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).
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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).