There are lots of good loudspeakers today. But large statement loudspeakers from years ago can still produce great sound if they have not deteriorated over time.
Sound quality of Newer versus Older speakers
From a sound quality perspective, is there anything that newer speakers are doing better than older speakers. For reference, I have a pair of Monitor Audio Silver 300s which are amazing me with their ability to balance detail retrieval with an ability to avoid harshness (with the right ancillaries). My subjective perception is that this type of balance between resolution and refinement was more difficult to find in speakers from 20-30 years ago.
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CnC was the changing point... From there forward, or from there back.. The only difference from that point was the material being CnCed and automotive paint finishes. OAK and (?) were out and fancy computer designed manmade materials as veneers were in.. Epoxy/Polymer Dipped cabinets. Hard as the hubs of HELL.. Polish to an ultra high gloss finish. Oh BTW all the new cabinets will self destruct and crawl out your door into your garden.. If you don’t have one. They will double for cat litter.. Expiration date is on the bottom..:-) Other than some pretty fancy laser etching and water jet cutting. It’s a lot of Bling. Actually BETTER? They been making hand made cabinets onesies and twosies for a long time. 30-50k for hardwood cabinets and or exotic one of a kind veneers. Hand picked Seas drivers, or hand made ribbons/planars.. I’ve seen 3 sets, in my life and a fourth here on Agone a few months back.. The guy had 3 Custom built LS planar/ribbon speakers. He didn't say a word about cost.. So you know it was top of the line. I think is was a active servo column system.. Production speakers for a whole lot of money... there is a lot of that... But better.. NO!!! |
The oldest speakers I own are the Spica TC-50s, which are probably about 25 years old. Properly set up, they sound about as good as any speaker I own, and I own quite a few. I agree with the above-poster about speaker technology not having changed much. After all, 90 percent of them are various drivers in some form of a wooden enclosure. I'm of the mind, though, that most speakers (once past a certain price point) are all generally very good sounding, provided you have the rest of your gear/room setup to take advantage of any given speaker. For example, huge speakers in a small room or tiny monitors in a huge room would probably not be ideal. Newer is definitely not better in the speaker world, except when it is. |
The speakers in my main system are 40 years old. I paid $264 for them about 4-5 years ago. They do some things remarkably well. I'm sure they can be bettered but I enjoy them tremendously. I just don't see any reason to spend 10X more for a little improvement when I'm already enjoying myself so much. |
One area where I think we are in much better shape is in tweeter technology. For a traditional speaker (not horn or ESL,etc.) tweeters have achieved remarkable extension and low energy storage. The innovation of the ring radiator moved the bar up considerably for what could be done with an inexpensive tweeter. Top level AMT show remarkably low distortion or thermal compression in addition to extension. It's easy to find tweeters that are flat through 20 kHz even among soft domes. While the idea of Be tweeter diaphragms has captured the imagination, they vary greatly in quality and are now equaled or bettered by others. Another might be how inexpensive really good film caps are now. |
It is a very big question. Vintage speakers are very different, from electrostatics to horn. There are also different time periods. For example speakers from 50x-60x are different from speakers form 70x. What I don’t like in the speakers evolution, it went to direction of small and low sensitive designs. That makes sound more compressed, tiresome and unmusical. The second think I don’t like, many modern speakers designer try to emphases high frequencies and it makes speakers sound unnatural. I also don’t like the fact the new speakers are designed to play modern POP music that makes them sound worse for classical, vocal and jazz music. I also want to add the "new" materials like beryllium are not really new and have been used in speakers industry since 80x. Here is an opinion of Peter Qvortrup about it: https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2018/01/25/peter-qvortrup-high-fidelity-the-decline-of-the-decades/ For people why think that vintage speakers are garbage can listen this video of Jensen D4 field coil speaker 9" from 1920's. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTRcg7DCuMQ Regards, Alex. |
