Loudspeakers have we really made that much progress since the 1930s?

Atmasphere cant do bass right! Maybe wee ones dont but full sized sure do. Less detailed maybe if you dont add a tweeter keep in mind these designs were only good to 8khz. Dont handle power well! What the heck dude that one boggles my mind its so so wrong come visit so I can prove you wrong on all accounts lol.

Vintage designs have proven there reliability modern has not. Functioning after near 80 years to atmasphere doesn’t show reliability? Then I dont know what standards hes using. Also arent you involved with marketing Classic Audio Reproductions? So maybe as Upton Sinclair said it { “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”}

I often show with Classic Audio Loudspeakers at shows. In that regard I suppose I am 'involved' although John Wolff seems to do pretty well on his own. I show with him because his speakers work, and don't have the faults I previously described.

Johnk, I've had EVs, Klipsch, Altec and JBL. None of them are free of breakups in their drivers (in particular, the midrange drivers) and so they sound harsher and less detailed. I'm used to hearing drivers with no breakups, so I am used to them being smooth. A person might not know what I am talking about if they are not used to such drivers! Under those circumstances, older vintage stuff sounds just fine, but I would not call it state of the art!

Reliability- I've seen plenty of vintage drivers fail for the simple reason that they are old. glue failing, paper rotting, need I go on?? Setting the age aside, how about limited power handling? Or inability to handle excursion? Breakups (those are sought after in guitar speakers but cause harshness and distortion in hifi speakers; breakups in the Altec compression drivers can cause the diaphragm to crack; I've changed a lot of those in my time)? Reduction of cabinet resonance? Cheesy speaker terminals and wiring? These are problems that are solved or reduced in newer designs.

Now there is a reason why vintage stuff is valuable and expensive. Its not always due to performance though. It might simply be because lots of older stuff is cool and there isn't that much of it. I just sold a 1941 Indian motorbike and one would be hard pressed to say that it had anything over modern bikes except style points and it went for a lot more dough than most modern bikes do! And heck, you can still make music with older speakers but you have to deal with their limitations. In particular I like to play music a bit on the loud side and I like electronic music with lots of bass impact....

What does it even mean to "play bass right"?

That's easy! In addition to making amps, I run a recording studio and have done a number of recordings. One of them has the largest bass drum that was in the state of Minnesota at the time of the recording- it was 6 feet in diameter and was something you felt rather than heard, especially when played softly. Most older speakers simply can't reproduce it right- certainly nothing from the 30s can. Now I was there at the recording session since I recorded it... and I have the master tapes and the test pressings of the LP. I **know** what this recording sounds like and its a simple fact that all vintage high efficiency speakers can't play the bass right. Some lower efficiency speakers can, I had Fultons back in the 80s when I did this recording and the Fulton Premieres could do it. But they were not particularly efficient. Today I have speakers in my living room that do the job just fine and they are 98 db.

When you have a recording that you know because you were there when it was made then you have a reference. I do recommend that any audiophile do field recordings when they can and get some idea of how to place microphones and otherwise sort out what the recording process is all about. Its an eye opener. If you can further get that recording onto a format that is easily played (CD or LP for example) then you have a tool for understanding how any system actually sounds.

So to play bass right, the system has to be able to simultaneously have the extension into the low 20s, the ability to play it with impact and the nuance to do the subtle passages without loosing information.

The Theile/Small parameters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiele/Small) were not worked out until sometime in the early 1960s and 70s; what this means is that not many speakers before that time could have had the bass sections of their cabinets properly designed. Its pretty well known for example that the Altec A7 'Voice of the Theater' didn't have the port set up right. Being that's the case, the argument that bass is somehow 'right' in the prior art falls apart pretty quick.

All one has to do is look at the work of Andrew Jones. On the high end vapor deposted beryllium drivers (which to me sound like the quad 63’s I used to own but better in every way). On the low end his latest elac $500 speakers should perform at an unprecedented level. A friend just ordered them and I can’t wait to hear them with my excellent electronics that while out of balance price wise will show what they are capable of.

 I think Atmasphere has pretty much nailed it down and  ended the discussion...NEXT!

I think Atmasphere has pretty much nailed it down and ended the discussion...NEXT!

missioncoonery --

Poster atmasphere didn’t entirely nail nor end anything (though I very much appreciate his contributions). Carry on elsewhere at your own pleasure.

Music instruments are pretty much what they have always been. And there’s the Stradivarius (and many other) fetishes for vintage stuff that supposedly was never bested.

In audio, and particularly speakers, many fundamentals are extremely similar since the 70s. Which is not a bad thing at all. It means a technology has reached a level where you may consider yourself served for the longer term. I do think there is genuine innovation, but on the other hand the improvements come down to the diminishing results we’re long used to in audio. My dad had phenomenally sounding speakers in the 70s. It was only in the early 90s that I was able to get -for myself, after I moved out- speakers that sounded equal in quality. And when my Dad died, I would have gladly taken those speakers, only they had been destroyed in a fire a few years before he died.

I think what has *really* changed is the quality of sound in the lower end. You were always able to get great sounding sound if you spent enough. But now you can build a system with a very few $500 components that gives anything a run for its money, and definitely puts still pricey vintage stuff in its place.