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Comment by Puts | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't rubber dry out over time? If you pay for a good set of speakers you probably want them to last for decades.

I have a pair of 35 year old Mission speakers constructed using rubber and so far there's no evidence of degradation and they still sound great.

I imagine if this was a tyre then it wouldn't fare so well because the rubber compound is for a completely different use and also exposed to adversities such as wide temperature differences and all sorts of kinetics that a speaker will never experience (hopefully).

Lots of traditional speakers already use a rubber ring around the edge of the cone.

Which is what turned to dust in my twenty year old infinitys. They were the cheaper ones but still surprised me.

Same with my Bose. The foam surrounds were short lived. Rubber lasted longer but was not as widely used.

The foam surrounds can be replaced. It isn't difficult and you can buy kits for a lot of different sizes including the glue.

One thing to watch is to ensure the cone is still centred but anybody who is patient can fix a bad foam surround.

I've done it! A relative of mine had two Gallien-Krueger 250ML guitar amplifiers, which are an interesting bit of kit, but the 5" speakers had foam surrounds that rotted out. I ordered and installed generic replacements from Parts Express. For my part, I was just curious about how the amps would sound.

As for the Bose, they were nothing special as speakers, and I already had a stereo that I was happy with, so I disposed of them.

Yeah, foam surrounds are the cheapo stuff, neoprene lasts.

They should use whatever bike innertubes are made out of. I've used innertubes as bungees outdoors, and they're quite durable.

This was about 10 years ago but here in New Zealand I found someone who could repair and replace the rubber so my 30 year old infinities are as good as new.

I bought (separately, used) a full set of older Infinity surround speakers. Eventually they all had to be re-foamed, but I managed to do it myself with parts ordered online. Have some acetone on hand to take the glue back off if you get it wrong and have to try again...

Couldn't you just replace it? We also pay for good cars, but we still change their tires every so often...

Why would I want to replace the headphones I am using for a decade with something I have to replace every few years. Its already sad enough that I have to replace my phone every year or two because of its battery and software upgrades that slow it down.

You can now add headphones to your upgrade cycles because number of new phones with reasonable specs and wired headphone support are becoming rare.

If this proves cost effective to manufacture and resulting headphones come with inbuilt obsolescence due to batteries and degrading rubber, we'll see manufacturers aggressively pushing this new technology.

Well I guess it's not the wooden box of a speaker that costs $2000-$30000 (normal price range for consumer Hi-Fi speakers). Replacing the speaker drivers would be more like replacing everything within the body of a car.

How do hifi speaker vendors justify such ridiculous prices when most studio monitors are way better priced than that? Insane.

I genuinely wonder the same actually. Seems like there would go even more engineering into making a speaker that is "true" and not coloring the sound as one expects from their monitors.

There's plenty of real engineering but it's only engineers that can differentiate the heavily marketed and absurdly marked up snake oil things from what's real. DIY people share honestly good designs that are underperformed by speakers/amps that cost 10x or more.

Justification isn't really a thing in that market (see also: luxury watches).

My friends who are into hi-fi/audiophile stuff who value accuracy typically do go for studio monitors or similar (e.g. Harbeth) vs. stuff like Wilson Audio. Some of them still buy fairly woo-woo stuff like spendy cables even though they might know better, but at least they don't go in for the pure scam stuff like Shakti Stones or directional Ethernet cables...

For one, studio monitors are typically near-field speakers.

"near field speaker" is a marketing term that has no meaning.

thats not true. A near-field speaker tends to be a speaker that performs well at closer distances. its obviously implied given its prefix.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_monitor

You dont know what you are talking about. “has no meaning” is such a nothing sandwich,

Near field is a property of the space, not the speaker. Would suggest reading https://digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=547

You're right that it's about a space, or a field, which is in the name, but you're wrong in contradicting the other poster. The near field is determined by the radiating surface, the front baffle of the speaker. Room height line arrays for example have a large near field. Near field speakers are those with tuning designed to be flattest when listened to inside the near field. The link you posted is confused and misleading, which is unfortunate since they dressed it up as some kind of "myth busting".

Not at all. Pro grade reference monitors can cost a small fortune. PMC BB6 XBD-A for example are $125,000 a pair.

It's easy to trick people into overspending on audio gear because you can use their love for music and their subjective biases and their egos against them. It's like the perfect situation for slimy sales tactics.

Beware, if you're spending $10k+ on consumer hifi speakers you're almost definitely getting ripped off.

It costs only a few thousand at most to get the raw parts and materials to build truly world class speakers (quality-wise) that are loud enough for any normal living space. Maybe not for a concert hall type space, but that's not consumer hifi anymore.

Speaker surrounds are replaced when necessary. For several decades foam was used, and it tended to break down. The butyl rubber usually used now lasts thirty to fifty years when not exposed directly to sunlight.

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