Performance Trend of Speakers, then and now

A good speaker is a good speaker. While I think you can get a bit more for your money as time goes on it isn't like with say an LCD TV where the price drops dramatically every year. There really hasn't been much advancement of speaker technology, sure you see some new materials and such but the overall design is pretty much the same today as it was in 1960.

The main difference in speakers now versus "then," and again, this is only my opinion of course, is todays speakers are designed with HT in the equation. They need to have more speed and dynamics to do HT well which doesn't in every case, relate to doing music well.

My old Boston Acoustic A-400's were 48" tall, 30" WIDE and about 6" deep. They were a sealed acoustic suspension design that had two 8" woofers, a 5" mid range and a 1" silk dome tweeter. Fabulous for all of the rock and jazz I used to listen to, but just not up to snuff for HT duties.

I used to have 4 Sansui SP 8000. Each with a 16" woofer, 2 mid range drivers, and two tweeters, including a horn, plus individual treble/bass controls. Cabinet-wise, they used to be pretty shallow, but man, those bad boys could move some air....

I think there are many difference in construction and design. The drivers have greater excursion, and are engineered and built with technology and materials to be able to sustain some wide ranging motions without risk of damage. Materials have come a long way as well, though, the biggest impact there, IMO, is durability rather than sound. You still see some major MFGs constructing drivers from true and tried treated pulp or fiber with great resulting sound. Cabinet development and it's integration into the overall sound has also come a ways. Some pretty strong and acoustically neutral designs.

All true,nothing to argue with here. Except for the ways we measure performance now. And thanks to software; design of passive and active X-overs has taken a giant leap. It's not "Black Art" anymore.

Don't know if it's a performance 'trend', but recent years seem to be making hybrids more and more available. Transmission line, open baffle, ribbons and planar to name some of the more popular ones. I could be wrong, but I don't think this is a fad.

For a number of reasons, existing performance is getting cheaper and that is a very welcome advancement. I don't expect esoteric/pricey offerings to disappear but I suspect the performance gaps will continue to close for some time.

One arena that expresses this very well is that of sub-woofers. I was throughly unimpressed with what I could find for $500 back in the early 90s. What I did hear at mass electronics stores were peaky and anemic examples of 'barely' qualified subs. Now, that same money will make waves in your coffee and identify the resonant frequency of your bathroom cabinetry. These are the good times!

I think that there are much better low-price offerings now than in the past, but that old doesn't mean bad. Some of my speakers (also used for HT) are 29 and 34 years old and still sound great (with updated caps).