Forgetting PA systems, I’m thinking more about the domestic version. The technology of magnetically actuated speaker cone sitting in a box has remained unchanged for, well quite a while now. I appreciate there have been developments such as electrostatic speakers, but I’m not really talking about them. I’m just wondering if the bog standard three drivers in a wooden box is really better/flatter/more musical/more accurate/nicer sounding than that old pair of Wharfedales I had in the 70s?
M
Loudspeakers would depend on things like material science, controlling the properties of polymers, and magnet field strength and permanence. Also, their design could be improved through use of finite element analysis and analysis in the Laplace domain. The manufacture of loudspeakers whose behaviors and properties are very closely distributed would depend on manufacturing control systems and automation. These things have all made lots of progress in the last 30 years. So, though none of these things are audiophile topics typically, I’d expect loudspeakers to work better for the money today.
Well is depends if you compare like with like.
At the higer end of speaker manufacture, there is a big improvement, some of it down to materials, others down to component improvments.
Speaker cones and suspension have moved on, they tried a form of dense but thin sponge foam as the cone suspension but that rots out after ten years or so.
We are back to various types of synthetic rubber for suspension and out surrounds.
The speaker cones have moved from being forms of paper, to some very exotic materials, that are incredibly light and unfeasibly strong and rigid.
Internally, crossover networks on high end speakers tend to use synthetic plasitc materials in the capacitors, which improves certain electrical characteristics - this was not possible even a decade ago as they would have been physically very large - but improvments in materials means that finally speaker crossover designers are free of electrolytic capacitors if they wish to specify an expensive alternative.
As for speaker magnets, its certain that there are a wider range of materials avaliable, but wether thse have made much differance is probably more a debating point rather than a significant change.
In terms of lower to mid range speakers, which is what Wharfedales are, then the changes are not that great, you could improve yours by changing the crossover capacitors for new ones as they degrade over time.
One significant change is the use of electronic crossover amps instead of the passive netowrk of inductors and capacitors - this has allowed designers to tailer the crossover netowrks far more accurately to the optimum range of the individual speaker elements to such a degree that these networks are set up to each individual driver off the production line, instead of set up as per a batch of several thousand of the same driver unit.
Other changes include the use of self monitoring features, these allow a speaker to be placed anywhere in the room, and the speaker itself will sample sound responses and and can then adjust their own frequency response to that particular location - such speakers are well into the $15k range.
Other features include sound ‘lenses’ which disperse sound in a particular manner to avoid upper and lower plane reflections - off ceilings and floors.
Probably the biggest changes though are the much more widespread use of sub-woofers, and multiple speaker set ups, with up to 9 seperate speakers - difficult to implement at true hifi standards (or rather extremely expensive to do so) but perfectly adequate for home entertainment kits.
Our sound tastes and the type of music that the industry puts out has also meant some changes, there is less mid range and much more upper mid and bass, to me this sound is empty - seems like it has huge holes in it, but lower end speakers are designed for this, and so the sound suffers accordingly, your 70’s speakers tended to be designed for a more neutral sound, and so music from that era would sound better than on most lower end speakers of today.
If you swap out your crossover network capacitors for new, or even replace them with fully synthetics, you will get a noticeable inmprovement, and they will probably sound better than speakers at a similar level in the manufacturers range.
I enjoy my 1970’s-era speakers. They have a wonderful, mellow sound, but even I can recognize that a moderately priced pair of modern speakers have much better high-frequency reproduction.
I agree with casdave about the mid-range. It’s certainly possible to get speakers with excellent tone balance, but not automatic.
The top speaker/monitor products that were the best of the best ten years ago are still the best today (think Infinity Reference 1 and their competitors), so the technology as far as driver positioning and enclosure integration hasn’t changed, but there have certainly been material improvements over the years that have been incorporated to improve the fundamental components of all good quality speakers.
I’ve auditioned older, yet well-maintained speakers against newer speakers and speaker technology has improved. Mainly because better tools exist. 20 or even 10 years ago, you didn’t have the measurement equipment we have today. Time-alignment has improved imaging, cabinet design software has improved speaker efficiency. It’s much more visible in the professional sound-reinforcement business where every extra pound hauled from place to place costs. Next time you’re at a concert, notice how small the speakers are compared to the systems in the 70s, 80s and 90s. The “line array” design has dramatically improved quality, controllability and efficiency.