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Do paper speaker cones sound less neutral?

kristoffer

kristoffer

Danish Hi Fi NERD
It seems to me that there are generally two schools of modern day speaker building. Either use tried and true material like paper for your speakers or use technology to develop new “better “ materials.

Brands like Rega, Harbeth and ATC still use paper cones in some form as far as I can see?

Other manufacturers use engineering to find new materials. Speaker manufacturers life KEF with their UniQ technology or B&W with their diamond coated tweeters.

So my question then is do paper cone sound less neutral? I ask because I have seen it mentioned a couple of times that paper cones are less neutral than cones made of other materials. The speakers I tend to like sound really great with especially voices and they have all had paper cones.

On the other hand speakers with metal tweeters have, to my ears, always, sounded really open but unfortunately also always fatiguing in the long run.

So is there something to these observations?
 
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If I’m not mistaken one of the issues with paper cones has to do with air humidity which may affect the diaphragm.

I have a prejudice against hard domes in general because (mostly) older ones use to produce a massive 10 or even 20dB peak at or slightly above 20kHz.
The same is true for some older and/or poorer implementations of “hard” cones which inadequately low-passed would leak audible break up resonances (e.g. Monitor Audio Studio series, some B&W Kevlar)

Ultimately it’s drown to implementation but some hard domes are now breaking up in the mid 30kHz and it is possible to filter resonances of hard cones by crossing lower.

this piece by Linn Olson may be of interest:

http://www.nutshellhifi.com/library/speaker-design2.html
 
Many of the worlds best and most sought after speakers have paper cones. I suspect the trend for plastic and other materials coincided with or drove the reduction in size, prissy ‘lifestyle’ marketing etc.

One thing you don’t ever see is small long-throw paper cones, they tend to be used on large speakers with large drivers. Say ‘paper cone’ and I think Tannoy, Altec, JBL, Briggs-era Wharfedale, AR, Yamaha, Allison, Gale etc, all 8” drivers or well above. The only small paper cone speakers I can think of are Royds, which can be very good too. Some very good big modern speakers (DeVore, Tannoy, JBL etc) still use large paper drivers, so I certainly don’t view it as old or obsolete technology.
 
kristoffer said:
It seems to me that there are generally two schools of modern day speaker building. Either use tried and true material like paper for your speakers or use technology to develop new “better “ materials.
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Yes there are 2 broad schools: soft weak damped cones vs hard stiff cones. The idea behind the former is to accept a resonant cone over the higher part of the passband but to strongly damp those resonances and to retain a smooth and controlled response above the passband. The idea behind the latter is for the cone to remain pistonic over the passband and to push the large undamped resonances as far above the passband as possible since they not only get driven by the rolled off signal to the driver but also the (not rolled off) harmonics from the motor. Stiff cones do not have wide passbands and are usually better suited to 3 and 4 ways in high quality speakers.

These days paper cones are not really the paper cones of decades ago. They tend to be a magic mix of all sorts of things in order to optimise the mass, stiffness and damping. They are just as optimised/sophisticated in terms of design as hard cones just with different objectives.
 
chartz said:
What about Bextrene?
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This was the first plastic that was widely used but it's properties are fairly poor in comparison with the materials that subsequently replaced it. Damping is modest requiring the addition of extra "doping" which was often done by hand largely negating the advantage of having consistent mechanical properties. Inconsistent mechanical properties was one of the significant problems with old paper cones but much less modern magic mixes that get labelled paper. These days bextrene is purely for those with little interest in technical performance. One application is warts and all replacement drivers for old bextrene drivers since the crossovers are likely to include fixes for the behaviour of the bextrene cone. Another is serving the retro marketing appeal of speakers like the LS3/5A which used bextrene cones.
 
h.g. said:
Yes there are 2 broad schools: soft weak damped cones vs hard stiff cones. The idea behind the former is to accept a resonant cone over the higher part of the passband but to strongly damp those resonances and to retain a smooth and controlled response above the passband. The idea behind the latter is for the cone to remain pistonic over the passband and to push the large undamped resonances as far above the passband as possible since they not only get driven by the rolled off signal to the driver but also the (not rolled off) harmonics from the motor. Stiff cones do not have wide passbands and are usually better suited to 3 and 4 ways in high quality speakers.
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I think you misses a distinct usage difference, and that is paper cones tend to be used in large drivers that do not need excessive cone-excursion to achieve volume, weight and scale. Contrast and compare the movement of say a 15” Tannoy or JBL bass unit with a typical 6” plastic bass-mid in a modern ported floor-stander. The former has no visible movement at any ‘normal’ levels, the latter when asked to do the same is bobbing in and out like a yo-yo adding all manner of distortion, arguably Doppler pitch issues etc too. One has to look at the whole picture here, and it is way more than one material vs. another. It is finding the right material for the specific job.

PS People keep buying LS3/5As because they are crazy good and allow the use of the best sounding amps! (ducks, covers)
 
kristoffer said:
So my question then is do paper cone sound less neutral? I ask because I have seen it mentioned a couple of times that paper cones are less neutral than cones made of other materials. The speakers I tend to like sound really great with especially voices and they have all had paper cones.

