cheapest speaker made in the last 10 year that can beat any speaker made before 1970?

Does that include speakers I would buy at Walmart for $39?

In my opinion, can't be done.  Once you get into "hi-fi", too much comes down to taste.  My speakers were built in 1958 and sound better than most of what I have ever heard, at least to me.  Then you get into age of design verses manufacture date.  I do like the sound of a Tannoy Westminster, but that is actually old tech.  I was just at a store in California last week and listened to the Wilson top of the line, driven by the top of the line D'Agostino amps.  Yep, everything was there and better just comes down to taste.  It could definitely get louder than what I have.  I walked away knowing that I like what I have better.  They also had some Boenicke speakers that, for the money, were much more toe curling for me than the Wilson.  From there you also have some unbelievable "other" items to beat if you are going after everything pre-1970.  Take a tour of Oswalds Mill or listen to some ginourmous old Western Electrics. 

Ain't gonna happen.  There are camps that feel the Quad ESLs and the Klipsch Khorns are some of the  finest still today.  

I dont know for sure for  speakers...( my Tannoy were more than good and i bought them 50 years ago)

But my headphone from 40 years ago can beat most headphone of today.... :)

If not on all acoustic factors at least on many...

Old technology dont means outdated...

The AKG K340 was terminated for many reasons, not because it was not a great flagship for AKG .... It is the best they ever designed...

It was terminated because his too complex technology coupling tuned array of 5 resonators with two cells with a cross-over transformer , electroacoustic one and dynamical one at 4,000 hertz cross- over point was too costly to improve and too costly to design to made good profit out of it , and too complex for the average customer to figure out how to work right with it to reach his optimal S.Q. and too hard to drive with the beginning of headphone amplifier...

A Russian headphone designer well known company even said to me that they tried for years with no succees to create a real hybrid as the K340... Too complex research and too costly to made....

The Dharma enigma is only a dynamic cell with the addition of an electrostatic cell which act as a super tweeter at 12,000 hertz only and without any tuned resonators inside the shell to tame the bass/mids as Helmholtz resonators did it in my room /speakers installation ... No comparison with the Dharma then ... In the K340 the electroacoustic cell work beginning at 4,000 hertz and do in a way half the job with the dynamic cell.... 4,000 hertz is where piano and voice presence are located...

Then i dont know for speakers, but vintage dont means outdated in headphone, not with my K340 at all... Out of the head 3-D volume immersiveness beating my speakers/dedicated room on many counts...Heaven exist for me ... But beware, i dont recommend the K340 to beginners because it takes me 6 months of listening experiments to optimize them...This is the reason why some very well known reviewers criticized them whitout thinking that their negative impressions reflected their ignorance...Some component ask much from us and ask to be understood before being used rightfully... One thing is sure all my other headphones are trash compared to them... Dr Gorike of AKG was a physicist, a genius in acoustic and i read his patent to understand his headphone...

Then vintage dont means outdated... And perceived sound quality is perceived, not computed...

>but it is technology, isn’ it? like computer, right? no?

> Yes, it’s technology, but the development with speakers is not comparable to development in computer tech. With loudspeakers, Western Electric has already achieved very high sound quality in the 1930s, and that heritage was continued by James B Lansing (Altec, JBL). Tannoy and Klipsch developed their similar technologies in parallel (and others as well), but not quite to WE/Altec level. (Just my oppinion - different tastes for sure for each creator, each suiting different rooms/ systems/preferences..) Since then the tech development was how to make it smaller and cheaper... and then how to make that even smaller and cheaper and also to come up with marketing slogans to "blind the peasants" to think that miniaturization did not compromise sound quality. (Laws of physics: you can’t make sound waves smaller, hence, making smaller speakers does compromise bass reproduction capability - there were gimmicks to get around that, but all have serious compromises in the dynamic shading, speed, coherence.)

Not saying that when it’s smaller and cheaper (aka more modern tech) is will necessarily always sound worse. In many cases we benefit from it, as there’s but very few homes that can house a full western Electric horn set (or even Voice of the Theatre speakers). Also, there’s very very few who can afford a full set of Western Electric speakers... a pair of Wilsons is poor man’s speakers in comparison. And comparing the two - the most modern Wilsons, and the ancient WE (or even VOTT) - both sound quite astonishing, but in a different way. With Wilsons you have the impression that you are listening to the concert from the most expensive seat, and with the WE/VOTT you will have a transcendental sceance bringing back the singer from the grave to the world of the living. Really spooky. Nothing mechanical, just the bared human soul. The Wilson is the exact opposite - it’s all mechanical, all technological. You listen and you marvel at the speakers. With WE/VOTT, you experience the human artist. It’s like an extension to life itself, nothing reminds you of technology and artificiality.

With the advancement in loudspeaker technology, the sound they make becomes more show-like, more stunning, but also more mechanical and much more artificial.

Cheaper and smaller, so it's a win-win. But at the highest level, old tech still reigns supreme. We can make better old ones today with better parts quality (such as a crossover upgrade, better wires, improved cabinet material), so it's not just take an 80 yr old speakers and it's better... we need to be sensible about it.