There was no need for subwoofers with the older speakers, unless they were bookshelf type. Even some of them did a reasonable job. There was a push for "clarity" in the late 70's and onward for mids and highs to be extended. Now, even with floor standers you need a sub to cover the low end frequency. I understand the need to cut back on the low frequency to get clarity but the pendulum has swing too far imo. But it has created a new market for subs that didn't exist before the great push for midrange. |
@artemus_5 , Loudspeaker design seems no more immune to the vagaries of fashion than anything else. Huge boxes, big boxes, smaller boxes, thin tall boxes, sealed boxes, ported boxes, horned boxes, backless boxes, paper cones, plastic cones, metal cones, hemp cones, kevlar cones, ribbons, panels, 1 way, 2 way, 3 way, multi drivers etc etc. Perhaps we should ask whether any loudspeaker ever managed to surpass the 1957 Quad ESL? Or are we still just going around in circles sampling different dishes off the same menu? Fish or steak sir? With wine or port? |
I think the vast majority of improvements have been in materials development. Some very high tech and some not so much. I worked for AR back in the late 80's and we did a HUGE business replacing drive units who's foam surrounds deteriorated. This is mostly due to UV, heat, and humidity. And it wasn't just production speakers. We supplied Mark Levinson's Cello Amati with the same bass driver from the AR 9. We literally were sending container loads directly from the driver manufacturer in Japan (Culver Tonnegen) to our Asian and European distributors. In addition, the electrolytic caps were long term time bombs and film caps were only put in high-end models back then. We were just getting into light metal domes back then (Ti mostly) and quite frankly, they sounded wretched to my ears. Today the designers have so many more affordable options. |
20 years ago (or even 10 years ago) many people wanted a Hi-Fi system in their homes. People back then were more discerning and picky about audio equipment. For this reason, separates systems with amps, CD players, tuners and even cassette players were the norm. in the late 1990s and early 2000s, that norm started to change. Audio as an industry became synonymous with convenience. iPods and other mp3 players started to take over. Some manufacturers of Hi-Fi gear shifted their focus based on market research. Some stayed the course as well, but if you wanted better audio quality there would a price to pay. The same is true today. Vintage speakers can provide better overall sound quality vs. basic speakers today because they were originally made for a completely different audience. Not all, look for flagship speakers. |
oh and good tools, again if a designer can use them...like accelerometer, FFT, null tests against a standard.....or even a stereo matched pair...conformal coat dipping... keeping thise big fancy caps properly formed 24/7/365... low reflection drivers ( yes the patent expired ) yep nothing new under the sun..... |
Some vintage speakers can rival any modern one .... I speak about normal speakers not the cutting edge of the last technology at a price point so over the usual price point that most people cannot afford them nor even contemplate the idea... Myself give me ANY relatively good speaker i will make it sound greater than you ever think it was able to deliver.... I know how... It is called acoustic.... No speaker, especially those about which people boast the most, can beat the room where they work....Simple basic acoustical science.... Give me a straw and i will destruct or redeem a room/speakers couple , with the ratio of his lenght and his diameter and his location in the room ...Thanks to Helmholtz.... This is the power of acoustic laws, unbeknownst to consumers speaking about their last favorite speakers and selling them to be the best, vintage or new.. I prefer to sell acoustic enlightenment instead of fad or "taste".... But it is always more difficult to experiment than to buy something....Vintage or new.... Anyway a good vintage design with good materials for the enclosure can beat any new design less refined it is an evidence....Add to that a great controlled room and the distinction between vintage and new lost his power almost completely.... Acoustic is the queen in audio.... 😁😁😁😊😊😊😉😉😉 |
The one thing most are missing here is crossover parts quality. Mundorf and Dueland have turned the capacitor industry on their heads. Even Wilson is making their own caps now. I changed out the Mundorf EVO caps on my Nola Viper 1AX's tweeters/mids to Mundorf Silver/Gold oil and the difference was NOT subtle and that's going from a very good midline cap to a top of the line caps. Resistors also fall in that line as well as inductors but caps are the most notable. |
