Stiffer woofer tend to move slow that why it produced muddy sound, while woofer that been exercised or lets say broken in usually move better or faster that produce clear or better sound. muddy sound may also be cause by unstable spike or base that instead only the woofer moving the whole box ( buffle ) also moves/resonate so some do mass loading. ( sand filing ).
agree with you sir about the 2way design that some best speaker are 2way than 3way or lets say 2 woofer..
Yup, a stiff cone suspension can produce a slow responding muddled bass. I'm just not convinced that a muddled bass is the same as boomy bass, unless a peaking happens at those frequencies. Perhaps we just have different definitions.
A boomy bass for me is one that has a characteristic PEAKING at certain frequencies relative to other bass frequencies, often at around 60hz, and is the result of speaker or port resonances and room modes augmenting each other. Every room has its characteristic room bass peaks, but a speaker that has its own could easily aggravate the percieved boominess. So boomines has more to do amplitudes.
OTH, muddled bass for me has more to do with confused bass notes that are not amplitude related, but a failure to delineate the harmonics between different bass frequencies because the woofer can't respond fast enough to fast-changing bass notes and their harmonics. It doesn't have to peak but you can get a one-note bass line below a certain frequency. A stiff cone suspension can result in muddied bass but may be too constrained to displace more air mass to sound boomy compared to a more relaxed suspension. But, ofcourse, a speaker can exhibit both traits. Even if the suspension were too stiff to move more air mass, if the port is tuned to that frequency, there'd still be some peaking at that frequency, though on a lesser scale. But the peaking can increase as the suspension material gets "broken-in." And this peaking can happen even as the muddled bass gets better definition. So a muddled bass need not be boomy, unless there are peaks where it is muddles as well. A boomy bass need not be muddled either, but can sound muddled if it jibes or augments room modes and overpowers other bass notes. So which is which? Was it boomy, muddled, or both? Just my thoughts.