What are the current "speaker trends" in your opinions?

I think it depends on the price brackets.  Each of them will have a trend of their own.  

For medium price, probably it will be DSP.  But with DSP, currently there is no clear standard.  Right now, you have to purchase everything from one single manufacturer.  

Let look at a practical scenario. Let's say you decide to build a USB input speakers and using some type of DSP.  Well currently the PC can only have one USB output per single sound source.  So only a single L or R speaker can receive the signal.  So you have to split the USB signal somehow, but that's not easy because USB can only have one master/one slave talking at a time.  It can be done but somebody has to come up with a standard.  Of course you have to deal with latency issue whenever you split up two signal.

A manufacture can decide to go alone but that will cost a lot of RD money and the small guys probably can't afford it.  

As for the very high end, they will remain the same.  Using DSP does compromise the sound and high end market still cares more about sound than convenience.  

What are the current "speaker trends" in your opinions?

Stereophiles leading the charge, with the education of those that can understand, the relevance of what the test measurements show to what the reviewer has heard in the good and the bad a speaker or amp.
This takes a lot of the guessing out of buying a speaker or amp to mate up with each other.

But it’s always the voodoo’ist that say it not relative, measurements are BS!! but the sad fact is they just don’t understand how to read those measurements vs what’s heard with amps or speakers. The voodoo'ist just don’t get it, that those same Stereophile measurements and tests were used by the manufacturers to design the amps and speakers they are buying and listening to!!

Cheers George

Hey,

George, what the hell Vodoo has to do with this lols.