Wayne Parham Messages: 18783 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
When you over-drive a speaker, it usually starts sounding very distorted.
As for the cone-up or cone-down thing, I was mostly talking about storage. If you lay speakers on their backs (cones facing up) and store them for a few years, you may find the suspension has sagged over time.
I have seen some subwoofer cabinets designed to face the woofer down though. It's an interesting design, and makes the woofer cone "invisible." But the disadvantage is that the cone weight will tend to shift it downwards, which will only get worse over time.