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

At home I run 3-4 systems while I do run modern loudspeakers many advanced for my own enjoyment I run horn systems. Most are combinations of old and new but when I can I try  to experience the best of vintage stock. If I have stock I mod so I can reverse and return to such. My office mains are community leviathan mid bass horns with 4- 515b woofers modified TAD 2001 on a giant community 10 cell multicell horn. I use costly passive networks but otherwise this could have been set up in 1970s. I do run a massive modern sub built to look like a old RCA MI booth monitor just much larger. My main system is 2-RCA MI shearer horns Viva amp I again run audiophile passive and use with fostex t500amk2 or faital driver on small 15 cell. 3rd systems 1920s RCA W bin with RCA radial horns and drivers and faital on matching tweeter horn again modern networks I use this at times with a massive front loaded bass horn. My garage system is a giant 1920s pair of RCA horns I used the RCA drivers at times but enjoy swapping in modern drivers my RCA drivers are  95 years old and I like to keep them functioning. I am all over social media you can google search if you want far too many pics.

inna house sized no shed sized yes if you want sub bass. Still if you look at how modern loudspeakers generate bass a large horn hitting 45hz without roll off at incredibly low distortion levels pretty much trumps the  high excursion, massive power, low bass by resonance approach and its  high distortion levels, limited dynamic range and associated  fatigue factors. The horns weakness maybe in coloration but at the listening levels homes use these massive designs are just coasting along.           

Rice and Kellogg, Harry Olson,John Hilliard, John Blackburn much of whats available today they invented in the 1920s-30s thus why I started the thread how much progress has really been made when the best of today is lucky to be as good as the best at that time and is most likely a evolution of these 1930s designers work.

LarryI, thanks for the nice comments.  The last time I was at the DejaVu store, I heard a really nice sounding setup that used the YL 5500 in a big horn with a 200 Hz crossover and 15" Goodmans woofers in open baffle.  It had a Jensen RP-302 crossing in at 10K.  Voices were very realistic over these speakers.

My speakers at home are made by Classic Audio Loudspeakers. I may have mentioned this on this thread a long time ago.

They differ from vintage stuff in several ways. First, the midrange driver, which employs a 3" compression driver coupled to a machined maple horn. is different in that the diaphragm is built of beryllium, but using a Kapton surround rather than a metal surround. This extends the bandwidth of the driver and prevents breakups- the first being at 35KHz. It is also field-coil powered. The horn is a new design and does not have the typical peak at the bottom end of the pass band which is caused by an error in design- common in a lot of vintage midrange horns.

So as a result is it faster, smoother and more detailed than vintage midrange horns. People often comment that is sounds like an ESL, but of course its a lot easier to drive and has greater dynamic range.

The woofers are a pair of 15" TAD drivers with Alnico magnets. One of the woofers has a free air resonance at 22Hz. Both drivers can handle 150 watts no worries. They are in series so the speaker can handle 300 watts. I don't think any of the vintage stuff can do that. In addition, the Theil/Small parameters were not understood until the mid 1960s or so- so port openings were a bit of a guess in the vintage stuff. These days computer modeling has the ports spot-on.

The crossovers are 6db with Mundorf silver and gold foil caps. Those parts didn't exist in the vintage days.

The result is overall the speaker is faster, more transparent and has more deep bass than vintage designs (with a sacrifice of some efficiency since the speaker is bass reflex rather than horn loaded).

I like the vintage stuff and if priced right can be nice to play with. But they don't hold up to the new stuff.