Dirty little secret of Pedigreed, decades old Speaker line - no one will address

So, YG has not changed its midrange cone material in many moons. How is this evidence that their product is inferior.  To me, it looks like they think they got things right in that department a long time ago.  

I like the sound of certain compression drivers and horns for midrange.  I've heard various implementations including aluminum, titanium and beryllium diaphragms and it is simply not the case that one or the other material sounds better.  The same goes with the material and construction o the magnet structure.  The one I ended up with has a phenolic diaphragm and was made sometime in the late 1930's to early 1940's.  

While we are at it, let’s discuss how little has been done in quite a while to innovate and improve violins, acoustic guitars, and the hockey puck.  Surely, new and better materials are available—beryllium has to be better than maple.

How do you know any one approach is inherently superior and that approach is the latest invention?  It is simplistic to assume one aspect, like the material chosen for a midrange, is superior in all aspects of performance and that a driver employing that design choice would be best in all systems.  
 

This also assumes that there is a consensus on what sounds good.  It is clear we don’t all agree which is why there are many choices out there.  For what I like, I have not found one aspect of design that always sounds superior.  It is not simply a matter of picking the latest technology, or something that measures well, or any other indicia; it comes down to hearing the gear.

Where is the evidence that any one technology or material choice is superior such that YG is somehow shortchanging its customers by not employing that technology?  The only evidence has been that other brands have made changes more recently than has YG; nothing demonstrates that these changes surpass what YG offers.

I hardly think that reading promotional material and divining the attitude of distributors constitutes evidence of any sort.  You mistake what you find “all there easily obtainable in the public sphere” as verified information.

You mention Vivid, Magico, and others who take a superior approach.  Yet, they all differ in the design and material of their midrange drivers.  Are they to be criticized for not converging on the optimal design?  If you notice certain characteristics of design that correspond with the sound of particular speakers, that will at least be something to discuss, but, you have completely left out discussion of the sound.  To listeners like me, that is the only thing that ultimately matters.

You have the reasoning inverted as to cause and effect.  You are saying essentially that because YG has not changed/innovated, it must be inferior.  You should first establish that YG is inferior--that there sound is no longer competitive with other speakers, and then you can speculate as to why that is the case and we would have something to discuss.  Have you heard YG and the other speakers you are comparing them to--Vivid, Magico, Rockport, etc. and found them to be wanting (i.e., established the effect--inferior sound)?  Have you established that the other brands have, through time and implementation of changes, improved while YG has not improved?  That would at least start to make the case for the cause.

csmgolf,

I agree with your assessment of the sound of YG and B&W speakers.  YG does get voicing right, it is just that there is something I don't really love about the sound--a kind of "dryness."   Still I respect their speakers.  B&W, as you and I agree, get basic voicing wrong and do a whole lot of other things I don't like.  But, different speakers appeal to different tastes and priorities so I don't dismiss them outright, much less accuse them of betraying the industry by their choice of technological approach.  

The end result is what matters, not what technology is employed, or for that matter, how the speaker measures.  There are so many elements to the design of a speaker that it really matters what choices one makes for a combination of elements, not so much how each element performs individually.  It is often the case that something old, and technically inferior is actually the better choice is a particular system design.  I know a builder of amps who gets back some of his amps which were "improved" with newer and much more costly parts.  He chose parts based on how they sound in the particular circuit and there were certain cheaper parts that sounded better.  This is a common thing.  About 20 years ago, another builder was in a bit of a panic because a cheap potentiometer was no longer being made and he could not find a replacement he likes.  The stuff he builds is ultra premium, so price was not an issue, it was the particular way this cheap pot functioned in his gear. 

groovey,

Your speaker is a youngster.  The phenolic diaphragm in my Western Electric 713b compression driver is 80+ years old and I have not heard any midrange driver I clearly prefer.  Some of the contenders are as old, and some are 60 year old newbies.