Speakers: Anything really new under the sun?

@holmz 

"I can point to handfuls of speakers I would be happy with, from quite a few manufactures. That gets a lot harder in the $1000 range as there are usually 2 or more flaws so we have your “Pros and cons”… the better ones just have fewer cons."

And still - these days there are a number of $500-$1000 speakers that while having flaws, are quite satisfying. It's all about making the right compromises. In some respects, I think it's harder to make a very good speaker that needs to match a price point vs a cost is no issue design. Look at the original Andrew Jones speakers for Pioneer. Certainly had their faults but what a great accomplishment!

And I 100% agree with ^this^.

The title of the thread was is there anything new under the sun, and there really isn’t in the ~1k$ range… 

Those speakers are compromising just about all the “new tech” in favour of being able to be affordable… including sometimes the simplest of internal bracing.

holmz

When auditioning speakers (or anything for that matter) take your own content and control the remote - lol

No kidding though…

One place played what I wanted over Spotify… and I ended up ordering a set of speakers. They also played a lot of other stuff.

At the last place I was at, I noticed that the ARC preamp was set to a higher level on the more expensive speakers… I thought to myself. “I see what you did there… (with the preamp going from -34 to -31)”

How does a grounding cable fix cabinet resonances?

A very few speakers from 20-40 years ago had no resonant cabinets.
But even today there are a lot of speakers with cabinet resonances.

There are a very limited number of cones that do not distort and changes shapes as breakup modes.

Some motors are more linear, but not every manufactures uses those… only a few.

Diffraction is better understood, but there are still lots of cabinets where diffraction is an issue.

Good designs from the past are still good today, and many speakers today and heavy on the marketing.

I think advancement in speakers is similar to advancement in other electronics like TVs and computers. Many things are similar and there’s amazingly good speakers at reasonable price points.

In the active speaker space ^this^ is clearly true.

If the OP is looking for passive, then it gets more nuanced.

Also, I unfortunately live in a hifi-challenged part of the country -- the closest decent hifi dealer is nearly 3 hours away -- so I can’t just run out and listen to a bunch of new speakers.

Which area is that? Flagstaff, Idaho, or Wyoming?

The other problem is that the dealer has an advantage in that they

1. have a room that is set up
2. content that plays well on what they are selling.
3. control of the volume knob.

Unless you bring your own content there are a lot of variables that will alter what sounds good in your space relative to theirs.

But it is worth listening. Just also worth knowing that one cannot remember sounds too well over a time gap between shops.

• Do you have your 20 year old speakers?
• What is wrong with those that you do not like?
• How big are they?

The materials science existed in the 80s and 90s too , and some well behaved speakers were made.

Why are there still speakers being made with nasty resonances?
(Cost is the main “driver”)

@hilde45 I mean “B”.

Maybe more manufactures are using it now on the high end, but at the lower end “cheap sells easier than good does”… and a lot buzz like it is a speaker built by a bee keeper.

DSP in active speakers. Drop a Dutch and Dutch 8c in a lousy room and get good sound. Genelec W371A with the Ones and you have directivity control down to something like 50hz, really amazing speakers. 

Some great examples ^there^.

The other (related) item is room correction for passive speakers.

There are many DSP solutions (some automatic), and at least 1 analogue multi band 20 to ~200 Hz solution.

So the OP needs to likely narrow down things a bit. 

I recall seeing a video on YouTube (sorry I don't have the link) that showed a cone flexing and going out of shape as it moved in and out, so the selection of cone material by the manufacture is really important.

@pedroeb is this it?

what changed ? the most disgusting thing is that the level of the music itself (as the art and skill of the performers) ... has monstrously degraded ...

True.

People talk about cables, fuses, mechanical isolation and other tweaks… long before considering the speaker’s fidelity.

@pedroeb - Obviously (or maybe not), I think it is important. The Accuton may work similarly in the woofer/MR.
There are also carbon tweeters.

