Do speakers ever just "get old"?

Cool. I guess my Hartley's are still spring chickens at the tender age of 28 then!

 

I've heard a number of modern systems made with very old (60-70 yr) drivers that are startlingly good sounding. It really depends on the specific driver and materials employed and operating conditions. Old cones made of paper can become very brittle with age, but, reconing can restore the life of such drivers. Old compression drivers often need no work at all.

A lot of speakers made in the 1970s and 1980s utilized a form of butyl rubber for the surrounds that did not last very long. Some ribbon drivers develop stress fractures from all the flexing. Electrostatic panels have all sorts of different failure modes, depending on the specific manufacturer (e.g., Quads a vulnerable to arcing when too much power is applied, Martin-Logans seem invulnerable to arcing, but some have failed because the wire bringing the charge to the panel corroded in high humidity environments).

 

I have disassembled some dome tweeters that seemed to be still working, but weak. I found that the dome was filled with foam that pressed against the inside. It was a little cylindrical plug about .75" diameter and .5" thick, stuck to the magnet. The foam had aged much like woofer surround foam often does, and had become soft and gooey, losing it's tension. I don't know if your Revels have similar foam inside the tweeters, but it's certainly possible.

 

Thanks for all the replies. You've convinced me that whatever I'm hearing, it's not due to speaker aging.

Sometimes I worry that I have "tinkered" my speakers into malfunction. For instance, I tried shoving dense foam into the rear ports (even though there is no manufacturer recommendation to do this) to see if that lessened some lower-end congestion in the sound. It had an effect, but I ended up not preferring it, and so removed the foam. Fine as far as that goes. But then I began to worry that by "trapping" the air inside a speaker design that was designed to work with a reflex port, I had done some kind of damage to the workings of the speaker. I don't know if this is a completely crazy worry on my part, but it's the sort of worry that makes me very hesitant to do things like tighten driver screws, etc.

 

B&W for one provides foam plugs for the ports to convert to a sealed box. Thus, I doubt very much that plugging a port would cause harm. But I do believe in leaving sealed boxes sealed unless a repair is needed. As far as tightening screws, there may be factory torque values that I would not want to mess with unless I had a factory manual of some sort.

 

Don't worry: closing the reflex port actually reduces (roughly by a factor 2) the woofer excursion, so definitely not a dangerous test.

 

I have ported speakers and have reduced the port size. Go ahead and tighten the screws down a small amount. Like you tighten a car lug on a tire. Even pressure, alternating pattern. Your not going to strip out the screw hole. Plus, as i mentioned the inside connection to the binding post is a problem area. I have never owned a speaker in which the internal wire connection to the binding post stayed factory tight.

 

My Altec Model 19's uses a plastic phase plug in the horn and one of them came loose and it was lying against the dome of the voice coil. It took some time for me to realize why the upper frequencies were lacking in one cabinet.

 

Humans get old too. And with it, changes in hearing. Keep that in mind.

 

Your ears get old too.

 

I have Sansui speakers, both made in 1970, SP-2000s and AS-100s. Both pair have origional caps and sound great. The AS-100s sound 'really great' with CDs. The SP-2000s sound wonderful with LPs, and CDs sound really good too.

I did get a pair of Cerwin Vegas (if that's how you spell it) for the wife. They only lasted maybe 3 years max and the woofers surrounds rotted out. It was unbelievable.

Meanwhile, the Sansui's still keep crankin. I'll take Sansui anyday.

 

Maybe you should try drinking less whisky before listening...or a smoother brand...

Seriously, as a speaker designer whose friend works on Revel stuff, they should be fine after 7 years, unless you somehow damaged them by cranking them really loud. The woofers surrounds aren't even foam.

Maybe something has changed in the room? Did you move anything, or change furniture? Or, maybe it's your ears, or your brain (which processes what your ears hear) or the weather (which affects how you hear, at least in my experience).

 

As my speakers are at least ten years old, and there definitely are spiders in the basement where my 'rec room' is, I read this thread with some concern!

Seriously though, does volume have any bearing on speaker life?

I rarely take the system as high as 9:00 o'clock on the volume dial, and live in hope that my gentle ways will assist the speakers having a long and happy life.

 

If you overdrive a speaker it will certainly reduce it's lifespan of meeting makers' spec..

Anywhere from instantly ending it's useful life resulting in total silence, to damaging parts to the extent that they will fail to perform properly..

This usually manifests in partly fried tweeters which will produce less highs or more distortion or both..

And midranges and woofers which also cook-out and will begin distorting or losing output levels or both.

Parts in the crossover can burn out, mostly capacitors, but sometimes resistors and coils can toast also..

