sounds good, is well well built with quality parts and looks good.
Ceramic,beryllium/copper in domes are great.
Ribbon,amt work great also
Indeed -- all these materials can be put into play. As for ribbons and AMTs, the materials can vary there, too, but their principles are much different than typical dome tweeters -- and so is the measured response.
Thanks for clearing up the clear!
Glad we could help!
An example of a metal vs. a flexible dome speaker, with sonograms and maybe slowed audio sample sure would have been nice.
Dayton makes a few drivers with the same design besides a difference in driver materials. If you look at their respective spec sheets, they have very different characteristics.
Very interesting!
Fully agree with this. In fact I have long suspected the main reason I prefer Dynaudio head and shoulders above any other speaker brand, is the proprietary magnesium-silicate speaker cones they use. They claim is has the most optimal known tradeoff across stiffness, lightness and damping... and my ears 100% agree. Their silk dome tweeters with metal coating are an excellent compromise as well. They make the upper octaves of a piano sound like a real piano and not like breaking glass.
That's a great observation!
Each material seems to add their own distinct "flavor" to the sound.
I just had a discussion with a former designer about that. While materials certainly affect the sound, skilled designers can actually use materials in such a way to trick listeners into thinking they're listening to the qualities of another. So, materials do make a difference, but I wouldn't fall into the trap of automatically assuming that something uses a certain material that it'll sound a certain way.
Someone send this to Andrew Robinson lol
What Andrew said is that he doesn't care what it's made of. It's the end result that counts. I'm sure Doug agrees with that.
@@mathieuattanasio7610 no, he literally said driver materials don't matter. Those were his words.
@theyard-ottawasindoorbikea5865 I think you misunderstood what he said. He said it doesn't matter what's in it, it's the results that counts. Who cares if the drivers are berrilium, diamond or paper. If it sounds bad, it's bad even if the tweeter is berrilium. If it sounds good, who cares if it's a paper tweeter. Go watch his video because it looks like you didn't even listen to it.
@@mathieuattanasio7610Correct.
@@mathieuattanasio7610 here is the quote "I think materials nowadays comes largely down to marketing. I really do. I think maybe once upon a time there were differences, maybe they were even audible"
No matter how you want to spin that. It is incorrect. He does go on to say that differences can be measured but isn't sure they translate to the audible human realm... but anyone who's listened to enough speakers can easily rebut that.
It was a bad take. No way around it.
How someone can’t know this is beyond me.
The one thing that might make this pointless is that a good designer will know and account for these issues in their crossover.
This issue with trying to account for all these problems in the crossover is that if you do that, you'll have an incredibly complex crossover and that can lead to other issues. All the good designers will say that it's fundamental to get the behavior of each driver as close to ideal as possible, resulting in much less work that the crossover needs to do. BTW, I agree that how someone really into hi-fi doesn't know these things -- if they're in hi-fi reviewing, it's that much worse -- is beyond me, too.
I think that's the very central point and you kind of gloss over it. Different tweeters have different performance characteristics, as a sort of truism. But a speaker designer will select the parts, design the cabinets, the crossover, waveguides, and so forth in order to create a complete system which hopefully performs correctly.
Once a transducer has been integrated into a complete system, it no longer matters what the material was, in the dumb way that I usually see people discuss tweeters, like "metal dome tweeters sound harsh and fatiguing". This is not true at all -- they will sound to you exactly like their frequency response indicates which can even be completely flat and sound perfectly natural. You can look at the on- and off-axis frequency response plots to figure how well the system works, in the end.
Audio is full of folks who mostly use secondary characteristics such as the materials used, in order to try to guess what the primary characteristics such as neutrality/flatness of frequency response. But the primary characteristics are directly observable and these days it is fairly routine to test speakers with a Klippel Near-Field Scanner.
@@anttilankila1250 I more or less agree, but with some materials you'll never be able to iron out flaws to sound exactly the same. Note that I said "some." For example, I'm not sure you could ever get a soft-dome tweeter crossed over at, say, 2kHz, to play at the same SPL as some ideally pistonic metal dome over the same range. I think you'd see distortion and compression artifacts show up in the measurements no matter how hard you try. Same for the bass -- can you get the same performance from a soft polypropylene cone? I don't think so. The materials matter to get certain performance characteristics out. They're certainly can't be made equal by even the most clever engineer.
It would be fun if all driver deficiencies can be compensated by crossover design, right?
