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Dude, where’s my bass?? Ah, 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 speakers for evaluating assorted cables, 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 noticed a 6cm hairline fracture in the surround of the mid-range cone.  In fact, checking the rubber surrounds of bass and mid-range speakers 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 sonic qualities?  Totally new area for me, having never dealt with material deterioration in speaker components.  Suggestions most welcome.
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dweller's avatar
dweller
3,781 posts
 
Better to replace the entire driver(s). May be time for new set of speakers.
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reubent
6,970 posts
 
Speaker surround replacement is very common with older speakers. It's typically fairly inexpensive too. If you like the speakers, its probably worth investigating and getting a price quote. Check the Millersound website for information about surround replacement. They are typically one of the most recommended resources for speaker driver repairs. They can put on new surrounds and align the voicecoils. They can also check for other potenitial issues.

If you like the speakers and want to keep them, check with Millersound, or another speaker repair company, for information. You will likely find it much less expensive than replacing the speakers.
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