From my extensive experience with all types/genres of speakers/drivers, and what not(5 high end audio store sales possitions, 1000's of installations/sales, way too many audiophile shows, demo's, auditions, and in home experience)I think we either need to go more in the dirrection of higher sensitivity(or ultra sensitivity) drivers, or active speakers!...if we're ever going to move further from up the sonic lader that is. There's been ten' of thousands of loudspeaker and driver designs over the last 40 years, and not much in the way of mass market upswing in the end product quality of the loudspeaker as a whole. I take it back, we've gotten good enough as loudspeaker designers(not me of course), that we can get very very clean and clear sounding speakers to market, using various methods of passive designs and such. But still, in the area's of dynamic transparancy and believablity, I think some of the stronger designs out there(i.e, Avantgarde horns, or ATC active speakers, Avlar active's, or other high sensitivity/high output speaks and such) have shed some stronger light on the need for more dynamically surefooted and authoritative speakers, that will bring the quality of pressentation up to where it should be!
Most speaker manufacturers shy away from such agressive designs, I think, simply for cost and simplicity of manufacturing. I believe, unless more "active" speaker designs, or much much stronger/high sensititity drivers are produced, there's really not much more that can be done to further the audiophile higher end sound reproduction ladder!
I know a lot of recording studio's are using active speakers, and I think there's a whole whole lot to be said for going with more advanced speaker set-up's this way.
There are some manufacturers out there producing home speakers like this, but they're all ultra expensive at this point!(well into the tens of thousands of dollars).
Passive networks and speaker designs are ancient, and it's time we moved on, or up. We've got the tranparency, detail, and soundstage thing down. Now I think we, the audiophile community, needs to see some more affordble designs put forth, which really push the dyanamic envelope.
There's far too many dynamically polite, non-believable/realistic sounding, delicate, dainty, audiophile speakers out there, and it's all pretty much been done a gillion times before, with small improvements here and there. With the advent of the sub/sat systems, and home theater, w/adjustable crossover networks, and such, bi-amping speaker systems has helped out the home theater crowd a bit, with the ablility to delegate bass mangagement in such a way that it gives a much more dynamic sound pressentation, that's definitly advantages for movie tracks, and makes music listening a lot stronger sounding. Although, for audiophile purposes, in regards to high end purity and refinement of overll sound, as you know, this hassome drawbacks.
Really, again to be redundant, in the 2 channel audiophile world world at least,there should be a call for an advance in the areas I've been describing. All the passive bi-amping in the world can only go so far ultimately. Manufacturers can do so so much more with today's technology and experience. It's a shame there's not more affordable out there that meets this need!