I play my Boston Acoustics cs260" at 60 dB they hardly move.😊😊😊😊😊
😊😊😊
People knowing more than old engeneers,🖐
@SoundStage!Network
Hey Doug, great topic! HOWEVER, I think you needed to take this discussion just a bit further. ;)
That is, WHAT implications does this have when applied to Multi-Driver loudspeaker systems, such as a typical 3-way loudspeaker that uses a separate woofer/midbass, midrange, and tweeter driver, with a crossover filter dividing network applied to each driver that only allows each one to play well within its most linear passband, which therefore should avoid or mitigate any of their unique inherent nonlinearities?
Let's say that each respective individual driver (transducer) provides extremely smooth and linear frequency/amplitude response within its intended passband, and any potential anomalies such as resonant peaks, stored energy "ringing", and/or cone & diaphragm break-up modes are only present well outside each drivers' intended usable passband.
IS IT IMPORTANT for ALL of the Pistonic Diaphragms of these Individual Drivers in this 3-way loudspeaker to be made of the Same Material in order to be perfectly "Timbre-Matched" and/or to achieve the most accurate/natural/life-like sound???
i.e. ALL of the drivers have diaphragms that are either made of compressed wood pulp/fiber & binder, polypropylene, carbon-fiber, woven glass-fiber, aluminum/magnesium/titanium/beryllium, ceramic, silk/fabric/Aramid fiber, "textreme", or a unique multi-layered composite "sandwich" construction, etc?
IOW, IF NONE of the individual drivers in this 3-way loudspeaker exhibit any significant nonlinearities that you spoke of, does a "mismatched" combination of different diaphragm materials really matter, and will you actually discern this mismatch of materials as being detrimental to the natural and life-like reproduction or "accuracy" of the speaker???
For many years as a hobbyist/enthusiast I've designed and built my own DIY loudspeaker systems for home, home studio, and car audio using both passive crossover filter networks as well as "active" systems using multi-channel DSP and amplification.
As just one example, in my car audio system that uses a high-end multi-channel DSP for individual driver level adjustments, fully configurable crossovers, time alignment (digital delay), phase matching, and PEQ, I use the Purifi PTT6.5 aluminum cone drivers for the midbass, a ~4" Dynaudio Esotar2 430 poly cone driver for the midrange, and the beryllium dome BlieSMa T25B tweeters.
I'm a long time amateur drummer/percussionist and saxophonist with a home recording studio. And when I play my own recordings of my instruments that I am obviously intimately familiar with, this combination of what most would call "mismatched" drivers exhibits the most life-like and "accurate" sound I've ever experienced.
The same can be said for my DIY active studio monitors, which use doped paper cone Ciare HW251N 10" woofers, and a BMS 5CN162HE 5" polyester cone midrange with a concentric 1.5" titanium diaphragm compression driver...
Wildly different diaphragm materials, but incredibly dynamic, life-like, and "accurate" sound...at least to my ears.
So I'm very interested in your take on this, or a professional loudspeaker designers' input.
Thanks for the very long and detailed response. In fact, shortly after this video launched, I thought about doing one that speaks to at least part of what you're discussing: Does having the same diaphragm material throughout the drivers matter? Stayed tuned on my thoughts about what I've learned about that...
@dougschneider8243
Will do. Thanks
I will chime in here with our experience: First off, I don’t believe that just because you use the drivers outside of their breakup frequencies, they sound the same. There are other differences in the sound of the materials than simply how it resonates. It’s just often being put forward because that’s the most obvious one. So I don’t subscribe to the idea that if you use the driver below it’s break-up, the material doesn’t matter. It still matters. But… that’s table stakes. Not using a metal cone midrange at it’s resonance peak is not optimising, that’s simply proper use. Even properly used, materials still matter.
When matching drivers, what matters again is the actual performance, not the materials. Materials required to reach a certain sound character at 10 kHz is not necessarily the same materials required to match that character at 100 Hz. Getting this to match is part of the art of making a loudspeaker.
Related to this: The filters required to use a specific driver has it’s own effect on the overall sound. Using higher order crossovers to lower a driver’s resonance peak comes with it’s own set of compromises. Again, you won’t reach the same end result, because you basically end up with a completely different speaker.
I think the most important realisation when you design loudspeakers is to accept that there are no inherent truths. It’s all a balancing act, and more than anything the end result depends on your ability to balance all the various compromises that make up a loudspeaker. If you search for perfection, you will fail. Your job is to make each compromise have as little audible effect as possible, because a “no compromise” speaker does not exist.
