Owning the speakers you dreamed of 20 years ago


Does speaker technology really change that much?  As I'm listening to my Klipsch Heresy's in a bedroom setup, I decided to look up to see what $3k or so could buy me today used and was shocked to see the speakers I used to drool over, when I was done looking at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition ;), were available for a quarter or less of the money.

Revel Ultima
Sonus Faber
JM Lab Mezzo 

And more, are all available to buy used.

Seriously these were speakers I would daydream about.  How do they sound today compared to a speaker that you would spend $3k on new or even a few years old?  How could these $10k speakers from a time I can still remember, really sound like a $3k speaker?  My Klipsch's remind me that speakers even older and cheaper are irreplaceable to me, so why wouldn't I spend $3k for one of my old heroes?

What am I missing here?



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Actually it was about 45 years ago in the 70's, my friends Dad's Klipsch LaScalas and now fast forward to 2000, and I bought myself a new pair of Lascalas.  Now 2021 and I still have them. 
Close to that long ago I used 3 way cone speakers driven by bi-amped 45 SETs.The crossovers were complicated by notch filters controlling resonant drops in impedance. It was not the simple matter of using more active filters between the 6SN7 drivers of the 45s to try to simplify the speakers by eliminating passive speaker crossovers to sound even as good as the complicated elaborate passive crossovers. I looked at ribbons and quasi-ribbons and preferred the quasi-ribbons to ribbons which often needed adjustment and replacement to fragile pleated aluminum. I imagined an all magnetic planar speaker system. I discovered Magnepan and they had a new 0.7 which is all quasi-ribbon and only two elements with simple first order crossovers and 4 Ohm impedance throughout the frequency range without need for any crossover circuits to make the frequency response consistent.
But you can't drive them with a 45 SET. By coincidence I discovered how simple it is to have a 45 drive an 833A and run the 833A at 1 kV on zero grid bias with a Hammond 1642SE output transformer. This was a perfect match for the power demanding Magnepans. I prefer it to cone speakers costing over $50,000 I have heard demonstrated.