There are professionals that can replace the surrounds and the speakers can sound as good as new. You would just need to do a google search or I don't doubt that someone here on Audiogon can make a recomadation as to a person/business/website.
Dude, where's my bass? Oh, lost to stiffened rubber surrounds...who knew?
Started a thread on "Cables" re: better cables to help restore bass to my B&W CM-4 speakers...so while preparing and listening to speakers for cable evaluation, our daughter - who has very acute hearing, unlike my senior ears! - noticed sort of a "crackling" sound in left speaker, and sure enough, removing cloth speaker covers, we notice a 6cm hairline fracture in the surround of the mid-range cone. In fact, checking the rubber surrounds of bass and mid-range cones in both speakers, there were significant areas of stiffened and brittle rubber material, which - I would presume - drastically muted the speaker responses to incoming audio signal. So, what to do? Can the surrounds themselves be replaced w/o impairing cone native sonic qualities? Totally new area here for me, having never dealt with material failure or deterioration in speaker components. Suggestions most welcome!