/Otto, Dynaudio Academy
It's absurd that armchair know it alls would think they know more than engineers who spend their lives researching this stuff. If they can't hear the difference - it's probably a sign that their ears don't work.
Poor ears, but got a mic and some software. Expert😆
Great video!
Glad you liked it.
Very good video...
I am glad you like it!
Thanks 👍
Awesome video! Put into words what we've thought about and 'know.' TY
We’re glad to hear that!
Nice one Doug.
Thanks for the feedback!
Doug, sure appreciate your no-nonsense chats! Obviously the world is a fickle place to be. How do you spell head? Bone.......
Glad you enjoyed it!
We're glad to hear that!
If some, among those who "should have known better" claim that the material isn't so important, it's probably, because they know, that it is possible to make a pretty good membrane, of many different materials. Some membranes will demand more powerful magnets, lighter coils, will need more of special treatment.. will be more expensive, but it IS possible. So - material matters, but there are workarounds for the most ☝😀 I've seen very "exotic" drivers, with cones made out of ( as they claim ) extremely stiff and pricy stuff, BUT implementation of technique that would have made them properly, stiff - was, for some reason, neglected 🤷♂️
Speaking of materials - The new DALI headphones - have paper cone ! - THAT is NOT a good thing ( unless the company, deliberately, did it - to make the customers buy new 🎧 after a couple of years...) 😱
Nailed it Doug.
Mark
I use carbon fiber Kevlar mix and it works in a 3 way 8's an smaller 70 hz to 800hz
Would be handy to have a table with how the different speaker materials sound
do not think that would be helpful for consumers, the list is going to be too long for simple one type materials, then we have alloys, mixed materials and doping. we also have cone shapes an surrounds other moving mass that effects sound.
engineers probably have an idea about how it could be explained but we normals can not understand that.
Hi. Although that seems intuitive to do, it's really not. How the driver and, in fact, the entire speaker will sound has mostly to do with all the design choices made when creating it. The materials will impart their signature, but how the signature blends into the rest of the system is anyone's guess. This leads to something else: it's a mistake people make that just because a driver uses a certain material, it will sound a certain way. Sometimes yes, oftentimes no.
Yes
Yep, they're not perfect. This is what i don't understand about audiophiles. They try to make it perfect, and comes out perfectly boring and drab. The BEST Thing is to make them as Loud as possible, LEARN how To Operate an EQ, and turn it down a wee hair. Then sit back And ROCK!
Excellent video from Vandersteen Audio regarding their pistonic drivers - made from carbon fibre and balsa wood!
th-cam.com/video/T2pvz6RDBCE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=PLU4HAokno9Gp0th
Yes, developed many years ago. Interesting design.
There's no best material. Paper can have variability with humidity. Metal can dissipate heat better, etc. They all have pro and cons but good speaker designs minimize the impact of their differences such as appropriate crossovers and tweeter/woofer combinations. It not the material that matters but how you use it and in the end they all can get the job done. The electromechanical design of the motor probably has a bigger impact than the driver material in the performance and that's beyond consumers understanding so marketing over exaggerates the material importance to persuade buyers.
I agree that there's no material that's best across the board for every situation, but I think designers have determined that there are certain ones that are better and they do tend to group around them.
@@dougschneider8243 I have seen just about everything used. Aluminum, titanium, magnesium, paper, Polypropylene, nylon, fiberglass, carbon fiber, Kevlar just off the top of my head. Mostly now are a composite of several materials. Cost point, availability, manufacturability are the reason for choosing. A more expensive speaker may use a more expensive material because of the perceived marketing but does not make it better. Mostly about differentiate your product from everyone else and marketing. With such a saturated market gimmicks are in abundance
@@dwaynepiper3261 What you're saying is true -- and, certainly, companies can use materials as gimmicks. And the most expensive materials aren't necessarily better just because they're more expensive. However, many of the materials used do have benefit -- and like you say, composites often get used now -- which was really the point of this video.
I try to find info about the motor system, but is usually not explained well on many speakers. Aside from basic info like improved excursion or used bigger magnet or voice coil.
Driver cone material definetly matters at the egineering level of the speaker but not much at the consumers level. I've heard beautiful paper cone drivers and metal and poly...and absolutely terrible speaker drivers made of those same materials. Was it the cone material ,magnet structure ,coil , surround , basket ? Not a clue . Not much can be said by judging the cone material but by how it was implemented in the complete design . People do like flashy looking cones though!
