Speakers: Anything really new under the sun?

The first commercially available speaker using DSP came out in 1991.  Change in the speaker industry over the last 20 years has been more evolutionary than revolutionary.  However, the pace has increased due to increased capacity for modelling and evaluation of ideas, and the rapidly increasing rate at which knowledge spreads.

However, if the question is about the history of Monitor Audio, here's their version of it: https://www.monitoraudio.com/en/about-us/timeline/.  A lot of it is model introductions, but there are plenty of references to incorporation of new (to MA) technologies.

You can get very good speakers for not a lot of money

....wharfedale comes to mind. 

The mass production of neodymium magnets has allowed some worthwhile improvements in driver design.

Borresen Acoustics has done some interesting work in lowering the inductance of its bass/mid unit through the elimination of iron.

That's just two examples of "under the surface" progress in loudspeaker design.

The Manger and MBL drive units are innovative.

In general audio is no different to most other industries in that the majority of progress comes from incremental improvement. The internal combustion engine is a good example - most of the conceptual work was done in the early twentieth century - lead by aircraft engines. However, advances in electronics, materials science and precision engineering have allowed significant improvements in performance, fuel economy, emissions control and durability. Even the electrification of cars is only taking a well established core technology.

I was actually in the exact same situation about 4 years ago. 20 year hiatus and then wanted to get back in. I feel you 100% jaybird! Had the same thoughts and wonders...But I knew where I left off was where I should start. With the speaks. Back then the journey led me to Dynaudio and that was it for me. My Audience 82's were my Holy Grail. Selling them after my divorce was one of the hardest things I had to do...Well 20 years later the Audience line is long gone. But Excite line which I didn't love (couldn't hold a candle to Audience, IMHO) led me to Evoke which is much closer to that Dynaudio Audience line that blew me away. However I still think about my Audience 82's and would love to do a side by side with my Evoke 50's. I'm not entirely sold today's technology is that much better. But at least the Evoke's have filled that gap more than anything else could...Just my personal experience and opinion...

@arion 

There are advances in materials all the time. Manufacturing process improvements help companies build products that are more consistent....We...have invested considerable resources to design, develop and manufacture our own AMT drivers. Advances in adhesives, diaphragm architecture and substantial research of magnetic motor structures have allowed us to build AMT drivers that cover the range from 120 Hz to 24 KHz.

Thank you for weighing in. This is why I suspected the claim by @holmz (that there has been very little advances in materials since the 80's or 90's) might need checking.