Just focussing on the speakers is probably good for the OP. But deciding between passive and active is worthwhile. If the OP has speakers already, then just staying with those seems like the most cost effective.

They can always look at room treatments and room correcting amps/DSP, which may be a better bang/buck.

Cabinet resonances are an entirely different matter which can be reduced with better internal lining of all surfaces and filling the enclosure with sound absorbing material.

Specific to the speakers that the OP was considering, the review of the model before them had cabinet resonances as a major flaw.

Cabinet resonances can be reduced but can they ever be reduced below the threshold of human hearing?

Generally the good speakers separate the men from the boys in that respect… so yes, they can be reduced to below hearing level, or unmeasurable.

So IME putting grounding wires on these speaker drivers is a bit of a “lipstick on a pig” approach towards fidelity.

Personally I would not upgrade them.
(It seems to be at best a minor sideways swap. There is no evidence that much has changed other than inflation.

For example, my 80s speakers were ~ $800, and are now $5650… and while they are on their 7th or 8th iteration, I think it would be more like the 10, 20 or the 40 k$ range to see a super obvious upwards change.)

If you like DSP, then you could go with powered speakers, or add a DSP.

I would look at some modest room treatment… and probably that would be after getting REW and microphone like a UMIK.

If you are going to upgrade passive speakers, then I suspect it is going to take more $2000. Hence; I would just suggest that you love them for what they are.

Getting active speakers removes the need for the amp, so selling the amp and speakers and going active, seems like another reasonable approach… but that will gobble up 2x-4x, of your 2k$ upgrade plan.
(Maybe you could get 1k for the speakers and amp.)

@holmz Good. We agree, then, that "there is new stuff happening." That makes sense to me, too. It’s what others here have said regarding advances in materials in the speaker industry.

Yep - new stuff is happening, and that is a general fact.
However as we move from general fact to specific case.
The new tech is immediate for the more privileged, buying state of the art speakers.
And the for the masses… that trickle down is time delayed.

So the main disagreement is in the specific context of whether the new $2000 version of the OP’s older $600 speakers have any new tech in them.

… If you think the speaker industry has stood still over 20 years, well then go buy some vintage speakers or stay with what you have.
…

How would one be going about knowing whether any of the new tech is in the speakers he mentioned?

This whole thing is like like talking about transportation being improved and pointing to mag-lev trains and Virgin corp tourist space flights as proof.
That may or may not have anything at all to do with the technology of getting back-n-forth to work in a new car, a city bus or tram.

So the technology trickle down is more “hopeful” in the context of the OP’s $2000 speaker… than something factual on a different brand’s $10000 speaker set.

We literally have no idea on these Mission Audio speakers other than their sales pitch, and reviews. Their website is somewhat thin on metrics, so how do we know what is happening and what tech entered into them?

https://www.monitoraudio.com/en/product-ranges/silver-series-7g/silver-200-7g/

Being personally unable to point to any facts, I have to encourage the OP to continue being happy with their existing MA speakers, until they have a way to verify that the new ones are a worthwhile improvement.

Thank you for weighing in. This is why I suspected the claim by @holmz (that there has been very little advances in materials since the 80's or 90's) might need checking.

@hilde45 sure, at the upper end there have been advances, but at the that higher end, they were doing good work 20 years ago. That link with the video up the page would be an example… but who exactly is running those drivers? We do not see them on any $2000 pair of speakers. Do they sound good, yeah they are great.

Take the OP’s speakers, or say the Moabs, and I doubt that we find anything earth shattering in terms of the driver technology. I doubt that the drivers would more than $10-$30 each. Maybe they are better than the $20 drivers 20 years ago… but how would we know?

There are still lots of speakers that have cabinet resonances these days, and they are using the same MDF and glues that they were using 2 decades ago. So something with bracing design and dampening is lacking… and that knowledge and material existed decades ago.