On the other hand speakers with metal tweeters have, to my ears, always, sounded really open but unfortunately also always fatiguing in the long run.

So is there something to these observations?
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If you have a soft and a hard cone driver with identical flat on-axis responses they will sound different. The dominant reason for this is the different off-axis responses leading to the reflections (most of the sound entering the ears) having different frequency responses. Audible resonances tend to be secondary in well designed speaker but not necessarily boutique audiophile speakers. The strongly damped resonances of soft cones tend to be fairly benign and indeed enthusiasts for large cone 2 ways or single drivers may consider them to be positive additions to the sound. On the other hand, if the resonances of hard cones become audible (often at raised SPLs if driven by the motor harmonics) it will sound unpleasant rather than benign.
 
I'm a big fan of paper cones for midrange and woofers. Properly damped, they are as neutral as anything you care to compare them against.

Tony L said:
One thing you don’t ever see is small long-throw paper cones, they tend to be used on large speakers with large drivers. Say ‘paper cone’ and I think Tannoy, Altec, JBL, Briggs-era Wharfedale, AR, Yamaha, Allison, Gale etc, all 8” drivers or well above. The only small paper cone speakers I can think of are Royds, which can be very good too. Some very good big modern speakers (DeVore, Tannoy, JBL etc) still use large paper drivers, so I certainly don’t view it as old or obsolete technology.
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The 5.25" Scan-speak 15W8530 as used on my E-IX is paper-based, albeit heavily reinforced with carbon and doping. There are smaller modern drivers than that made from paper too. In my experience, plastic woofers don't seem to produce bass as crisply as paper ones do.
 
Tony L said:
I think you misses a distinct usage difference, and that is paper cones tend to be used in large drivers that do not need excessive cone-excursion to achieve volume, weight and scale. Contrast and compare the movement of say a 15” Tannoy or JBL bass unit with a typical 6” plastic bass-mid in a modern ported floor-stander. The former has no visible movement at any ‘normal’ levels, the latter when asked to do the same is bobbing in and out like a yo-yo adding all manner of distortion, arguably Doppler pitch issues etc too. One has to look at the whole picture here, and it is way more than one material vs. another. It is finding the right material for the specific job.
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You appear to be mixing up two independent things: the size of the cone and how it is designed to behave. If a woofer has a fairly wide passband resonances will be in or near the passband and it will have to be soft/paper. If the passband is fairly narrow like a sub then a hard cone becomes an option.

Tony L said:
PS People keep buying LS3/5As because they are crazy good and allow the use of the best sounding amps! (ducks, covers)
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There is no requirement for audiophiles to prefer neutral high fidelity speakers over those with attractive sound effects. It is a hobby. Conflict is only likely to arise if LS3/5A enthusiasts insist they are high fidelity/high technical performance speakers rather than good audiophile ones.
 
uncl_nigel said:
Proac Futures is that paper cones show visible signs of age
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That almost sounds like an oxymoron ;). Saw those at Heathrow (?) when they came out (late nineties?); Future One and 0.5 if I remember. I had R3.5s at the time , or maybe R4s. Nice aesthetics, but didn't think they equated with the R series, pound for pound. I also remember the new R3.8, which was neither fish nor foul. I loved my Rs,R3.5 and R4.
 
Most 'paper' cones are formulations, Tannoys have used capoc and hemp amongst other additives since the 1950's-common practice-each manufacturer having their own proprietary formulations(this critical element now mostly farmed out to specialist manufacturers these days).The Tannoy Prestige range all use paper coned bass mids. Some of the pro range are fortified with cellulose. The SOTA JBL 1500Al uses a paper/polystyrene/paper sandwich cone..Then we have magnet materials/motor, spider and surround/termination design to consider.......does foam sound more bouncy than M roll fabric?.....
 
Tony L said:
Many of the worlds best and most sought after speakers have paper cones. I suspect the trend for plastic and other materials coincided with or drove the reduction in size, prissy ‘lifestyle’ marketing etc.

One thing you don’t ever see is small long-throw paper cones, they tend to be used on large speakers with large drivers. Say ‘paper cone’ and I think Tannoy, Altec, JBL, Briggs-era Wharfedale, AR, Yamaha, Allison, Gale etc, all 8” drivers or well above. The only small paper cone speakers I can think of are Royds, which can be very good too. Some very good big modern speakers (DeVore, Tannoy, JBL etc) still use large paper drivers, so I certainly don’t view it as old or obsolete technology.
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Heco ?
 
A mix of paper and something else such as fibers seems to be the best compromise IMO.
When properly built, they give you both the warmth of the paper and the slam of bass drum kicks.
Another good mix is carbon fiber damped with Roacell just like this one but a tad less musical or soft in the midrange :

https://solen.ca/wp-content/uploads/sb17crc358.pdf

Scanspeak concept of having two layers of paper glued back to back is also very good though not as tight as carbon fiber in the very low frequencies :

https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.c...ak-revelator-18w/8531g-00-7-mid-woofer-8-ohm/
 
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