Are advances in technology making speakers better?

@holmz , the technology was the same a century ago but speakers had different requirements. Given the state of amplifier development, efficiency was a very important issue if you wanted to fill a whole theater with sound. Now we have CAD tech to help us design loudspeakers. Back then it was slide rules. I appreciate old loudspeakers for what they are, speakers designed with different priorities. As a group they tend to be very efficient and very colored which phusis obviously likes. Coloration in the older speakers interferes with the generation of a decent image. phusis will now tell you that his speakers image fine. They do not because they can't. It is like asking a bus to fly. Buses and airplanes are transportation but have vastly different capabilities. Yes, I have listened to a bunch of ancient loudspeakers from Altec, EV and JBL. I like the old Bozaks the best:-) 

I am so confused what should I do?

Listen to your speakers (or, better, to the music coming out of them) and not to the salespeople.

@mijostyn wrote:

the technology was the same a century ago but speakers had different requirements. Given the state of amplifier development, efficiency was a very important issue if you wanted to fill a whole theater with sound. Now we have CAD tech to help us design loudspeakers. Back then it was slide rules.

CAD tech only gets you so far. What’s its use when applying it to a frame generally too puny and inefficient, other than potentially making smaller speakers better? You would have to appreciate the difference large size and high efficiency offers, other than from a panel speaker (sans high efficiency), but leaving the importance of it to a bygone ear and different segment of use only falls back on you wanting to make general what you fail to savor nor understand. And btw the best designers back then knew how to make more use with a "slide rule" than most do with CAD design today. Combine the two, another matter.

I appreciate old loudspeakers for what they are, speakers designed with different priorities. As a group they tend to be very efficient and very colored which phusis obviously likes.

Coloration, it could be argued, is many things also by "virtue" of absence: lack of image size and dynamics, scale, ease, physicality, presence, etc. - traits where most modern speakers fall short. You don’t hear it as coloration per se, but when you know the difference it makes you also realize how much less alive, visceral, real and emotional the experience gets. I’d be glad trade in a bit of coloration in what’s typically expected of it to be (and that’s assuming it’s even there) with mentioned traits, but obviously you don’t know and don’t care to know what I may or may not be missing out on, nor what I gain with your staunch generalizations and assumptions.

Coloration in the older speakers interferes with the generation of a decent image. phusis will now tell you that his speakers image fine. They do not because they can’t. It is like asking a bus to fly. Buses and airplanes are transportation but have vastly different capabilities.

Oh, but they do, and again: you wouldn’t know. And your analogy is about as meaningless as can be. An actually relevant one would be that of referring to the Apollo space program. Back then in the 60’s (and early 70’s) they went to the moon with the computational power available to them at the time. Could they have revisited the moon in the meantime with more modern tech? Sure, if they wanted to, but they didn’t - and that’s the point. Oh well, what’s the use of speaking to a door, a closed one no less.

Yes, I have listened to a bunch of ancient loudspeakers from Altec, EV and JBL. I like the old Bozaks the best:-)

Says one individual.

In terms of active speakers, yes. In terms of passives? No. 

@Phusis, if you think those speakers image you have never heard the image of a current state of the art system. Experience is the best teacher. Next, what do you know about CAD when it comes to speakers? Do you actually design speakers? Back in the 60's speaker designers and builders could never afford the computers used in Apollo mission. They cost in the millions. There were no PCs and no CAD programs for speaker design. All they did back them was shove any efficient drivers they could come up in and a box they would fit in with a simple crossover and paint them black.  The most thoughtful designer back then was Paul Klipsch and he even made several mistakes in design that would not be made today by state of the art builders. I remember hearing a home JBL system with that slotted horn they used and it was pretty impressive. I was 16 years old. Whatever, not one of those old speakers could remotely compete with modern speakers. 

There are speakers that are more accurate than others. "Sounding better" is a subjective opinion by an individual who may or may not have any idea what they are listening to. Accurate is not subjective, it is just hard to define in the case of loudspeakers. There are characteristics accurate loudspeakers always have that can be measured, but unfortunately, they do not guarantee accuracy. Accuracy also depends on the recording. Studio recordings are never accurate. They are sonic images painted by recording engineers and as such qualify as art. Live recordings, on the other hand, can be very accurate but it also depends on the recording engineer's skill at maintaining that accuracy. I always try to find live recordings from a concert series I attended and have my favorites to use making that analysis for myself. An example would be Cecile McLorin Salvant's Dreams and Daggers. The sonics are very close to What I heard at the Blue Note in NYC as far as my hearing memory can determine. Great live recording. An accurate system has to be able to match the energy and size of a live performance. It is the rare system that can do that. As a rule this can not be done without subwoofers. Subwoofer drivers did not exist in the 60s. They came along in the late 70's and the drivers did not really reach maturity until the 2000's. Unfortunately, in many systems subwoofers do more damage than good. I wrestled with them for two decades before getting them to perform at the level were they caused no interference with the midrange and handled the bass up to 100 Hz. This is why the manufacturers of many subs tell you to set the sub to 40 Hz. Down there all they are usually pumping out are record warps. With just a low pass filter they are doing nothing to help clean up the main speakers.