Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Why metal Drivers?

I live in Lexington, KY...home of Thiel audio, who has also started using metal woofers. Metal cones generally have intense resonance peaks centered around 5kHz, even from highly respected driver manufacturers such as Seas. These peaks can be very hard to tame, even with complex crossovers. Plus metal cones can sometimes add a 'hard' sonic signature to music. Has anyone noticed a metallic hardness to the Axiom sound?

Just to give you some background on Axiom and metal cone technology. Axiom was one of the pioneers of this technology. We began experimenting and using metal cones for our sub-woofers in 1985. The two main benefits to metal cones are; firstly the rigidity of the cone structure which, especially at high volume, leads to much lower distortion, much better midrange clarity, and improved imaging, and secondly excellent heat dissipation from the voice coil. The concern you have raised is valid and is why we did not use metal cone drivers beyond our sub-woofers until 1996. At that time we developed a method to make metal cone drivers that do not have the resonance problem you have raised and thusly no crossover correction is required. This allowed us to get the benefits of the metal cones without any compromises and to create the current line of Axiom Millennia loudspeakers to a new level of performance.

Ian Colquhoun
President & Chief Engineer