In modern speakers, in general, tweeters are getting better. But mid and bass drivers are getting worse. But there are number of exceptions. JBL produced excellent tweeters from end of 60x. Dick Sequerra vintage ribbon tweeters (Pyramid T1, T9) are very good. Modern full-range drivers like AER, Voxative, Fostex are very good. But in general modern bass-midrange drivers trend is cost reduction! They can tell you about "state of the art" but it is lie! All these low sensitive tower speakers with small, dull, reinforced concrete drivers don’t have any definition from mid-bass to upper midrange compared, for example, to these Jensen from 1920’s. They also sound compressive and tiresome even is your power amp have a power of nuclear power plant. The good new we can mix old and new technologies today. We can use best old and new drivers and modern crossover parts. |
If you google the white paper for the Thiel CS6 speaker, you will find that Jim Thiel was addressing time and phase coherence and energy storage decades ago. All of the things that have been mentioned here is not new. I’ve had my CS6 speakers for 16 years now. They still thrill me, especially with my new monos and digital front end (vinyl is still king). Occasionally I get to hear some newer speakers but nothing good enough to drive me to change. The new Sasha DAW sounds good- nice bass. Still, I just can’t see them moving into my listening room. Oh, if they had thrilled me I would have tapped my 401 for them. I would like to hear the Magico’s sometime. 6 hour drive for me but why not? I’m retired and I got my 2nd shot yesterday. |
@alexberger, Great posts. An historical perspective is usually a very good thing to have. No wonder so many would be 'influencers' might seek to belittle it or even eradicate it completely. The reduction in size and the almost universal deliberate tilting of the FR means that accuracy is usually the first thing that's sacrificed. Even in 2021 it's very difficult to find a pair of loudspeakers (or headphones) that have a flat frequency response. Although it is encouraging that mastering engineers still seem to prefer loudspeakers to mix on as opposed to headphones. [Apparently mixes done on headphones transfer to loudspeakers less well than those done the other way around]. Hopefully sites like ASR will continue to expose such practices and thereby give users advice on how to EQ these design characteristics out to match their taste and their room. The very best example of imagery that I ever heard was during an audition of a Quad ESL. The baritone sounded palpably three dimensional between the speakers. So of course I had to buy them. However my experiences at home were not so good (I later learned on here that my Naim amps were not the best match - the seller was using Quad amps, valve I think). Still, I have to admit that no speaker that I've heard since (>25 years ago) has been able to recreate such 'reach out and touch' imagery as those Quads did. There is a huge amount of circumstantial evidence suggesting that loudspeakers are getting better, but are they? Well, if they are, then perhaps folks like Amir at ASR will be able to demonstrate that in due course. |
The very best example of imagery that I ever heard was during an audition of a Quad ESL. The baritone sounded palpably three dimensional between the speakers.I think that your experience with the Quad was probably less caused by the pairing with your amplifier than room acoustic.... I own average good speakers Mission Cyrus 781 and what you described i never have it with my speakers BEFORE my acoustical controls installation... After that their imaging,3-d holography and listener envelopment factor by 100%... Acoustic controls is the most powerful upgrade anyone could do... |
In my experience it’s the evolution of amplification that has driven speaker design. In the 60 and early 70s even 35 watts of solid state was considered high power. Horn midrange or 12 inch woofers were common because of their efficiencies. This led to broad cabinets that brought attention to themselves as the sound source and deep bass that by today’s standards would be called muffled or wooly. Cheaper watts and high current have freed speaker designers to experiment with cabinet designs, drivers and crossovers. |
I have Vandersteen 1Bs, about 25 years old. I took them to Miller Sound assuming they should be re furbished but was told they were fine. Mr. Miller stated that as long as speakers have not been exposed to dampness, or other harsh conditions, they'll last a very long time. I think he was right. They do sound great. |
Hi @tennisdoc56 Cheap watts leaded us to wrong direction - low sensitive speakers. low sensitive = compression! You can do nothing with low of physics. Hight power heats voice coil and cause thermal distortion including compression. You can use nuclear plant power for amplification it wouldn't fix compression of low sensitive speakers. |
