What brand was better than it is today?

"I did think of the inverse question-what brands are better today than before?  "  Should Woulda Coulda

I will keep this to the first component (speakers) mentioned and 
ones owned and still have .

Mission and Celestion Speakers. Still made and no longer relevant from what I see out there. 

I believe  Sonus Faber and Klipsch Speakers are still great companies but have been producing less than stellar products for the mass merchandiser .  The ones I have are old ( 20 and 38YO )  and I still enjoy them immensely. Still good companies. 

KLH, the 9's were pretty nice. Those were the first fancy speakers I ever heard. What do they make today?

IMHO, the obvious choice, hands down with no competitors in sight, and as someone else already mentioned, is Altec Lansing.

With the caveat that today’s company is a completely different entity: if I am correct, today’s company bought the trademark and that is the only thing linking the two.

I second Olsmobile  :)

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“KLH, the 9's were pretty nice. Those were the first fancy speakers I ever heard. What do they make today?”

Oddly enough, I just saw a new pair of KLH speakers at Decibel Audio in Chicago, and I was quite surprised.  I owned a pair of KLH One’s from 1977 to who knows when, and loved them in their time.  I asked the salesperson if he knew anything about who was making them now, and didn’t have much info except that it wasn’t a corporate conglomerate.  I think the model was the Kensington or something like that.  I got to a/b them with a pair of mid-range Harbeths, and they kind of held their own, at less than half the price of the Harbeths.  They looked very nice also, looked like high quality construction at least on the outside.  I think the KLH pair was$1300, the Harbeth pair was $4000.  I was very nicely surprised considering how low KLH went quality-wise in the 90’s.  I still have the One’s cabinets in the basement.  Seeing the new model was like bumping into an old friend.

Dave