———

The AMTs that @arion described are a bit of a different beast… They might cost a lot more than the $20 drivers that I have been referencing.

Sure technology trickles down, But I am not sure it trickles down to $2000 range? It might.

———

The Monitor web site shows only minimum impedance, and sensitivity, and not impedance versus frequency, nor much else. So we are sort of assuming that the rest is OK.

But we really have no way of know much about them from the web site, other than the basics.

@jaybird5619 if you are in the SE, then maybe consider contacting Erin at Erins Audio Corner and have those Monitor speakers put onto his Klippel. Then we will know what they do, and whether new drivers and crossovers would be worthwhile.
He is in Alabama… 

@hilde45 I think that we are probably more in alignment than not.

Distortion
Those pistonic drivers, the Accutons, and various beryllium tweeter are covering cone break up.
(But we don’t see them on many low end systems.)

The new Purifi motors, as well as the ScanSpeak motors address more linear motors assemblies.
(And we do not see them on low end systems)

There are also some baskets which are stiller and reflect less energy forwards.

Resonance

There were great cabinets in the 80s and 90s which lacked resonances. And even better ones now.
But many singing cabinet boxes exist still.

Diffraction:

Diffraction is better known and accounted for now, but maybe not 100%

And that is only the mechanical part. There is also the cross over parts, etc.
The lion’s share of innovation has been in the active speaker space.

So yeah we are chipping away at it, but as the market is a driver, low cost usually results in things being cut so the technology is replaced with “good enough”.

Ideally we get really good speakers and they last a life time.
More often it is, “These will do for now.”

I’ll take a deep breath and you sir, have a nice evening.

@hilde45 I am not an expert, it is just my perspective.

So yeah there is new stuff happening. Just it is not happening at $2000/pair.
(IMO)
Or it is limited to a bit here and a bit there.

My 35 year old speaker were great in the 80s. And they are still pretty good.

To get really very good speakers is usually going to bring someone into the $5000+ range. (IMO)
 

But then how do we define good, really good, great, and exceptional?
We need a way to do it.

I have offered my opinion that distortion, compression, directivity, impulse response and step response as metrics which can offer us some insight. Unless we have those metrics we can only imagine.

So I, like you, also do not know how to judge statements (nor how to judge subjective descriptions).

Unless a particular speaker has addressed some component of the above list then I can only guess that they made a change that may or may not be working towards something. But there is no easy way to understand what it means in terms of performance or sound quality.

So yeah I am not sure that my perception is true, it is just the description of what I perceive from my filtered view.

Let’s stick with Monitor Audio like the OP has.
It is a different model, but I see:

• Cabinet resonances
• The step function is upside down
• The impulse response is a bit ratty at the onset.
• high distortion at 96dB, which is likely speaker compression.
  • That would affect loud passages which can be 20dB higher than the RMS SPL for say uncompressed classical or jazz recordings listened to even at 75-80 dB.
  • And as we add more distance from the listener to the speaker, this ability to handle higher drive power, gets to be more and more important. 

I can see nothing on the monitor audio web site that would suggest that they have fixed the issues, other than they did mentioned somthing about vibration work at a lab, so maybe the resonances were addressed??

Yeah other speakers at the higher end, have (and have had) low resonances and low compression… so it is not like current state of the art is in this (discontinued model). We would need to see a test of a current model to know for sure.

(And whether that is distressing to the sound, is dependant upon the listener.)
 

The conclusion in ^that link^ Is as follows:

Conclusions
The Silver 100 looks gorgeous and seems to have good engineering behind it to create a good response. It does however have a few small scale flaws. Because their scale was small, it was hard to evaluate their impact and develop correction for it. All else being equal, I rather see a speaker with larger error that are easy to identify and fix.   Such was not the case here. I let you judge its performance then based on data you see as my subjective assessment is weak in this regard.

I am going to give a recommendation to Monitor Audio Silver 100 with the bit of EQ in place. Hopefully we can get our hands on the "G7" version to see if they have made any refinements that mitigate the issues I found.

