Most improved last 10yrs: Speaker, amp, or pre?

According to the rise in price tags versus 10 years ago, the obvious answer is:

D) All of the above.

Cheers,
John

PS: If you really want to stir things up, you may want to throw cables and power cords into this fray too.

I'm with Douglas Schroeder on this one. I'd really like to see a convergence of digital and analog and/or amp to speaker. Say active electrostatics akin to the Acoustat X where they have balanced in for long ic runs plus one less transformer in the output. This could be driven with something akin to the Metric Halo ULN 8 that serves as moving coil preamp, room equalizer and if needed electronic crossover (operating within an 80 bit environment!). Toss in some sort of global feedback and we might have a game changer (or the worlds most sterile system).

Mapman,

the 7s' innovations supposedly involve using the same materials (end-grain balsa in particular) in all the drivers and not having any shared frequencies (to prevent smearing) among adjacent drivers.

I make no claims about thoroughness as far as listening to lots of speakers. in fact, I went to the demo in a pretty jaded state of mind and was decidedly not 'blown away' by the wilson sashas - even though they sounded great. my response to the 7s was something along the lines of 'these sound different from any speaker, no matter how expensive, I've ever heard'. and I don't even like the artist they used for the demo ('the boss'...).

obviously, the rest of the system, the room, the 'software', etc., all contribute, and I'm hardly in a position to do a series of A-B comparisons ($45K!), but I haven't been this blown away by any single component in years. it's a given that they'll be much reviewed and much discussed when they get 'out there', so my initial impressions will either be confirmed or dubunked by the 'pros' - and I'm no pro by any stretch of the imagination.

sure wish they were cheaper...

Douglas_schroeder, I'm very interested in hearing and seeing more about the component sources you mention.

Performance - very little. Looks probably speakers.