I started upgrading my 1990 system with replacing my kef R105/3 speakers and I found to get equal quality from new speakers I have to spend 4 to 5 times what they cost and I’m still making some compromise. Electronics seem to actually sound better, but Either I’ve destroyed my ears or all these exotic materials are 95% marketing and 5%sonic improvements. My .02 |
the benchmark for me was a pair of circa 1982 maggie tympani III panel speakers demo'ed @ definitive audio in north seattle. precise imaging that could be heard all over the room without getting too warped. AND depth that made [on the right recordings] one think there was room beyond the end of the room where the speakers were speaking. a direct-disc recording of some cathedral organ transformed the room into the original recording venue, but for an almost palpable "cloud" of surface noise between me and the speakers. the music was back behind [literally] the surface noise cloud. prolly the least efficient speakers ever made, a pair of class A monoblocks each the size of a dorm room fridge, were effectively heating the room too near to sauna levels for my long-term comfort. after sweating some, i left the room to listen to their little brothers, the SMGs. like a tiny version of their big brothers, without their seamless wall-to-wall omnipresent imaging, but with the essential tone quality and stereophonic imaging/depth, i was sold. they were the first truly high-quality speakers i had. before i had a pair of nova 6 acoustic suspension compact boxes, they were probably the mellowest speaker i'd heard outside of a pair of advents. neither could image anything like those maggies. |
@alexberger, It’s incredible just how hot the voice coils can get. Hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit. After 30 minutes or so it’s more than likely to have some effect particularly with some designs. Thankfully I’ve only ever had to replace one driver because of this, but compression due to overheating has certainly been an issue with some of my speakers in the past. The trick is to hear it (in any sized speaker) and back off before the poor thing gives up the ghost. |
@speakermaster -- New speakers do one thing that the old ones will not do, they look real pretty, the old way of making speakers was all about the sound and performance and not the looks. To me a speaker is "pretty" when its looks is a clear reflection of its function - i.e.: that form follows function, and not the other way round. You truly see the manifestation of physics-as-a-necessity, whereas looking pretty for just that usually leaves performance by the wayside. Doesn't that defeat the purpose? |
pretty in looks, just like pretty in sound, are all in the eye of the beholder many a speaker brand have made themselves distinctive with their looks as much as their sound - form may follow function or form just for form's sake (or beauty's sake) modern living aethestics have progressed with many forms of contemporary and modern decors, much stemming from many cities and countries where living spaces are small despite the people being well off... makes for a larger market in skinny unobtrusive floor standers |
Hi @cd318 , I always can hear difference in speakers in term of compression dynamics. Many year ago I had Dynaudio Audience 60. I always felt these spikers have very heavy sound reproduction, the sound presses on the listener and tires. When I bought Spendor 2/3 I felt a difference. Much more easy sound reproduction, especially on low and mid volume. I have been using Altec 604E since 2005. They are very high sensitive. So when I go to friends or audio show I always hear compression from most of low sensitive speakers. Even big speakers like Wilson Audio. I feel it like a heavy, strained sound reproduction, unnatural, tiresome. Sound presses and it cause me a discomfort. I can easily listen the difference between similar designed speakers. For example, JBL L200, L300 and 4430. L200 have better midrange texture and easy sound reproduction. 4430 are the worst heavy sound reproduction and muddy midrange. Regards, Alex |
@alexberger, Hi, I think one early sign of compression is when you start to crank up the volume but the sound doesn't get much get louder. @speakermaster, Have a look at the Quad 63s, Tannoy Berkeley's/Arden's, JBL l100s, Spendor BC1s, vintage Celestion's, Wharfedale's, Harbeth's etc. What about the old Sonus Faber's? Weren't they always beautiful? Are modern designs really that better looking? The fact that the classic rectangular box is so familiar and still liked by so many people means it's very difficult for any speaker design to get away from it - despite its obvious sonic shortcomings. It's certainly a good thing that modern speakers tend to be offered in a greater range of finishes these days. Nowadays I tend to prefer speakers that colour match the wall behind, so I'd much prefer it if different grille colours were offered as a choice. Anyway, I think audiophile fashions can change dramatically over the years. Some of those old backlit Japanese amps and receivers from the 70s/80s are now suddenly starting to look extremely stylish to me. |
