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Again, not to make a "formula", but I was thinking about the possible roles of the speaker in "offsetting" the typical upward-tending tone/harmonics of hi-fi.  Sure, there are lots of strategies to "deal with" the upward tendency.  These ideas might range from using tubes, to plate loading, or electronically adjusting gain according to frequency.  But what about the speaker's - or driver's - rote role in this?

Something that has slowly dawned on me is that if I can somehow "naturally" control/limit "large driver" "issues", then "bigger" paper cones tend to "sound better'..  "Too big" means, larger than what is typically chosen by "high-end" designers or DIY copycats.  Again, OTHER FACTORS BEING EQUAL.  I put that in caps because there are WAY too many other factors at work to simply derive from this a working "large cone" axiom.  Rather, it is more of a "reflective" observation, and one that I think is worth making, or I wouldn't have made it.  Some typical "big cone" "issues" to chew on are response spikes, falling-off and/or suddenly-disappearing upper harmonics and/or tone, image bloat, muffling...

Any sort of cause and effect "reasoning" on this is vague speculation, but this does not bother me.  I would speculate in any case that the "bigger cone" can either "offset typical hi-fi frequency imbalance" or that it simply "presents it better", at least in terms of tone and harmonics, GIVEN that the particular "too big' cone in question can none the less go "as high as it needs to" to "do its job", etc.  And, believe me, this last is no "gimmie".  In fact, dealing with these issues is what healing the drivers is all about.

Paul S

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