Are advances in technology making speakers better?


B&w every few years upgrades there speaker line and other manufacturers do this to.  But because I have the earlier version does this mean it's inferior? Cable manufactures do the same thing.

How much more effort is required too perfect a speaker? my speaker is several years old and all the gear and the speaker are all broken in. And now I'm being told to upgrade.
 

I am so confused what should I do?

jumia

Thank you, @larryi.

@mijostyn wrote:

magnificent? Hardly. They were awful and they still are awful.

I guess the following says it all:

If you want to wax poetic over an antique speaker try the KLH Model 3. Not great either, but a lot more listenable. 

I rest my case. 

@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

 

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

I am picturing “Young Frankenstein” say ion good, “It’s Alive”… at some point the resonance and distortions could be too much of a life of their own.

I like playing the “GoGo’s” “WEe got the beat” as much as the next guy or girl, but We can apply Anthropomorphism to actually believe that the speakers are alive.

A “Live Recording” is an “Alive Recording”

@cd318 , speakers that leave a colorful first impression are exactly that, colored. I fondly remember my father's Bozak B307As. Driven by a Dynakit Stereo 70 they were glorious, gloriously bass heavy. But, they beat the tar out of my Zenith portable. He didn't know it but I spent a lot more time listening to his system then mine. They were colored and did not image probably because they were too far apart. I did not know much about imaging back then. I was just impressed as all get out when Hendix's guitar went back and forth. Back then it was more important that speakers be efficient as 60 watts/ch was the best you could hope for until Crown and Bob Carver came along with some of the worst sounding amps ever although the Fuzz Linear was much better than the Crown. Back then we all wanted K Horns. The big theater systems were never intended for home use and in home environments they SHOUTED at you. Certainly, they grabbed your attention. It is the speaker that does not grab your attention that requires more listening. Interestingly, with modern digital signal processing it might be possible to make some of those old EVs and Altecs sound passible. Did he mention digital? Shoot the bastard!

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).

@mijostyn wrote:

The big theater systems were never intended for home use and in home environments they SHOUTED at you.

Be specific, which of them in particular are you referring to? My own EV pro cinema speakers are placed ~11ft. from the listening position, and they don’t in the least shout at me. If anything going with the bigger, large format MF/HF horn from a smaller ditto made them even more relaxed sounding, and yet fuller and more visceral. Additionally I’ve heard big JBL and Vitavox theater systems, among others, in domestic settings that weren’t at all shouty, as you put it, but I guess to some presence of presentation (as opposed to placid ’laid-back’) equates into "shouty." No, big theater systems weren’t intended for home use, but that’s not necessarily to say they can’t be successfully integrated in a home environment.

Certainly, they grabbed your attention. It is the speaker that does not grab your attention that requires more listening.

I’ve heard enough speakers through the years to know exactly when they have my attention for the very right reasons. Implying that people who like big theater segment speakers are just in for a fun, empty calorie, adolescent thrill ride is, how should one put it, a less informed stance.

Interestingly, with modern digital signal processing it might be possible to make some of those old EVs and Altecs sound passible. Did he mention digital? Shoot the bastard!

No extra processing needed for my actively configured EV’s via the DSP, other than basic filter values, gain structure, a few HF-notches and a peak suppression. Delay settings are vital, obviously.

Most who’re into high efficiency speakers, not least of the vintage kind, seem to dig passively configured setups with low wattage tube amps, oftentimes with an analogue source. Myself I use a digital source exclusively (HDD-based, no less), active config. via DSP and a differentiated SS amp approach with lower wattage class A (30W), class A/B (>1kW) and class TD (>1kW). Not least I use high eff. subs, which seem to be a rarity here.

phusis , by all means enjoy your EVs.

@mijostyn I am assuming that you do not abide legacy speakers from a 1/2 century back as being within the spirit of the thread with “Advances in technology” in the title?
 

@holmz wrote:

@mijostyn I am assuming that you do not abide legacy speakers from a 1/2 century back as being within the spirit of the thread with “Advances in technology” in the title?

To some the question mark in the thread title is less of a factor..

@holmz , the technology was the same a century ago but speakers had different requirements. Given the state of amplifier development, efficiency was a very important issue if you wanted to fill a whole theater with sound. Now we have CAD tech to help us design loudspeakers. Back then it was slide rules. I appreciate old loudspeakers for what they are, speakers designed with different priorities. As a group they tend to be very efficient and very colored which phusis obviously likes. Coloration in the older speakers interferes with the generation of a decent image. phusis will now tell you that his speakers image fine. They do not because they can't. It is like asking a bus to fly. Buses and airplanes are transportation but have vastly different capabilities. Yes, I have listened to a bunch of ancient loudspeakers from Altec, EV and JBL. I like the old Bozaks the best:-) 

I am so confused what should I do?

