Sound quality of Newer versus Older speakers

From a sound quality perspective, is there anything that newer speakers are doing better than older speakers.

Uh, yeah. Everything.

There was no need for subwoofers with the older speakers, unless they were bookshelf type.  Even some of them did a reasonable job. 
There was a push for "clarity" in the late 70's and onward for mids and highs to be extended. Now, even with floor standers you need a sub to cover the low end frequency. I understand the need to cut back on the low frequency to get clarity but the pendulum has swing too far imo.  But it has created a new market for subs that didn't exist before the great push for midrange.

@artemus_5 ,

Loudspeaker design seems no more immune to the vagaries of fashion than anything else.

Huge boxes, big boxes, smaller boxes, thin tall boxes, sealed boxes, ported boxes, horned boxes, backless boxes, paper cones, plastic cones, metal cones, hemp cones, kevlar cones, ribbons, panels, 1 way, 2 way, 3 way, multi drivers etc etc.

Perhaps we should ask whether any loudspeaker ever managed to surpass the 1957 Quad ESL?

Or are we still just going around in circles sampling different dishes off the same menu?

Fish or steak sir? With wine or port?

I think the vast majority of improvements have been in materials development. Some very high tech and some not so much. I worked for AR back in the late 80's and we did a HUGE business replacing drive units who's foam surrounds deteriorated. This is mostly due to UV, heat, and humidity. And it wasn't just production speakers. We supplied Mark Levinson's Cello Amati with the same bass driver from the AR 9. We literally were sending container loads directly from the driver manufacturer in Japan (Culver Tonnegen) to our Asian and European distributors. In addition, the electrolytic caps were long term time bombs and film caps were only put in high-end models back then. We were just getting into light metal domes back then (Ti mostly) and quite frankly, they sounded wretched to my ears. Today the designers have so many more affordable options. 

@cd318


I believe Solomon said it best, "There is Nothing New under the sun". But marketers won’t say that nor will the built in obsolescence allow it. Perhaps the Paradox of life is that "the more that things change, the more they stay the same".