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Sound quality of Newer versus Older speakers

From a sound quality perspective, is there anything that newer speakers are doing better than older speakers. For reference, I have a pair of Monitor Audio Silver 300s which are amazing me with their ability to balance detail retrieval with an ability to avoid harshness (with the right ancillaries). My subjective perception is that this type of balance between resolution and refinement was more difficult to find in speakers from 20-30 years ago.
calvinandhobbes
daros71's avatar
daros71
118 posts
 
It's like with everything else, like a super modern kitchen with a crappy cook, a F1 car with a crappy driver, 100mpx camera with a stupid photographer and so on. Technology has to be driven...it doesn't drives itself. Big companies are often driven by financial targets and less y passion and commitment.
jdoris
972 posts
 
Are there differences due speakers being voiced to the music of their era?
I remember hearing Dylan's "Desire" on some 70 era's monitors with big, sloppy woofers, and thinking, "Wow, this is really right."
Sort of like movies' voicing of natural speech changing over time: surely nobody actually talked like that in the 70s? :)
alexberger
935 posts
 
Newer, by far. Cone materials are far superior, even more so at the lower end of the spectrum. Ditto techniques for reducing varying inductance effects. Better capacitors. Far less cabinet resonances. More consistent dispersion.
Most of "new materials" are cost reduction and marketing.

Best cones are paper cones.
Best magnets are field coil follow by alnico.

Especially it is true for people who listen classical and jazz music.
Even rock music and  sounds much better on 15 inch paper cone speakers like 70x JBL.
If you listen modern POP music that was mastered for boombox, why do you need Hi-End system at all?

dletch2
455 posts
 
Older audiophiles like the comfort of their old colored music. It works for them. It does not work for everybody. 


Most of "new materials" are cost reduction and marketing.

Best cones are paper cones.
Best magnets are field coil follow by alnico.


At what price point? That is not true at all at the high end. Not even close. Alnico is a magnet material type. There is far more to a motor than the magnet type.

roxy54's avatar
roxy54
8,072 posts
 
alexberger said:
"So when I go to friends or audio show I always hear compression from most of low sensitive speakers. Even big speakers like Wilson Audio. I feel it like a heavy, strained sound reproduction, unnatural, tiresome. Sound presses and it cause me a discomfort."
I really agree with this. Low sensitivity speakers don't have the same sense of ease as high efficiency speakers, especially (but not exclusively) horn speakers.

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