The higher you drive the speaker above a certain threshold, the closer you come to real damage..

Most home speakers can run 5 or 10 watts forever without damage. Even 20 watts or more most can do for long periods. But many modern speakers of small size could have trouble running sustained power of 30, 40 or 50 watts without some damage... Impossible to pre-determine exactly where the damage will occur.. To be safe, run them at half the rated power or less..

Pros use huge speakers because they can take huge RMS watts and dissipate the heat/power without damage and can last for many decades of high sound level output.

In the home, recent trends have been to purchase small little speakers which are not able to produce high levels of realistic concert sound pressure and sustaining long high-power use. So they burn out when driven over the ability to handle it, at levels that don't quite equal live music.

 

Thanks for all the info!

 

I think the danger to speakers isn't so much playing loud per se, but trying to play them too loud with an underpowered amp, which will clip. Amp clipping will kill a speaker faster than anything.

 

Between the danger of underpowering speakers, and the danger of overpowering speakers, it's a wonder speakers survive at all!

 

I have a pair of Celestion Hadleighs that have seen daily use for the past 30+ years. They're in fine shape, apart from some scratches on the cabinets.

I have a pair of Bose 501's that date from the same period; their foam surrounds had to be replaced about a year ago. I got these second-hand (after the surround replacement) and have no idea what sort of environment the original owner had them in. I do know they were in storage for a number of years before I got them.

 

Dennis Metz is right, "are you sure it's your speakers?"

I have 2 pair of 1970 Sansui speakers (SP-2000s and AS-100s) and they are all origional and both pair still sound really great. I mean, they sound really good.

Think your old vintage speakers are not up to par?? Connect a BBE-462 Sonic Maximizer between your cd player and the amp. You will find out 'immediately' if it's your speakers.


reb's right too:
1. Tighten up all the screws that are securing the drivers to the cabinet.
2. Open up the x-over cover (where binding posts exit), tighten down internal binding post nuts.
3. Clean binding post contacts(speaker and amp) and speaker cable spades/banana plugs.
4. If your speakers have 'L' pads, Dioxit them
5. If they still sound bad after the BBE test: test each individual speaker. and replace the caps.
5. Then...Rock on!!

 

How tight? Mine were loose and I used a phillips head to get them to just where they met resistance, but not really tight because I don't want to strip them. There are rubber washers that compress a bit. Should I tighten more?

 

"Go ahead and tighten the screws down a small amount. Like you tighten a car lug on a tire. Even pressure, alternating pattern. Your not going to strip out the screw hole."

 

Sorry to quote myself, but I have news about this post of mine.....

Yesterday, I did what I knew I had to.......

1) Dismantled the speakers, unmounting the components and the crossover.
2) Replaced the spring-loaded, tiny back connectors with HUGE new ones, accepting bananas or monster bare wire.
3) Replaced internal wiring with 4.0mm (11AWG) Tasker speaker cable. Cable cross section is now roughly 8x the original one
4) Replaced the L-pad 8Ω attenuators with exactly-same-size-and-specs new ones. Once dismantled, the old attenuators showed tired wire filaments and a blowing up and browned insulator.
5) Reassembled everything, with care for air insulation and screw tightening.

The cost was €25/speaker.

I am impressed by the result of this maintenance. The 4310s have manteined all of their personality, but the overall presentation now is much more present. The performance of mids and highs is now way cleaner and the bass is slightly more profound and controlled. I definitely can hear an enjoyable improvement.

I attach a picture of the old (green-black) wiring and the new (red-black) one, as well as an (old) L-pad.



So, an answer to the original OP: some speakers hardly get old, but with proper maintenance they can be young & younger like me and you will never do again...

 

I've wondered the same thing, but 7 years seems like an almost new speaker, assuming it hasn't been abused. My speakers are 8-9 years old and I still think of them as new.

Like someone else asked, has anything changed in the room? Added carpet or a quilt hanging on the back wall?

I wonder too if our ears just become so accustomed to the sound of our systems that maybe we get bored with it sometimes. I remember thinking my system was kinda ho-hum then I had a friend over and played Lucky Man (stereo), after playing some surround stuff for him. Since I was showing off I goosed the volume a bit. I could tell he liked what he was hearing and he asked if it was a surround disc. Nope, plain stereo. Then I found myself listening (probably) as he was listening - with a new set of ears, so to speak. Man, this does sound pretty good.

I've noticed several times since then I find it 'seems' to sound better when I'm giving a demo for someone and I see their reactions. Weird. Maybe I'm listening differently when other people are there, not sure.

 

I know very little about speakers, but I have owned a pair of KEF C20s for at least 20 years (possibly 25, I can't remember) and haven't touched them once...they still sound great.