Vuki
Senior Member
Nope. Break-up doesn't even make distorsion. It does nothing, except a change in linear response aka amplitude frequency response. Only if the AFR is exaggerated, by the diaphragm breaking-up in resonance, that amplifies distortion products, which are generated elsewhere (!) in the frequency range.
Many drivers happily take advantage of break-up, to everybodies pleasing, while keeping HD at very low level.
The said effect of HD/IM amplification wasn't recognized, or communicated the least, when the stiff cone tech came up, like hexacone, metal and so on.
The advertizing claimed that in particular soft cones where susceptible to HD/IM due to lacking rigidity. The other way round it was. The common resonance(s) of the stiff cones were excited by distortion products and generated a specific signature, which, sure enough, was taken as supernatural clearity. It is not so, that the HD was experienced as THE second or THE third harmonic. Due to the resonance it would be perceived as an up- and down-swelling side note of fixed frequency. Of course such an effect would be pronounced if at exactly that frequency the resonance appears as a peak in the AFR too. It would render the affected frequency band a focus of attention, which was not set by the music, but by the speaker.
If not damped (mechanically or electrically) hard cone driver brake-up rings/resonates and I would like to see one use this effect with good result.