Listen to your speakers (or, better, to the music coming out of them) and not to the salespeople.

@mijostyn wrote:

the technology was the same a century ago but speakers had different requirements. Given the state of amplifier development, efficiency was a very important issue if you wanted to fill a whole theater with sound. Now we have CAD tech to help us design loudspeakers. Back then it was slide rules.

CAD tech only gets you so far. What’s its use when applying it to a frame generally too puny and inefficient, other than potentially making smaller speakers better? You would have to appreciate the difference large size and high efficiency offers, other than from a panel speaker (sans high efficiency), but leaving the importance of it to a bygone ear and different segment of use only falls back on you wanting to make general what you fail to savor nor understand. And btw the best designers back then knew how to make more use with a "slide rule" than most do with CAD design today. Combine the two, another matter.

I appreciate old loudspeakers for what they are, speakers designed with different priorities. As a group they tend to be very efficient and very colored which phusis obviously likes.

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. I’d be glad trade in a bit of coloration in what’s typically expected of it to be (and that’s assuming it’s even there) with mentioned traits, but obviously you don’t know and don’t care to know what I may or may not be missing out on, nor what I gain with your staunch generalizations and assumptions.

Coloration in the older speakers interferes with the generation of a decent image. phusis will now tell you that his speakers image fine. They do not because they can’t. It is like asking a bus to fly. Buses and airplanes are transportation but have vastly different capabilities.

Oh, but they do, and again: you wouldn’t know. And your analogy is about as meaningless as can be. An actually relevant one would be that of referring to the Apollo space program. Back then in the 60’s (and early 70’s) they went to the moon with the computational power available to them at the time. Could they have revisited the moon in the meantime with more modern tech? Sure, if they wanted to, but they didn’t - and that’s the point. Oh well, what’s the use of speaking to a door, a closed one no less.

Yes, I have listened to a bunch of ancient loudspeakers from Altec, EV and JBL. I like the old Bozaks the best:-)

Says one individual.

@Phusis, if you think those speakers image you have never heard the image of a current state of the art system. Experience is the best teacher. Next, what do you know about CAD when it comes to speakers? Do you actually design speakers? Back in the 60's speaker designers and builders could never afford the computers used in Apollo mission. They cost in the millions. There were no PCs and no CAD programs for speaker design. All they did back them was shove any efficient drivers they could come up in and a box they would fit in with a simple crossover and paint them black.  The most thoughtful designer back then was Paul Klipsch and he even made several mistakes in design that would not be made today by state of the art builders. I remember hearing a home JBL system with that slotted horn they used and it was pretty impressive. I was 16 years old. Whatever, not one of those old speakers could remotely compete with modern speakers. 

There are speakers that are more accurate than others. "Sounding better" is a subjective opinion by an individual who may or may not have any idea what they are listening to. Accurate is not subjective, it is just hard to define in the case of loudspeakers. There are characteristics accurate loudspeakers always have that can be measured, but unfortunately, they do not guarantee accuracy. Accuracy also depends on the recording. Studio recordings are never accurate. They are sonic images painted by recording engineers and as such qualify as art. Live recordings, on the other hand, can be very accurate but it also depends on the recording engineer's skill at maintaining that accuracy. I always try to find live recordings from a concert series I attended and have my favorites to use making that analysis for myself. An example would be Cecile McLorin Salvant's Dreams and Daggers. The sonics are very close to What I heard at the Blue Note in NYC as far as my hearing memory can determine. Great live recording. An accurate system has to be able to match the energy and size of a live performance. It is the rare system that can do that. As a rule this can not be done without subwoofers. Subwoofer drivers did not exist in the 60s. They came along in the late 70's and the drivers did not really reach maturity until the 2000's. Unfortunately, in many systems subwoofers do more damage than good. I wrestled with them for two decades before getting them to perform at the level were they caused no interference with the midrange and handled the bass up to 100 Hz. This is why the manufacturers of many subs tell you to set the sub to 40 Hz. Down there all they are usually pumping out are record warps. With just a low pass filter they are doing nothing to help clean up the main speakers. 

I wonder if people really understand what good imaging is and what good soundstage means. These terms are really thrown around quite liberally.

And balance this against a well recorded piece of music versus mediocre. I think a nicely recorded piece of music achieves more then spending thousands and thousands on amplification and speakers.

It’s a mess and spending tons of money to address poorly recorded music doesn’t solve engineering shortfalls.

@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.

@mijostyn wrote:

@Phusis, if you think those speakers image you have never heard the image of a current state of the art system. Experience is the best teacher. Next, what do you know about CAD when it comes to speakers? Do you actually design speakers?

No, I don’t design speakers nor know of the specifics of CAD in their more modern development, but I don’t believe I have to either; my primary concern is to assess the final product, and it also leaves me unaffected of what theory might dictate apart from acknowledging the importance physics, so yes: experience as it relates to perceived sonics, and what’s deduced from this, is the best teacher.

