Cloth surrounds ?

[killa]

What are the advantages/disadvantages? Obviously they wont damp cone resonance as well but it seems like rubber would slow the cone movement down limiting the high frequency extention. I know they use to use the cloth surrounds in older speakers a lot.
I have just purchased a pair of the the new hsu research hb1 mk2 and they use a treated cloth surround and it got me thinking, so I am just curious as to why they are so uncommon today.

[philiparcario]

2 pros they last long. they look better then foam. i don't know why they are not used more. cost? i have 12 inch oem woofers cloth surrounds, in a 500 dollar
(1965 dollars)
1965 fm am record player. i restored it for my father in law. plays down to 50hz . it is a fine piece of gear. looks like this

http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibi...cts/stereo.htm

[billfitzmaurice]

I am just curious as to why they are so uncommon today.

Price.

[killa]

I'm not sure it is do to price. The hsu research speakers are fairly cheap and their mid woof uses cloth surrounds.
http://www.hsuresearch.com/products/hb-1.html

[johnnyrichards]

It does seem that only the cheaper drivers these days use cloth surrounds. Roger Russel wrote about this a little bit when he was talking about specing out some drivers back in the day. He claimed that the rubber and cloth surrounds were not capable of the excursion and damping he required for some of his designs.

If it was only price that was an objection, we would see cloth on some of the "price is no object" drivers out there... That the highest price drivers do not use cloth (when they use other materials of pricey yet questionable virtue) is telling... Of what, I don't know because it may very well be that people have come to expect rubber on their 200 dollar woofers so that is what use.

It would be an interesting experiment to take three identical woofers using rubber surrounds and replace the surrounds on two of them with foam and cloth.

[killa]

Yeah I also think people have just come to expect rubber surrounds. Rubber is good for damping cones but if you have a cone that does'nt resonate bad I would think a cloth sorround would work just fine, possibly better.

[brianp]

I've seen pleated cloth surrounds (often with multiple pleats) mostly on older PA and guitar amp speakers. These were typically high sensitivity drivers (necessary back in toob dayz) with (to put it charitably) somewhat less than linear frequency response. Usually the cloth was treated with some sort of rubberizing compound to fill the pores and make it air-tight. Over the years, such compounds tended to dry out, stiffen, and crack.

Still, they lasted a lot longer than foam surrounds. Does anyone know the approximate lifespan of butyl rubber surrounds?

[killa]

Yeah but what about half roll sorrounds like marantz and others used on their speakers? I have seen pleated paper but not cloth. I would think many of the older drivers from that era probably had fairly ragged response anyway.

[billfitzmaurice]

Usually the cloth was treated with some sort of rubberizing compound to fill the pores and make it air-tight. Over the years, such compounds tended to dry out, stiffen, and crack.

Preventing those problems is one reason why cloth is more expensive. It's also far more durable than foam or rubber, which is why it is used in pro-sound drivers that have to endure punishment and duty cycles no hi-fi driver would ever see, making its higher initial cost cheaper in the long run.