Difference between today and yesterday.

Thank you all.
Rodman I think you make some very good points, especially when you mentioned the change in materials used in cabinets. And of course the cone materials.

There are quite a few old speakers that have stood the test of time. In some ways, particularly in the lowest octaves, they were generally superior IMHO.

Infinity RS, Kappa, IRS series
Dunlavy
Hales
Apogee

it is a matter of preference:

personally, i prefer the apogee duetta signature, quad 57s, infinity servostatic, koss electrostatic, accoustats, and tympany 1 d, to any speaker in current production.

Mrtennis, we seem to share this preference for planar speakers, especially for stators and I would add the Quad 63 and the good old Beveridges to your list. I've owned most of the gear you've mentioned and to this day I (at least imagine to) hear the colorations of cones, which a good planar speaker, inspite of other drawbacks simply doesn't seem to have. I've held onto my Quads 63s with Gradient subs practically until now and in the years following their first appearance never really found something better, except for stacked 57s perhaps, but now having changed house, I've finally settled for the big Sound-Labs. I've listened to a lot of (cone) speakers of current production and although I found many of them impressive in certain aspects of reproduced music, I could not agree more with your final statement. Those speakers you refer to, held the secret of "musicality", a highly subjective term of course, but sometimes, if driven right, they came uncannily close to the real thing, whereas many modern designs fail to impress me in this respect. Perhaps there are less and less concert goers amongst the designers and within the buying public. I wouldn't know.

Some say that speakers peaked in the late 60's to mid 70's and then went down hill after that.......

If we stick to sound quality...

I'd agree with the above, as the audiophile market definitely went in the directiion of art deco furniture (tall and thin - expensive veneers instead of good drivers) and "boom boom tizz" for sound (little or no midrange and sloppy mushy ported bass with etched highs). I don't blame manufacturer's as they only make what people want (sells) and makes money (low cost) and the duplicitous reviewers simply sing Hallelujah for every aesthetic new model (pretty much all get praised for their sound and the issues boil down to "flavor"...like ice cream - just pick the flavor you like)

At the low end, I think that decent sounding speakers have become very cheap compared to the past (this to me is an improvement).

In pro audio, active designs have certainly improved the sound enormously since the mid 70's. I was just in the local music store yesterday and listened to a pair of active Genelec 8050A - extremely impressive - they beat Focal, KRK, Dynaudio, Adams and Mackie's and NOT by a small margin...(by the way these were ALL active speakers, as musicians/pros rarely bother with passive anymore...of course they were also ALL ugly looking speakers - but, for some, the sound is actually relevant).