I was going to include (but didn’t get to within the 30 min. deadline for edits) that what I regard as fine imaging mayn’t be up to your standards, but that’s not in my mind to say the EV’s can’t image. If on the other hand yours is a more binary approach where anything other than state of the art imaging equates into no imaging, then I guess the EV’s (and most other speakers, incl. the more modern ones) can’t image.

Back in the 60’s speaker designers and builders could never afford the computers used in Apollo mission. They cost in the millions. There were no PCs and no CAD programs for speaker design. All they did back them was shove any efficient drivers they could come up in and a box they would fit in with a simple crossover and paint them black.

Relative to the expense of speaker development back from the late 20’s on up, less could do. My point is that brilliant people willed the development of excellent designs from a century ago that didn’t see restrictions imposed with regard to size, but rather what was needed of them to fulfill their intended (cinema) use with limited amp power. Replicas of the WE12a’s for example, build with care in hardwoods and with modern Lamar drivers, are regarded as being among the very best sounding speakers around, aided of course by complementary driver/horn sections around their frequency span.

The most thoughtful designer back then was Paul Klipsch and he even made several mistakes in design that would not be made today by state of the art builders. I remember hearing a home JBL system with that slotted horn they used and it was pretty impressive. I was 16 years old. Whatever, not one of those old speakers could remotely compete with modern speakers.

PWK’s self-imposed limitation was that of working with both a size and budget restriction to accommodate domestic consumers, and initially at least working only with all-horn designs this didn’t come unpunished. Even the K-horns are size limited to a fault, whereas the Jubilee’s come closer to being a more true expression of what an all-horn design is capable of. Indeed, even the latest iteration of the K-horns sound "restricted" and more like speakers next to my actively configured and TH subs-augmented EV’s with large format MF/HF horns on top. That’s why I’d always choose a large format pro cinema system, despite being of much older date and situated in a home setting, where the horn sections are more properly sized (the designers themselves would state "just barely"), because to my ears they just sound more uninhibited and real - age of design be damned. Experience, experience - and priorities..

[...]

I always try to find live recordings from a concert series I attended and have my favorites to use making that analysis for myself. An example would be Cecile McLorin Salvant’s Dreams and Daggers. The sonics are very close to What I heard at the Blue Note in NYC as far as my hearing memory can determine. Great live recording. An accurate system has to be able to match the energy and size of a live performance. It is the rare system that can do that.

Regarding accuracy of reproduction I can relate in particular to "energy and size" as vital parameters here, which is also what I strive to achieve in my setup. It might seem paradoxical, but bigger speakers can sound much less like speakers being that the music emanates into the listening space more uninhibitedly and properly sized; the mind is more effectively tricked into believing what’s presented to it is "real" and/or less a reproduction.

As a rule this can not be done without subwoofers. Subwoofer drivers did not exist in the 60s. They came along in the late 70’s and the drivers did not really reach maturity until the 2000’s. Unfortunately, in many systems subwoofers do more damage than good. I wrestled with them for two decades before getting them to perform at the level were they caused no interference with the midrange and handled the bass up to 100 Hz. This is why the manufacturers of many subs tell you to set the sub to 40 Hz. Down there all they are usually pumping out are record warps. With just a low pass filter they are doing nothing to help clean up the main speakers.

High-passing the mains not too low, and high enough for it to have proper impact/effect, is paramount when trying to integrate subs properly. I fully agree and certainly wouldn’t be without this way of configuring the overall speaker system.

@cd318 --

Great post.

There have been tremendous advances regarding materials (with Ceramic, diamond, etc) and we now have tiny woofers that manage to produce some bass (at the expense of sensitivity of course, but still) at reasonable level.

Wether those advances make a loudspeaker more MUSICAL is debatable. I've been listening to a few cost-no-object, last generation loudspeakers and while impressive on many levels, they are sometimes too perfect for their own good... a "recording" being a very imperfect thing to start with, and a pale copy of the real event, sometimes it's better to add a tiny bit of color and distortion to make it palatable.

... I've been listening to a few cost-no-object, last generation loudspeakers and while impressive on many levels, they are sometimes too perfect for their own good... a "recording" being a very imperfect thing to start with, and a pale copy of the real event, sometimes it's better to add a tiny bit of color and distortion to make it palatable.

Being “too perfect” sounds like a nice problem to have.

I have not listened to a lot of systems that were “too perfect”, but I am willing to learn.

@phusis , knock yourself out phusis.

@holmz , It is a nice problem to have. There is no amount of coloration that is acceptable. The problem for most audiophiles is that they can't avoid it. Some of them like phusis even glorify it, make it not only pleasurable, but necessary.