Best Ways to Clean Your Speakers: Top Products, Tips, Techniques

Jan 26, 2024

By Joshua Kanter

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A little bit of maintenance now goes a long way towards preserving the quality and function of your favorite speakers, and it's easier (and cheaper) to keep them clean rather than have to replace them. Here's how to care for your speaker's parts, along with additional cleaning products to safely use on your sound system.

Just like you would clean your car, regular cleaning of your speakers helps ensure that they stay sounding crisp and accurate. Dust and debris can often get lodged in your components, affecting the way they work and ultimately, causing middling audio. Cleaning your speakers keeps them in good condition to keep your music sounding great.

Here's what you need to know about how to clean your speakers.

Woofer: Cleaning the membranes and rubber surrounding the woofer is easier than you may think: Grab your mildly moist microfiber cloth, wipe it down then gently wipe it down again with a dry cloth. For the surrounding rubber, a rubber care solution works well since it's made for soft rubber specifically, but the material is usually pretty durable.

Tweeter: While the woofer's materials are generally sturdy and can deal with rougher handling, the tweeter and dome is a different story. These are much more fragile and easily damaged, so to remove dust from it (and the surrounding membrane), don't touch or wipe it – instead, air is your best bet.

Either through a can or just by blowing, a few puffs of air should get a good amount of debris off. While it may not look as sparkly clean as the wiped-down woofer, the sound quality won't be affected at all. If your dome has accidentally gotten pushed in, the opposite can fix that: As bizarre as it sounds, instead of blowing, a quick inhale with the dome against your mouth can pop it back out again. It may look and feel weird, but it works. A dome that's in its right place, rising above the surrounding surface, delivers better sound dispersement than a pushed-in one.

Exterior: A damp microfiber cloth may be all you need here to remove dust that's built up on the outside of your speaker's housing. Unless you’re absolutely sure that a polish or pre-moistened wipe is going to be safe, or wiling to take the risk on discoloration or ruining the finish, stick with water.

Also, we don't recommend fully opening up your speakers either. It may seem like a good idea to do a thorough deep clean, but you’re more likely to end up damaging the parts, and possibly voiding the warranty too.

Not only will frequent cleaning bring some shine and sparkle to your speakers and their sound, it’ll also extend their life and keep them playing your favorite music for years, even decades, into the future.

Koonie's duster gun cranks out air at 3300RPM, and features a rechargeable 6000mAH battery that can run for over 30 minutes.

This is way better than buying individual cans of compressed air, not to mention more economical: One of these is equal to about 5000 cans. Plus with no refrigerants, accelerants or gas, you won't be breathing in the vapors given off by other aerosol dusters.

It's not just for speakers either. This is ideal for cars, media setups, and spots around the house that are hard to reach.

Buy Koonie Cordless Air Duster $53.99

This kit comes with a small army of tools to clean speakers and pretty much anything else: AirPods, smart phones, PCs, even cameras. The blower blasts out dust from hard-to-reach places, and the array of brushes cleans gently without leaving marks. Wipes are provided too, along with swabs, tweezers and a microfiber cloth to fully get the job done.

Buy N+A 169 Piece Cleaner Set $7.99

This goopy mass makes it simple to pick up dust in tough places, without any spray cleaners, wet wipes, or air. Instead, just slap this gel onto your speaker surface, peel it back up, and you’re done. Its gooey surface attracts dust, dirt, crumbs and other small debris.

While it's great at sicking to dust, it doesn't cling to your hands (as long as they’re clean), and even has a nice lemony scent to it. Once the gel is completely covered in debris and has lost its original stickiness, simply toss it out, as it's made with biodegradable materials.

Buy ColorCoral Cleaning Gel $6.99

These gently-moistened wipes quickly clean speaker surfaces, without the need for a spray bottle.

These go far beyond just speakers too, and are safe to use with pretty much any electronics in your media setup: LED and LCD TVs, laptops, touchscreens, phones, earbuds, cameras and keyboards to name a few.

We suggest wiping your speakers down with a microfiber cloth afterwards, but letting it air-dry is okay as well.

Buy Endust for Electronics Cleaning Wipes $7.79