Are advances in technology making speakers better?

Most of the advances in the last 60 years have been to make speakers more compact rather than to improve sound.  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.  But, you can take the drivers in some of these very old systems and build extremely good systems that can easily rival the best modern systems if you have the money and the space.  I’ve heard a few, but I don’t have that kind of space or money.  One of the was almost five feet wide, 4 feet seep and nine feet tall; one only saves on amp space because one can drive this thing to ear-splitting levels with a couple of watts.

As to The new Mo-fi speaker, which I’ve heard and found very impressive, it is very much old-school in many respects: paper cone,  pleated surround, silk fabric dome for the co-axial tweeter.  The only thing “new” is the 30-year or so practice of using neodymium magnets.  Also, it is very large for a stand-mounted speaker, and this is very much and old school approach to sound quality.

I suspect that the taste of the buying public has more to do with the sound of modern gear than the state of the technology.  The public favors “detail” which means lean upper bass because warm upper bass obscures higher frequencies that provide the kind of detail people seek.  

Ghdprentice,

I think technological advance makes it easier to achieve any kind of sound from speakers, I just think that the kind of sound the builder is aiming for is a much more important factor than the technology employed to get there.  The Sonus Faber Amati speakers you have in your main system primarily sound the way they sound because the designer voiced them that way.  They don’t employ any radically new technology to get that sound.

I don't think we disagree.  The technology is important.  I just think the particular sound the designer is shooting for is much more important to the sound.  One can get very close to any particular sound chosen with technology from the past.  With the hyper-detailed sound of some speakers, the past, might mean only a decade or two back, with the kind of sound of the Amati, slightly older technology will do.  As to speed and resolution, there are plenty of older drivers that can achieve this while still sounding warm and relaxed like your Sonus Faber Amati drivers, but the ones I can think of are pretty expensive and much more impractical and certainly cannot be packaged as beautifully as your speaker (e.g.,Jensen field coil M-10 drivers).

That is not to say that the design of such speakers is easy--it takes a lot of knowledge, experience and experimentation to achieve the kind of sound that Sonus Faber achieves.  That design, and correctly employing whatever technology is available, is the main reason these speakers deliver the kind of sound that you and I like.

phusis,

This is a terrific summary of the kind of systems that cannot be matched by modern systems.  They cannot be placed in anything but the largest rooms and are quite impractical, but, they are magnificent.  I've heard a few modern versions that utilize very rare drivers and other parts, as well as systems using ultra expensive reproduction drivers from G.I.P. Laboratories in Japan.  There have been other companies that made drivers and horns intended to copy old Western Electric designs, and some of these copies are very good.  The still existing companies, like ALE, Cogent and Goto make drivers that cost more than most people's homes (Magico used such drivers in their horn system which was their ultimate system).

I have a small slice of that kind of setup.  I have twin 12" alnico drivers with pleated fabric surrounds in a Jensen Onken cabinet, a modern bullet tweeter (Fostex) and a Western Electric 12025 horn with Western Electric 713b drivers.  I think the 713b is one of the finest compression drivers ever made.  This system is tiny by horn system standards, but, it is very good nonetheless.  I drive them with what is essentially a stereo rebuild of Western Electric 133 amps (uses vintage parts, including the authentic Western Electric input and output transformers).

I personally tend to focus on development of high efficiency designs because I prefer the sound of low-powered amps, particularly certain tube amps.  In that realm, there have certainly been some recent developments/refinement of drivers that I would consider major improvements.  I like what is being done with full/wide range drivers, like the 8” AER BD series, Voxativ drivers, etc.  Although the basic technology is not new, I am sure that modern technology played a big role in refining the design.  In recent years I have heard several very good systems employing such drivers (e.g. Charney single driver systems, Voxativ single and multiway systems, Songer single and multiway systems).

At the Capital Audiofest, I heard Andrew Jones talking about his design of the Mo-Fi speaker that is getting very favorable notice (I think it is very good for the money).  While the basic design of the co-axial drivers is old school—paper cones, pleated surround, silk dome tweeter—the way it was designed employed modern technology, such as using 3D printing of prototype parts.  It would have been pretty hard to get to the low price point of these speakers without modern design tools.

Of course people can disagree on what is good sound.  But, I don't think one can categorically dismiss older systems, or modern systems built on such older components without offering some specifics of what one has heard.  From what you have listed so far, I would agree.  That stuff is highly colored and not my cup of tea.  But, a well implement system using WE 555 compression midrange, and a horn like a 15A, a WE 597 tweeter and M18 woofers would be a completely different thing.  I've primarily listened to modern systems using such drivers or modern clones and drivers inspired by the old WE drivers and these are NOT like common Altec or Klipsch horn systems.  Their are RCA drivers, International Projector Company, and other vintage manufacturers that are also quite rare (and expensive) that sound great.  Some modern stuff by G.I.P. laboratories, Cogent, ALE, and Goto sound quite good too. 

In the wide range cone driver camp there are surprisingly good drivers by the likes of Voxativ, Lowther, AER, Cube Audio, and a number of other drivers I've heard whose manufacturer I could not identify.  But, if I were building around a wide range driver, my choice would be an old Jensen/ERPI M10 fieldcoil driver (13" paper cone) and a WE 597 tweeter.  Such a system might not have deep bass, but, it would be so musical and enjoyable that I don't care (I've heard systems with the M10, but with lesser tweeters and those sounded terrific).