[Bill-99]

How long should an ACI speaker perform at or close to spec? Certainly there are a lot of variables here, such as how hard they are driven, the environment in which they live, etc. I'm looking for some general guidelines at sane volume levels.

[Mike Dzurko]

How long should an ACI speaker to perform at or close to spec? Certainly there are a lot of variables here, such as how hard they are driven, the environment in which they live, etc. I'm looking for some general guidelines at sane volume levels.

Bill:

We build for the long haul. Usually, about the only thing that wears out in a speaker system can be the various foam surrounds. The older ones (like the original Advents and some of our Dynaudio based models from the early and mid 80s), were good for 10-15+ years. Current foam is supposed to last longer. All the current models we build use either rubber or synthetic rubber surrounds. These should be good for 20-30+ years, maybe even longer. Strong UV is tough on cone and surround materials. So a speaker sitting in an open window in Florida will show aging much sooner than one in Wisconsin.

Note, most speakers can be re-coned which give them another whole life span for not a lot of money.

[Bill-99]

Mike,

Are you saying 20-30 years at or close to spec? That's not what I'd have expected.

If you pictured this as an X/Y graph, with the Y-axis measuring performance relative to spec, and the X-axis representing time, what I would have expected was a sharp upward slope initially during break-in, then a fairly level line going to the right gradually drifting back toward the X-axis as the cones age, maybe punctuated with a sharp drop with foam failure.

What I'm trying to figure out is whether there will be a gradual degradation in the audio qualities of the speakers, so gradual that it isn't noticed until you're visiting someone who has newer speakers. Then you wind up questioning if their speakers are better or if you have age and use-based degradation.

Just to get this straight in my head, can you clarify this?

Thanks,
-Bill

[Mike Dzurko]

Bill:

Yep, I think 20-30 years before any audible degradation is a reasonable expectation. The materials used are very stable and in fact will likely last even longer than this. Using the speakers doesn't age them unless they are consistently driven into non-linearity (beaten to death). The only real enemy is UV and again, unless they're sitting right in the bright sun this will take a long time to cause any damage.

[Marbles]

Bill-99, your hearing on the other hand, will not hold up as well as the ACI speakers over the same period of time.......  

[Bill-99]

Mike,

Thanks for the clarification. That's great!


Marbles,

Good point. It's no picnic growing old, is it?

-Bill

[ieales]

My current speakers are about 20 years old, Spica TC-50MkII.

While I occasionally rock out with some Led Zepplin at 100db+ levels, most listening is in the 85 range.

They still do what they do so well that I've yet to replace them