Will put my aging BIC venturi V-830’s against a lot of speakers. They have been my go to since the early mid 90’s. Even the little brother V-630’s are sublime. I swear by these speakers. Even the new reincarnation of BIC are just ok, but, nothing like the 90’s BIC, or those BIC Realta speakers, almost bought them, but at the time, didn’t have the scratch. I kick myself! |
@avanti1960 , "I would say speakers of today tend to be more over the line towards detail and speakers of previous eras tended to be under the line and closer to forgiving." Isn't this the dreaded upwards tilting of the high frequencies that many loudspeaker manufacturers are still tempted to introduce for the sole effect of being more impressive in the show room? This practice (along with tipping of the bass - the so called smiley EQ) seems to be even more common in the world of headphones where a design with a flat response is almost unheard of. No wonder most engineers still prefer to mix on professional monitors. |
I have a pair of new dynaudio contour 60. My fathers 35 years old crappy bose 505 sound more natural as my contour 60. I previously owned the Dynaudio contour 3.3 from the late 90’ which sounded far more natural as the contour 60. I believe there are a lot of modern speakers which sound more natural and balanced as the dynaudio 3.3 but i did the wrong choice. What i’m sure is that at parity of investment you will get a better sound by buying older speakers. You find very good, top of the line speakers from 20 years ago for 1500 euro....to match the quality of those speakers with a new product you probably have to spent 10 or even 15.000 Euro. The contour 3.3 i owned costed me 1200 euro and they sounded ubelivably better (from every point of view) as the 10.000 Euro Contour 60. Speakers have a very long lifecycle. |
My Mission Cyrus 781 at 50 bucks used (1989) are so good, that in spite of their limitations, i like them more than most speakers i have listen to but BECAUSE my room is under control....Before my acoustic control their sound was not so great...i was thinking to an upgrade then... 😁 These vintage speakers, British, were neutral but leaning toward a warm sound, they present details but not with harshness and no microscopic details floating and detached from the sound flow like very high resolution speakers which in almost any room are fatiguing... For someone listening loud music a few minutes it is spectacular.... But i listen music for 5 hours in a row sometimes more in a day.... I forget to say that in good acoustical settings their bass is so good that i dont need a sub woofer at all... I own one disconnected from day one … 😁 they are not so big but fill my room completely 3-d.... Name me a better speakers for 50 bucks or under 2000 dollars? Good luck.....Then anybody speaking against vintage speakers is rich in money or dont know what a good speaker is designed for.... Most people think they have listened to their speakers for years, they will die never knowing that they have listened to their room all along... This truth is unbelievable especially for those who already think that their room is ok....But all small room need not only passive treatment but more importantly active controls to help the speakers to work at his peak unimpeded.... I repeat that for the newcomers who will think about it.... For the others it is too late and unbelievable anyway... |
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Newer, by far. Cone materials are far superior, even more so at the lower end of the spectrum. Ditto techniques for reducing varying inductance effects. Better capacitors. Far less cabinet resonances. More consistent dispersion.all you say is true...however, if behind all that tech you don't put a engineer with an exceptionally good hearing and musical culture, the result is a round Zero. This is what happens to many companies...they focus on tech specs, even the wrong ones probably, aggressive marketing and fancy design. For those companies sound quality seems the last priority. In my very limited audiophile experience i know that dynaudio is one of them. They changed their priorities in 2016. In fact there are almost no happy contour 60 owners around. It's full of dynaudio fans which praised the old product lines and which agree the new product lines are a disaster. Despite better materials, better capacitors, better cabinet design (sure??? My contour 60 sounds like a wooden box emitting sound inside out). If you have a 10K budget for a speaker you can get crazy stuff in the used market. |
