There is a bias toward modern systems, however there is an issue.
The traditional high quality system is now approaching 30 years old, here was a drop off in the 1990’s in terms of quality for the mass market, although there were still a few very high end systems which were so expensive few folk had them.
Electronic components tend to degrade over time, even transistors and other active devices can degrade, but the main ones that go downhill are the electrolytic capacitors, and also speaker cone surrounds decay and disintegrate.
The capacitors are crucial components in the speaker crossover network - they end to dry out and go low in value, and this means that the speakers elements are being driven by signals outside their optimum range. You can hear this because older speakers lose their dynamic range - punchiness or kick - and also they lose q lot of their top end. If the foam surrounds also go, you get rattle, vibration and also lose bass response.
These can all be corrected, replacing the speaker cone surrounds, and the electrolytic capacitors in the speakers and also the capacitors in the amplifiers. It can be quite expensive to use solid state capacitors instead of electrolytics, so you tend to replace the larger ones with electrolytics and the smaller ones with solid state capacitors.
Once you have done this, there is a marked difference, and I’m sorry to say that the vast majority of modern cheaply made (but not necessarily cheaper cost) speakers really cannot compete with a set of restored high end vintage speakers.
This should not come as a surprise, the costs of manufacture have a significant bearing in old or new stuff, speaker technology has changed over the years, that’s true, but not enough to make cheap modern speakers better than old high quality stuff.
I shall make a couple of other observations, it makes quite a difference to the music you are playing and also the source. Speakers have always be designed to operate effectively with certain types of sound - amplifiers also have this to a lesser extend.
Music has become much more bass and top end driven over the years, so speakers have been designed with this in mind, there isn’t all that much mid-range, and a lot of stuff is over-volumed at these parts of the range too.
Older speakers tend to be more designed for a flat response right the way through the audio range, then in the late 1980’s most manufacturers went with a bit of bass lift in their speakers.
Surroundsound is designed specifically for the low end response, hence the subwoofers and with video and films in mind, its not always the best option for music.
Sources of music make a big difference, if you are listening to DAB radio, or perhaps one of the ‘lossy’ formats such as i-tunes, MP3 etc and you are playing it through a docking system, there is a high chance that you are operating on a reduced dynamic range, your music will not have the kick - unless this is artificially boosted, but then you lose out in other ways. Push this through a set of unrestored high quality older speakers and straight away they are not getting the chance to perform.
Listening through headphones is simply not the same as room listening.
You can buy very very good high end home theatre systems, they come at a high price, but the average mid range system suffers from ‘BOSE’ syndrome, some folk have got used to that sound, I find it tiresome.
Yes that Bose style sound can be measured, it can be quantified, you’ll find a low end emphasis, lots of top end emphasis, no middle. One reason that it is tiring is because of the non-linearity of human hearing. We become less sensitive toward the upper and lower ranges of sound, so this Bose style sound has to compensate in order to sound loud, and that’s why you get this arrangement.
If you have a more even sort of sound, with a flat response throughout the audio range, you would not turn it up as much, because you are operating in the more sensitive part of your hearing spectrum.
I have rebuilt a goodly few speakers, the 1960’s ones are almost stone age in their audio design, they sound boxy - even the highly expensive ones for their day. They are ok on acoustic music - lots of plucked strings etc but are soon left behind when reproducing rock music.
Its not really until the late 1970’s that suddenly the speaker manufacturers seem to have got to grips properly with speaker design, and there seems to be a steady improvement right through to the mid 1990’s, I presume this is because there was improvement to speaker elements and it was also possible to do computer based design.
Since that time, the demands made upon sound equipment have changed, the way we listen has changed, the music hasc hanged. Even so, if you take a number of good quality and restored 1980’s amplifiers and drive each channel independently into restored high end speakers, you would be surprised at just how much better your results are. Thing is, who wants their house with three, maybe four amplifiers, lots of linking cables and 6 or 7 large speaker cabinets in their front room?
You can get more with older stuff, if you can do the restoration work and know how to connect it up, but it takes a certain amount of skill, knowledge and effort.
Modern music consumption trends mean that its not the all important thing that it once was and high quality reproduction does not get the priority it once did - musicians hit the headlines for anything except their music, its all about getting into the celebrity magazines. The music is no longer the earth changing (it it ever was) set of social and political statements, it means rather less than it did.
- far easier just to buy a mid range set of boxes, its about good enough for today’s usage, if you want you can spend vast amounts more.
I also have to qualify all this with adding that during the ‘hifi golden age’, there was an immense amount of meaningless babble, with isolation feet, platter turntable clamps, and crazy priced speaker cable. High quality stuff is high quality, no matter how new or old, within reason of course, a 1950’s set up is never ever going to be as good as modern kit. Stuff can be made that is better than the 1990’s audiophile gear, there is little demand for it