are 4000$ /pr speakers today better than $4000/pr speakers from mid to late 1990's?

I like this^^^^. I did start buying up class A speakers from the 90's since they're finally affordable and reviewers of that time could really write a story. The more exotic the speakers get the more finicky they get regarding amplification so it's very possible a properly matched system from the 90's could out perform a state of the art speaker from today unless you're able to keep working to find the right components. The amp I bought that transformed the Salon 1 didn't perform the same magic on the salon 2 so even though the reviewer said the salon 2 was better in every way, in my system, n ot so much. Have fun and buy used.

thanks all, great comments to let sink in for a while.  i'm sure it does depend, but i'm also pretty sure that design, approach, materials have gotten a lot better. throwing price in there can mux it up. that 705 review did have a lot of interesting comments!  some sad but who knows.

wow so here's some comments directly related to my post: in a 2015 review of paradigm prestige speakers.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/paradigm-prestige-95f-loudspeaker

Metal dome tweeters seem to sound less harsh but no less precise in current speakers than what I remember from speakers in the 90s.

@gdnrbob — I’m just going by what I hear.  I never liked the metal dome tweets and yellow Kevlar drivers used by B&W in the 90’s and beyond, and I find the Diamond tweeters and Continuum drivers to sound much cleaner and better as implemented in the current D3 models.  I’m not really a B&W fan, but I could live with the current 804 D3 and could definitely not say the same of the earlier 804N models.  Likewise, and as per the OP’s original question, I’d absolutely take a pair of 805 D3s over a 90’s era 803N.  That’s kinda where I was coming from FWIW, but to each his own.