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Is there any benefit to replacing woofer foam before degradation?

sqlsavior said:
Foam surrounds are a design flaw.
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I don't consider them a design "flaw"--if they failed prematurely, that would be a design flaw. Depending on use/storage conditions, most foam surrounds are fine for at least the first 20-30 years. That is a reasonable life expectancy. As I mentioned in my previous post, most designers/builders did not expect this gear/speakers to still be around 30-40-50 years later, much less highly desirable.
 
sqlsavior said:
Certainly not in comparison to other parts of the speaker. Foam surrounds are a design flaw.
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So, something that allowed designers to get BETTER performance than ANY OTHER option, in the applications they were used in, is a design FLAW?

In what universe is that actually true?

And yes- there are MANY cases where any other surround type- rubber, fabric, paper, etc- would be a PERFORMANCE DOWNGRADE compared to the foam surround. It's a matter of having the correct combination of light weight, flexibility, freedom from noisy artifacts (flapping, oil-canning, etc, like fabric surrounds, and sometimes rubber surrounds, frequently do in high excursion applications), damping (not as much as rubber, more than fabric or paper- the "goldilocks" perfect balance in many cases) and ease in economically forming specific shapes, sizes and thicknesses (including tapered thickness), to get the best performance...

Regards,
Gordon.
 
GordonW said:
So, something that allowed designers to get BETTER performance than ANY OTHER option, in the applications they were used in, is a design FLAW?

In what universe is that actually true?

And yes- there are MANY cases where any other surround type- rubber, fabric, paper, etc- would be a PERFORMANCE DOWNGRADE compared to the foam surround. It's a matter of having the correct combination of light weight, flexibility, freedom from noisy artifacts (flapping, oil-canning, etc, like fabric surrounds, and sometimes rubber surrounds, frequently do in high excursion applications), damping (not as much as rubber, more than fabric or paper- the "goldilocks" perfect balance in many cases) and ease in economically forming specific shapes, sizes and thicknesses (including tapered thickness), to get the best performance...

Regards,
Gordon.
Click to expand...
Amen.
 
Folks, you don't need to convince me that surrounds that turn to dust in 30 years are superior design alternatives, because you never will, and because it doesn't matter - it's a done deal - they're dust already. Any of today's designers that don't consider UV and like deterioration in their selection of surround material have no excuse now, do they? I think it's great that people are replacing surrounds to keep old loudspeakers going, and that the knowledge and materials are becoming common enough to enable this. Congratulations to all who do so! I am not belittling anyone, even the speaker designers - it's obvious that poor longevity was not a known attribute back then. At least, I'd rather believe that than that they didn't care. But now they should know.
 
there is one great reason. pull and measure the woofer for all the specific specs, free air
resonance, Q, frequency response curves, etc. that way you can compare to after refoam.

we all make the same assumptions that re-foam simply returns the speakers to original
specs.
 
Are modern foam surrounds using better, more long lasting products than the surrounds from long ago?
 
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