Speaker composition: is a grey-polymer coated woofer not as good as aluminum? (1 Viewer)

[Dave H]

Just curious. I have some speakers where the cone is aluminum and another pair as grey-polymer coated. Which is better?

Also, I see the tweeter is listed as ferro fluid cooled aluminum and the other speaker's tweeter is listed as just dome tweeter.

These are Yamaha speakers I have.

 

[Tim Ranger]

The cone material is only one small aspect of the sound quality of a speaker. There really is no one "best" material. They all have strengths and weaknesses. There IS a lot of marketing hype surrounding cone materials. Interestingly enough, many of the best high end speakers use variations of paper cones and silk or cloth dome tweeters instead of the latest material. It's the overall design that counts.

 

[Mike_Ch]

Dave,
Ferro fluid is used in tweeters to increase power handling by heat dispersion. Read this thread to find out more info on driver technology.
Cheers,
Mike

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Dave,

For Midranges and Subwoofers a propely implemented paper
cone can outperform an improperly implemented alloy cone.

Every material has stengths and every materials also has
it's weakness's. Many companies will use plastic cones that
are "Aluminum Plated" for looks, that's all it amounts to
because that millions of an inch thick layer of aluminum
plating they put on via electrochemical process hardly
stiffens the cone like they "claim".

With a lot of cheap brands they do these things to make
the speakers look high end and to have flash, so that they
may appeal to people shopping for a speaker based solely
on asthetics alone.

That being said, My mid ranges are a blend of magnesium and
aluminum alloy and are hemisphericaly machined (no seperate
dust cap) and I love the way they sound. They were never
used for looks (black anodized, they hardly stand out from
the rest of the black speaker) they were used because they
are very high resolution, very sensitive and they do a
superb job at midrange. Whoever uses a Metallic Mid or
Tweeter just has to make sure they know what frequency said
driver "rings" at, and cross it over well below that threshold.

 

[Brian Bunge]

Whoever uses a Metallic Mid or Tweeter just has to make sure they know what frequency said driver "rings" at, and cross it over well below that threshold.

Or use an extremely high order crossover to achieve a steep rolloff so that you can get as much high frequency extension out of the driver as possible.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Brian,
yep or that method..