Blown Mid Driver


Listening to some music yesterday for the first time in 3 months. Didn't sound great. Heard a bit of crackling from the left speaker. Took the grill off to find the 'foam' ring around the mid driver had gone flacid / half of it caved in. Not sure how this could have happened. Tunes always played at a decent volvume, but nothing extreme to cause distortion, no physical abuse, etc. Any thoughts on how/ why this could've happened besides volume? Dynamics of some sort? Age? 

Laptop running J River app >
Silver Starlight USB >
Bel Canto U Link Asychronomous USB >
Bel Canto DAC 2.5 >
Nu Force Reference 9 v2 solid state monoblocks >
Paradigm Studio 60 v5 ( mid driver blown on one) /
Anthony Gallo TR-1 sub


jpbdh4
The foam surrounds shouldn’t cost more than $20 delivered. I replaced the foam on a pair of 6” mids without any drama and there was no voice coil rubbing, just don’t lay them at an angle while the glue is drying and if 1 of them rotted I would expect the rest that have foam surrounds to follow. 
I pulled a pair of paradigm Titans out of closet after 20 years, surrounds where gone. Ordered surround/glue kit, it's cheap. Never done it before, watched sellers how to video. I was surprised how easy of a fix it was. Worked like new. 

Bringing this thread back to life with an update... having a 2 yr old put a hiatus on the fix. Removed the driver. Turns out the (forgive my lack of technical speak here) metal housing ’frame’ had completely broken away from the speaker portion. Thus the cantilevered weight of the magnet in the cabinet caused the foam surround to concave on itself. My guess is it was knocked over at some point, maybe in shipping, and then frame cracked. Then eventually broke proper.

For giggles, and knowing it wouldn’t sound perfect, I tried to jb weld it but the surface area of the metal was so thin and touching the foam that it was a failure before launch.

Called Paradigm and they still had 10 new old stock mid drivers. Picked one up for $275 including shipping. Now ideally I’d get a pair but by that point I’d be over my threshold/ on the way to a new pair of speaks.

Ran tunes through them 24/7 for 3.5 weeks straight to break it in. Sounds just like I remember. If there’s any difference between the pair I can’t pick it up.

https://ibb.co/P5hBr7M

Next time make sure you get speakers with butyl rubber surrounds. They last considerably longer. As far as the magnet separating from the basket is concerned it was most likely a defective weld. If a metal part cracked defective metallurgy would be to blame. I have never seen or heard of a sub woofer driver doing this never mind a much less stressed mid range driver. This driver was defective from the start. It just took a while for it to fail. I would not blame it on shipping. The weakest part of the speaker is the enclosure. A blow hard enough to do that to the mid range driver would surely damage the enclosure and the speaker would have been bad out of the box not years later.