I'm not sure what you mean by "but not much at the consumer level." Care to elaborate?
@@dougschneider8243 I simply meant that there's not much to be judged by cone material alone. I personally would not be able to differentiate cone materials by sound signature ( cheap tweeters maybe). If your buying individual drivers or complete speakers ,cone material alone will tell you practically nothing.
@@ohmythatsweird Definitely a fair comment. Trying to judge the "sound" based on material just doesn't work.
I'm really interested to see responses to this. As I said, I think it's a "dumb" topic because it should be so obvious to anyone who's into hi-fi. But...
Great video and these things are all verifiable in the myriad of testing channels/outlets out there. That claim that it was purely marketing by Andrew Robinson made me drop off the subscription… really like so much about the gear he tests but that claim is so erroneous it’s unforgivable.
@@TheOriginalKnottian Hi, thanks for the feedback. I'd heard from a speaker designer he had said tat and I couldn't believe it. I had trouble finding where, but I Google searched and als found instances where people had said similar ridiculous things. Hard to believe in some cases.
Stiffness of driver give low sensitivity, papper give higher sensitivity. It is better to have several different speaker for different music
Hi. I'm having trouble agreeing with that. Imagine using rubber for cone or dome material. It's not stiff at all, it's very heavy, and, all other things being equal, would have low sensitivity.
Funnily enough paper gives a good stiffness to weight ratio
Regarding speaker sensitivity, there are many factors that determine speaker sensitivity, magnet and voice coil Configuration, Cone mass, Suspension mass and stiffness and more…😊
Doug, I can fix/remove the slap back echo of your room (or tell you which plugin to use to do it - it's not difficult) and also give you a more "close mic'd" radio DJ vocal sound. Shoot me an email if you're interested.
Hi Mark. Good to hear from you. We debate sometimes on whether we should take the room out more. Have the plug-ins. As an audiophile, I don't mind hearing the microphone not really touched. But I may put it closer and experiment. Thanks.
@@dougschneider8243 The slap back was a little distracting, and a little 50's rockabilly. Otherwise sounded good.
I've always been told paper has the best texture and tonality.
There's no "the best" for anything. Materials have strengths and weaknesses -- paper is no different. Also, you'll rarely see paper used for high frequencies.
Driver materials matter in regard to stiffness to mass ratio and resonant or break-up modes. But you do not hear differences due to metal cones vs paper cones. The physical characteristics are DIFFERENT for every driver that has a different diameter size, surround, motor, spider, shape and so on. So you do not HEAR different types of materials , you hear the specific characteristics of the total driver design, which is the frequency response, phase, group delay and THD parameters.
Hi, I can't agree 100% with you. I agree with the part about the total performance of the driver, but if you're using a cone or dome with a nasty breakup mode - that's why I used tweeters for an example -- that resonance that's a result of the cone or dome is going to be heard in some fashion. Maybe it's a massive peak or maybe there are resonances spread across a wide range of frequencies -- the point is, those behaviors will contribute to what you hear.
@ Well, I have been in this industry for 25 years and I am certain about how loudspeakers work. The break-up modes you refer to come out as THD or harmonics that are not present in the original signal. So according to your response, we agree. But people do not hear materials, you hear the physical characteristics of that material combined with the total system in combination with it. You are hearing modulations of air not a cone made of paper vs fiberglass vs aluminum.
@@johnjackson7295 I agree and the design will be adjusted to compensate for the weaknesses of the specific material choice.
@@johnjackson7295 I would agree with what you're saying. Where we differ, I think, is the wording. What you're saying is that we're hearing the result of materials and other design choices. Agree?
@@dwaynepiper3261Yes, but… those compensations also has an effect on performance. It’s not possible to design a paper and an alu cone driver to perform identical. ANY change in a driver, whether it’s a change in material, geometry, or assembly process, has an effect on sound. Even the glue will affect the sound, audibly and measurably.
The important bit is to understand that it’s not like all paper drivers sound one way and all alu drivers sound another way. In that sense, you don’t hear the material, you hear the result of the material. But not all results are possible with all materials, and for that reason, the material matters. And I do believe it is possible to exclude certain materials if you know which result you are after. However, just because you chose the right materials, you are not guaranteed the right result.
/Otto, Dynaudio Academy