Are advances in technology making speakers better?

Difficult question.

They probably are better generally all things being equal, but the difference might not be as much as you're being told.

My Tannoy Berkeley's were built in 1978 and I'd say they still outperform 90% of speakers built today. But they were a fairly high end design back in the 1970s.

On the other I had a pair of Heybrook HB1s back in the late 1980s and I doubt whether the £170 cost back then would amount to more than £500 today.

What I don't doubt is that the HB1s would hold their own against anything this side of £500 today.

Of course both those speakers were pretty special for their time and no doubt there was a lot of crud back then too.

So perhaps it's fairer to say, mainly because of advances in measurements and testing, that there's just a lot less rubbish out there today?

If I was you, I wouldn't bother with any supposedly incremental upgrade.

When the time comes you might want to look at something that promises a serious undeniable improvement. Depending upon what you have already it could be something from B&Ws own speaker lineup or a different brand.

 

@jnovak 

The next time you're at a hi fi show walk past a pair of $100.000.00 speakers and have yourself a little chuckle.

 

Quite true.

But preferably not in front of its designer if you can help it.

@larryi 

Most of the advances in the last 60 years have been to make speakers more compact rather than to improve sound.

 

Like everything else these days design has to be market led. I recall a well known designer explaining how a new design begins with whatever the market seems to demand. In his case it was a slim compact floorstander. So right from the bat there were serious sonic compromises involved (thankfully his company do produce a larger more substantial model as well).

Therefore it's good to see that Andrew Jones is able to finally cut loose a little on a design such as the MoFi SourcePoint 10. I guess their feeling is that there is room in the market for a direct challenge to the likes of Tannoy etc.

It's certainly going to be interesting to see what Jones/MoFi offer next.

 

Earlier speakers that were all out assaults on sound quality were gigantic in size.

The advent of stereo made them even more impractical.  

Shrinking the size became even more sensible when the transistor made higher powered amps needed for smaller speakers (lower in efficiency) cheaper to produce.

 

Good points, especially the first one.

Whatever people think of speakers like the Klipsch La Scala, there's no denying the fact that they make most other loudspeakers sound positively anemic and puny.

@grislybutter

To me it’s a mystery why he is multiple times more watched than e.g. NRD

... which is cool and has entertainment value

Most of not all of the popular YouTube channels put entertainment value first.

That’s the key point - entertainment.

Now if someone wanted to post videos of brain surgery online and they wanted high viewing figures then entertainment would no doubt be deemed far more important than pure surgical skill.

There seems to be something endemically difficult about the human condition that we need to put so much value on entertainment.

Maybe not just ’entertainment’, maybe it’s the personality that attracts us the most?

The feeling of not being isolated.

 

@moonwatcher

I am concerned a bit about Steve Guttenberg’s observation that maybe the new SP10 were on the "bright" side.

 

I noticed that. It’s often the case with reviewers that one subtle criticism tells you more than all of the flattery.

Of course, there’s no doubt that many will prefer a bright balance to a more neutral one.

I know I would have done some 30 years ago.

You’d think as people age that they’d prefer brighter speakers to compensate for the loss of higher frequencies, say above 12kHz, but then again a bright loudspeaker might have a boost between 7-10 kHz where they might be no hearing loss.

Such speakers tend to sound good in the showroom but maybe not so good long term.

 

@ghdprentice

but have you guys listened to speakers over the five decades? The difference in sound quality is just jaw dropping.

 

I’ve been into high performance audio playback for almost 4 decades and I can’t say I’ve noticed any jaw dropping sound quality difference.

For whatever reason I felt that there seemed to be an actual dip in loudspeaker performance during the 1990s and the early 2000s.

Some folks still hold the original Quad ESL and the BBC LS3/5 in the highest regard. If there was any jaw dropping improvements in sound quality I’m sure they’d be very interested.

I’ve yet to hear the highly regarded Revel Salon 2s which always seem to be up there with the very best when it comes to comparisons.

It’s interesting to note that they are now a 14 year old design.

@grislybutter

I don't have 20 or 10 minutes watching a stranger for pure entertainment value.

 

I beginning to realise that I don't either.

My watch later list on YouTube is now over 100 videos now!

Couldn't I just have one month to myself?

Oh well, I guess when you sign up for marriage and kids you need to read the small print about the risks of giving up most of your spare time for at least 20 years or so.

 

I better learn something if I spend the time that I could use for other things.

Great attitude. How I wish they'd have given us something like Robert Lacey's Great Tales from English History books to read when I was at school.

I despise the public education system in the UK because it feels as if only those who can afford private schooling should have the privilege of being taught the history of their own country.

The rest of us got next to nothing.

Despite being a graduate most of my learning has been on an ad hoc basis, in my own time. The same applies to my knowledge about loudspeakers. What I have learnt is that it seems to be one of those subjects where the designer very quickly runs into one compromise or another.

In fact there are probably only a handful of no-holds-barred attempts at designing the perfect loudspeaker.

As @larryi said, "Earlier speakers that were all out assaults on sound quality were gigantic in size."

Well that automatically rules out 99.9% of the loudspeakers built today.

Andrew Jones himself seems to be suggesting as much here in this episode from the Occasional Podcast. It's certainly worth a listen and there's a lot worse you can listen to during the daily commute to work.

https://audio-head.com/mofi-electronics-and-andrew-jones-introduce-the-sourcepoint-10-loudspeaker/amp/

 

@phusis

Yes, that was a great explanation between some of the differences between then and now.

 

If anything modern speakers by comparison sound overly processed/filtered, dull, malnourished and quenched of life

 

I had the fortune (or is it misfortune?) to hear the Lowther Hegeman speaker recently, and despite it looking like a large
cocktail cabinet, and not having the most precise imaging, the bass was as effortless as you could imagine.

This early 1950s design left a greater impression on my memory than anything else in years.

Can there be any other speaker that is easier to listen to than this?

So why can’t all loudspeakers have this kind of ’organic’ natural sounding bass?

This spatial bass issue (as opposed to coming from a rectangular box) is where I think much of the difference between the very best and the rest lies when it comes to loudspeaker performance.

 

As you explained earlier, my experience here (and with Avantgarde Trio’s years before) does seem to confirm that horn designs do need to be bigger.

Much bigger.

http://www.lowthervoigtmuseum.org.uk/lowtherHegeman.html

@phusis 

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.

 

This is the great danger facing those modern designers who tend to rely too heavily upon measurements.

Modern testing equipment will usually tell you what's wrong with your design but it won't tell you what might be missing.

Sometimes it feels as if too much has been sacrificed on the altar of a good measured response.

Sins of omission and not commission might be easier to live with but too much piety seldom resulted in a good time.

This was a criticism of many British designs of the 1990s and early 2000s. Some may have measured well but they still sounded flat in comparison to their predecessors.

The most important job of the modern designer must surely be this task of reducing coloration without losing the sheer musical joie de vivre that was conveyed by some of the best designs of yesteryear.

This job is certainly not made any easier given the size constraints that are imposed upon virtually every modern design.

How could it be?

Perhaps in order to wholly improve upon a good 1950/60s loudspeaker you have to make a similar sized 2020s loudspeaker.

 

Ye cannae change the laws of physics Jim.

Not even in the sometimes strange world of audio playback.