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Loudspeakers have we really made that much progress since the 1930s?

Since I have a slight grasp on the history or loudspeaker design. And what is possible with modern. I do wonder if we have really made that much progress. I have access to some of the most modern transducers and design equipment. I also have  large collection of vintage.  I tend to spend the most time listening to my 1930 Shearer horns. For they do most things a good bit better than even the most advanced loudspeakers available. And I am not the only one to think so I have had a good num of designers retailers etc give them a listen. Sure weak points of the past are audible. These designs were meant to cover frequency ranges at the time. So adding a tweeter moves them up to modern performance. To me the tweeter has shown the most advancement in transducers but not so much the rest. Sure things are smaller but they really do not sound close to the Shearer.  http://www.audioheritage.org/html/profiles/lmco/shearer.htm
johnk

Showing 8 responses by tmare

tmare
44 posts
 
Someone told me the most expensive speaker money can buy today is the very old Western Electric.
tmare
44 posts
 
The vast majority people do not care the sound quality these days, I think...
tmare
44 posts
 
Very interesting read. Thank you, guys.
tmare
44 posts
 
I own modern speakers and I have never heard any real vintage speakers. I’m very curious how they sound because I have a few 60’s vintage guitars, guitar amps and vintage microphones, which sound so much better than any of new ones for some reasons. For musical instruments and microphones, there is probably no improvement, only retrogression, even the technology should be much better today, and I’m always wondering why...
tmare
44 posts
 
I also recently rediscovered the horn speakers. I had considered them as speakers for nostalgic people, but I think I was wrong. It has a charm that my current speaker doesn’t have. The one I heard was definitely not screaming, but I was not sure if it was as accurate as mine.
tmare
44 posts
 
Wrong! Clearly you don’t know anything about Violins and there is no comparison that makes any sense between an old Violin and an old speaker. An ideal speaker should have no voice of its own.
The problem of this statement is comparing real speakers VS ideal speakers. Ideal speakers is better, no question, but as far as I understand, the ideal speaker nor violin never existed, and it will not.
tmare
44 posts
 
I started thinking that the ideal electronic to acoustic conversion (vice-versa) is not determined by measurable specification. If so, measurement microphone is the only microphone needed in the professional recording process, but I have never heard someone records the musical instrument with a measurement microphone.
tmare
44 posts
 
I think this is where the comparison with violins falls apart. In theory there is no ideal violin - they are all different, but in theory there is an ideal speaker. My contention is that with modern methods we can get closer to that ideal.

Which speaker is closest to ideal, and why?
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