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!
compass_rose

Showing 1 response by teo_audio

The most difficult to replace surrounds are on the midbas and mid drivers.

Difficult as matching back to the original sonic presentation, as it was originally designed to be...becomes very difficult.

Not so bad with generic drivers but B&W would not be generic drivers or generic surrounds attached and glued and built in a generic way. The opposite in fact. at least in modern designs. Some surround types are not made for nor available to the repair market. For older drivers this is not as much of a problem, as some of those cone/surround considerations have become mainstream. But not always. Cases are individual, and require individual investigation.

On the high end midbass and mid drivers this becomes the core issue.

In the best cases it is minor, as problems go and in the worst cases, it can be undoable or so sonically shifting... that it is no longer like the original speaker.

Someone who can judge that correctly in a mid bass or mid scenario, is almost (partially, at least) a driver designer in their own right.

So you can’t just and should not simply buy a surround anywhere, from mister reseller who sells surrounds that ’fit’.

Look to matching things up correctly, via a specialist who knows what is what. And research the specialist. Make sure the research results of people’s satisfaction is built out of people who can understand the subtleties in difference. Look for the intelligent and learned opinions and feedback.

Ie, a pile of opinions without data on the intelligence and learned aspects of the opinions means exactly squat, but most people don’t look close enough for that, and so..mediocrity ends up ruling the day. Quantification and qualification of the given data leads to the better conclusion, as it does in all analysis...