Are advances in technology making speakers better?

@moonwatcher you need to listen to a large Advent.

@ghdprentice , I know you are right about high tech workers in general. Loudspeakers are not high tech. Anybody with a table saw can make one. Not necessarily a good one, true.

@mijostyn I did get to hear the large Advent at a small mom and pop stereo store near NC State in the late 1970s or early 1980s. All us poor students lusted after those and the ones from maybe Polk that looked like large coffins. We half expected the grills to open and Count Dracula to come out.

I have a old pair of vintage ADS L520 in my bedroom. When I turn out the lights, I can pretend they are the large Advent... :-)

@grislybutter

I don't have 20 or 10 minutes watching a stranger for pure entertainment value.

I beginning to realise that I don't either.

My watch later list on YouTube is now over 100 videos now!

Couldn't I just have one month to myself?

Oh well, I guess when you sign up for marriage and kids you need to read the small print about the risks of giving up most of your spare time for at least 20 years or so.

I better learn something if I spend the time that I could use for other things.

Great attitude. How I wish they'd have given us something like Robert Lacey's Great Tales from English History books to read when I was at school.

I despise the public education system in the UK because it feels as if only those who can afford private schooling should have the privilege of being taught the history of their own country.

The rest of us got next to nothing.

Despite being a graduate most of my learning has been on an ad hoc basis, in my own time. The same applies to my knowledge about loudspeakers. What I have learnt is that it seems to be one of those subjects where the designer very quickly runs into one compromise or another.

In fact there are probably only a handful of no-holds-barred attempts at designing the perfect loudspeaker.

As @larryi said, "Earlier speakers that were all out assaults on sound quality were gigantic in size."

Well that automatically rules out 99.9% of the loudspeakers built today.

Andrew Jones himself seems to be suggesting as much here in this episode from the Occasional Podcast. It's certainly worth a listen and there's a lot worse you can listen to during the daily commute to work.

https://audio-head.com/mofi-electronics-and-andrew-jones-introduce-the-sourcepoint-10-loudspeaker/amp/

The very high efficiency, and thereby all-horn systems of yore weren't really intended for a domestic environment - the likes of cinema speakers from RCA, Altec, Western Electric, Klangfilm and Vitavox - but they arguably were and still are among, if not the very best expressions of true (i.e.: all-)horn speakers around, while sounding great in a home environment if one wills their inclusion here. They were also very big (apart from being brilliant, sturdy designs), which is a vital aspect and accommodation for horns to be their best. Once domesticated into smaller and less dedicated iterations from Klipsch and others, horn-hybrids among them, problems arose. Since then technology has certainly assisted in making what are essentially horn designs too small into sounding somewhat better, which seems to be a particular trademark in the use of technology today: making something smaller sound better - as such. Still, take a much older horn design properly sized, even with (or likely because of) the drivers of the day, and it'll run circles around their smaller, modern brethren. A tweeter assisted (like with a JBL 2405) Vitavox Thunderbolt system (and they aren't the biggest horn speaker systems around), not least actively configured, simply mauls any modern direct radiating and popular, even expensive typically horn-hybrid speakers from JBL and others into the ground with its fleshed-out presence, tonality, dynamics, resolution, scale, etc. Truly, it's no comparison. Maybe one doesn't fancy such "a sound" because they've never heard live-like dynamics and insight this fully formed (and compared to the habitual exposition of the "molasses" imprinting of typical low eff. speakers, one understands the shock that may follow here), fair enough, but don't tell me it's a dated, shrill sound that comes from a place of nostalgia. If anything modern speakers by comparison sound overly processed/filtered, dull, malnourished and quenched of life, and they're the ones out of place in a time when we should at least have recognized the importance of adhering to size and high efficiency with a design that brings music to the fore relatively uninhibited. 

phusis,

This is a terrific summary of the kind of systems that cannot be matched by modern systems.  They cannot be placed in anything but the largest rooms and are quite impractical, but, they are magnificent.  I've heard a few modern versions that utilize very rare drivers and other parts, as well as systems using ultra expensive reproduction drivers from G.I.P. Laboratories in Japan.  There have been other companies that made drivers and horns intended to copy old Western Electric designs, and some of these copies are very good.  The still existing companies, like ALE, Cogent and Goto make drivers that cost more than most people's homes (Magico used such drivers in their horn system which was their ultimate system).

I have a small slice of that kind of setup.  I have twin 12" alnico drivers with pleated fabric surrounds in a Jensen Onken cabinet, a modern bullet tweeter (Fostex) and a Western Electric 12025 horn with Western Electric 713b drivers.  I think the 713b is one of the finest compression drivers ever made.  This system is tiny by horn system standards, but, it is very good nonetheless.  I drive them with what is essentially a stereo rebuild of Western Electric 133 amps (uses vintage parts, including the authentic Western Electric input and output transformers).