are 4000$ /pr speakers today better than $4000/pr speakers from mid to late 1990's?

Here is something interesting. In the last ten years i have owned Devore, Audio Note, Harbeth, B&W, KEF, Tekton DI`s and Magico speakers with prices ranging from 4k to 19k and while all were good to very good i was never 100% happy. Recently i came across a nice pair of Wilson Watt Puppy 5.1`s for 4k and i will tell you in my home and paired to my system the 20 year old 4k(todays used price) Wilsons out perform all of the above mentioned speakers.

I know 20 years ago the Wilsons were something like 17k but at todays used prices they are out performing some of todays new 17k speakers.

@soix ,
Have you read the latest Stereophile review of the B&W 705?
There are some interesting comments regarding old and new  BandW's.
B

speaker design has advanced a lot, materials got better but i feel that in many modern cases tuning is missing.
G

I like this^^^^. I did start buying up class A speakers from the 90's since they're finally affordable and reviewers of that time could really write a story. The more exotic the speakers get the more finicky they get regarding amplification so it's very possible a properly matched system from the 90's could out perform a state of the art speaker from today unless you're able to keep working to find the right components. The amp I bought that transformed the Salon 1 didn't perform the same magic on the salon 2 so even though the reviewer said the salon 2 was better in every way, in my system, n ot so much. Have fun and buy used.

thanks all, great comments to let sink in for a while.  i'm sure it does depend, but i'm also pretty sure that design, approach, materials have gotten a lot better. throwing price in there can mux it up. that 705 review did have a lot of interesting comments!  some sad but who knows.