Dirty little secret of Pedigreed, decades old Speaker line - no one will address

Well, at least they don’t use staples to hold the speaker together...LOL. If they are getting the frequency response and transient response from aluminum that they want, then why bother ever changing it? They have invested heavily in the process. Once engineers get "buy-in" from marketing and from the head honchos to invest in say an expensive CNC machine to implement designs, they aren’t going to stop using it willy-nilly unless there is some huge payoff in sonic benefits and increased sales to justify it.

Companies must make a profit. That’s job one.

And note that materials science is forever coming up with "newer, faster, better, cheaper" materials. But at the end of the day, are they really demonstrably better?

Many people actually prefer the sound of paper cones, especially for bass. To each their own. If you don’t like the sound of YG, don’t buy one. That’s your prerogative. Move on.

I may not like the grille design on Fords these days, but I don’t go out of my way to criticize them for it. I simply don’t buy one.

csmgolf,

I agree with your assessment of the sound of YG and B&W speakers.  YG does get voicing right, it is just that there is something I don't really love about the sound--a kind of "dryness."   Still I respect their speakers.  B&W, as you and I agree, get basic voicing wrong and do a whole lot of other things I don't like.  But, different speakers appeal to different tastes and priorities so I don't dismiss them outright, much less accuse them of betraying the industry by their choice of technological approach.  

The end result is what matters, not what technology is employed, or for that matter, how the speaker measures.  There are so many elements to the design of a speaker that it really matters what choices one makes for a combination of elements, not so much how each element performs individually.  It is often the case that something old, and technically inferior is actually the better choice is a particular system design.  I know a builder of amps who gets back some of his amps which were "improved" with newer and much more costly parts.  He chose parts based on how they sound in the particular circuit and there were certain cheaper parts that sounded better.  This is a common thing.  About 20 years ago, another builder was in a bit of a panic because a cheap potentiometer was no longer being made and he could not find a replacement he likes.  The stuff he builds is ultra premium, so price was not an issue, it was the particular way this cheap pot functioned in his gear. 

I’m using 40 something year old JBL 240 TI‘s with a titanium dome tweeter so what do you want me to say?
 

groovey,

Your speaker is a youngster.  The phenolic diaphragm in my Western Electric 713b compression driver is 80+ years old and I have not heard any midrange driver I clearly prefer.  Some of the contenders are as old, and some are 60 year old newbies.  

The OP seems to infer that if a manufacturer doesn’t continue to manufacture technical updates( chase) at the rate other manufacturers do, then they are falling behind.  While this might be mostly true of high-tech computers, this doesn’t apply to high end audio where we chase sonics that meet our personnel preferences.

A manufacturer only needs to compete “sonically” within their target market, “innovation” is not even a close second. True some innovations make the sonics better, but at an added cost that will be passed on with the price.  We choose with our ears within our budgets.