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

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.

Atmasphere Capacitors have existed in some form since the 1740s silver and gold are not advancements just evolution of early design. Your TAD drivers all based on early 1920s designs,the horn of the CAR is just a evolution of a 1940s design. OTL amplifier is from the 1950s sure you improved but you didn't create invent. Thus my point about real progress progress in orignal design and thoughts. This to me seems missing today.

Perhaps there cannot be any more breakthroughs for a very long time, who knows? When all you really want to do is sell sell sell, you will create nothing except more ways to sell.

One does have to take a financial risk when working with or bringing out new innovations could be a bit of corporate repression of design in favor of safe bets thus more profit? Could be that reproduction of sound for human use can only be effectively generated by a limited num of combinations thus replication? Maybe humanity copies and improves more than invents and innovates? Maybe my perceived biases do not allow me to see or hear all the massive innovations in audio reproduction?