Having done some research on this when I was making custom speakers, I can tell you shape does not seem to effect radiation pattern. They all create a pressure wave that expands outward in all directions as it travels. It does not collapse inward. Think ripples on a pond. The waves you see are not in the same direction as the stone that caused them. You can mount a woofer backwards and it still performs the same if polarity is reversed. I hope this helps you visualize what’s happening at the air/cone interface.
Speaker cone shape
Why are speakers cone shaped, apart from rigidity? To my mind the air being pushed by a cone would radiate at an angle inward toward the axis of the speaker and collide in the centre, which seems inefficient to me, and likely to cause some distortion of the sound. This may also cause interference to adjacent speakers on the same baffle. Would there be any advantage to having the surface flat, assuming you could maintain rigidity without increasing the mass? There must be modern capable materials out there.
Is the fact that the speaker is cone shaped that causes the volume to change counter intuitively as you move left and right in front of the speakers? What I mean by counter intuitively is when you move left the right speaker sounds louder and visa versa.
Is the fact that the speaker is cone shaped that causes the volume to change counter intuitively as you move left and right in front of the speakers? What I mean by counter intuitively is when you move left the right speaker sounds louder and visa versa.