Terra Tech: Cone Material + Design Principles
Consider the environment. Identify acoustical advantages. Build from the ground up.
On the surface, our Jeeps appear to be anything but optimal for designing an audio system that truly focuses on sound quality. Assessing the front midrange drivers, their location, and what we wanted to accomplish, we strayed from our typical cone medium given the acoustical characteristics of the environment.
Using 6061 Aluminum in a midrange driver can be a risky undertaking. We've worked with carbon fiber and fiberglass woven cones for decades, and I use these drivers in my other vehicles as well as my home studio monitors. Our Jeeps, however, are different environments altogether.
It's a rolling brick, perched atop 37" mud terrains, doors off, no top, no insulation, and not a single opportunity to create a prominent soundstage. Or so it may seem. With the soundstage high atop the dashboard, placed wide directly under a giant reflective surface (the windshield), Jeep possibly unknowingly gave us a system-builder's dream; unlimited, open air to optimize dispersion of the entire band of midrange + high frequencies.
In our case, aluminum is in fact the ideal medium for midrange drivers. It's much livelier and more responsive than composite materials, and the harshness that can be associated with the material is alleviated with the shaping of the cones, the inverted santoprene surrounds, and having a higher impedance voice coil for optimal transient response.
By having the cone roll off directly into the inverted surround, we optimize midrange dispersion into the cabin to create a seamless, open sound signature that eliminates localization (the inability to discern where the sound is coming from; it just appears "high and up front").
Our cone medium + design paired with our silk tweeters gives us the perfect solution; a dedicated, location-specific 80mm component system for our endless adventures around the world.
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Click here to learn more about Front SoundStage speaker upgrades for Jeep Wrangler and Jeep Gladiator.