I agree that resonances can never be fully eliminated but they can be lowed so they have negatable impact.

Here's what I use:

Mundorf Twaron Angel Hair

Well worth investigating along with a sound deadening covering of all internal surfaces to help with lower frequencies

^That^ is all good, but the OP was asking about speakers as a whole system.
Many manufacturers address resonances, and other “State of the art” things. Just it is not clear that the Monitor Audio speakers they were looking at is addressing them.

Maybe they are OK with modifying their speakers? It seems like bracing and deadening the existing speakers could be more worthwhile - but if we knew what’s their new model is doing, we would know whether to mod the old ones, get new ones, or just get something else...

You can apply extraordinary measures to eliminate cabinet resonance and the result is a speaker like those made by Magico.

And a dozen others or more.

There is no defined engineering path to a great sounding speaker.

The engineering path to troubled speakers is easier:

• Cabinet resonances
• Compression limiting dynamics
• High distortion
• poor frequency response
• directivity issues
• port noises
• cone breakup
• Issues with diffraction
• issues with phase in the crossover regions

And probably a few more??

Many companies make speakers using quality drivers and cabinets that address the majority of the issues. And most of them sound pretty good.

If we never come close to agreeing on what is a great sounding speaker, how can we then extrapolate from this uncertain data what is the right approach to speaker design?

I thought many people did agree on which speakers are great sounding and many agree on which are poor sounding?

There is range in the middle, say $500-$5000 , where the cost compromises affect 1 or more areas, and we end up not being very certain that they are good. Or some will abide the flaws and others will abide different flaws more easily.

So there is a huge agreement on the manufacturers side where they know what makes a speaker good and bad, and which flaws they can overlook to limit cost.

I can point to handfuls of speakers I would be happy with, from quite a few manufactures. That gets a lot harder in the $1000 range as there are usually 2 or more flaws so we have your “Pros and cons”… the better ones just have fewer cons.

 

Allot of great comments here and many positive reviews out there on the OP’s current speakers. Jaybird, installing active crossovers in your current speakers may be a very rewarding project. I have 3-way, 8-ohm cabinets with very stiff cones and surrounds. The sensitivity is in the mid-90 dB’s.   

I’m using a Rane 23B 3-way fully balanced active stereo crossover. Each cabinet driver has a separate amplifier. The L/R balanced leads from the processor plugs into the Rane. The 23B has 3 pairs of balanced outputs for cables to the 6 amplifiers needed for both cabinets, Each speaker has rotary dials on the 23B to Easily set the correct crossover points and volume levels (being especially careful with the Fs limits). The critical info needed is each speakers crossover points. The Fs on manufacturer’s spec sheets is the absolute lowest frequency a speaker can safely handle. The tweeters are most sensitive to this critical setting.

Once you verify the OEM spec crossover points, the rest gets easier. I chose SEA tweets w/ a Fs at 2K, and 7-inch midrange drivers that play up to 4500 hz. To keep the full midrange (300-3000 hz) on one driver, I set the XO between the Mid/Tweeters at 4500 Hz (sounded best/most natural to me), and Bass/midrange drivers at 200 Hz (and again, sounded most natural to me). 

Keeping my processor at low volumes and using a sound level meter, I started with the midrange at full volume on the 23B, then, turned up the bass to match, and lastly matched the tweeters. Then, used the processor’s SET UP feature to set the distances and better match each cabinets volume levels together. The 15 inch woofers play flat to 35 Hz and I added a SVS Ultra sub to play 20-35Hz. Ultimately, I tweeked the 23B volume levels slightly using a frequency test CD by isolating each driver. It was that easy. I still get chills listening to music and haven’t looked back in over 10 years. 

I generally find it easier to focus on the negatives.

So if the OP was going to do that, then adding some extra dampening and bracing would likely help to tame the resonances.

That Rane looks like it might be worth playing with for me.