I have a pair of KLH Model 2, they have to be over 30 years old and the butyl surround is still soft and supple... so you never know....the environment plays into it too.
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!