The future (and past) of speakers

[Gravenhurst]

I have recently been demoing many many speakers and it’s got me thinking.

How much better can speakers get?

The Design of speakers (excluding things like electrostatic speakers) has not changed much over the years and you can spend only £500 these days maybe even less and get amazing speakers.

I love the Dynaudio X32s and they are 5 years old now, im waiting to give the new X34s a go before I make my final decision, but I wonder how much of an improvement there will be my guess is they will probably sound a bit different but not necessarily better, as did a lot of the more expensive speakers I demoed

So do you think speakers can improve much more?

How do you think speakers from 10 years ago or older fair against today’s ones?

And are there people out there listening to older speakers who think modern ones don’t offer anything better?

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

If you were to dissect my 96 year old granddad's 30+ year old Wharfedales you probably wouldn't notice much difference in the fundamentals between the 1970s when they were made and the latest offerings from Wharfedale today. The same can probably be said of electrostatics as well.

A big however follows, erm, however.

There have been several areas where speakers have improved markedly over the decades: cone materials, magent / coil design and construction (and materials), cabinet design (and materials), crossover design (and components and materials) are four that spring to mind. The underlying theme here is materials. 30 or 40 years ago, paper cones of one sort or another were about it. Nowadays we have all sorts of polymers, composites, etc. etc. tp play with tha simply weren't around (at least outside Area 51) 30 or 40 years ago. Similarly, the most exotic materials used in cabinet construction 30 r 40 years ago were fancy plywoods. Now we have the ubiqitous MDF and a whole shedload more to play with. Better more powerful magnets, purer copper, better crossover capacitors, etc. etc. etc.

Another area where design has probably been capable of being improved is the availability of numerical methods like finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics to look at the harmonics etc. of the speakers. Whether bespoke brands produce enough sets to justify the cost of such analyses, whether they would bother if they could or not, I don't know. Maybe some manufacturers still rely on the human ear, probably the most critical test instrument of all.

 

[MakkaPakka]

The Design of speakers (excluding things like electrostatic speakers) has not changed much over the years and you can spend only £500 these days maybe even less and get amazing speakers.

The same can be said of all hi-fi - in what way is today's Naim, Arcam or Rega amplifier better than what they were offering ten years ago?

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Isn't that a bit like saying the car hasn't improved much since seat belts, air conditioning, air bags, fuel injection, catalysts and disk brakes became the norm 20+ years ago?

 

[jcbrum]

The Design of speakers (excluding things like electrostatic speakers) has not changed much over the years and you can spend only £500 these days maybe even less and get amazing speakers.

The same can be said of all hi-fi - in what way is today's Naim, Arcam or Rega amplifier better than what they were offering ten years ago?

In the case of the amplifiers, probably not much. Amps of 10 years ago were pretty good, but there were some awful ones too.

In the matter of loudspeakers, Gravenhurst says that he can buy amazing speakers for £500. This is because there have been many improvements in drive units. Modern drivers can outperform old designs by a considerable margin, particularly in the smaller sizes. It's possible to get a better performance from a leading edge 7" or 8" driver, than was possible with a 10" or 12" unit a decade or so ago.

Tweeters are much cleaner than they used to be, especially when they are fed by a modern high pass filter to supress the out of band frequencies which they cannot deal with effectively.

Active crossovers help greatly in providing modern drive units with only the signal they are designed to reproduce, and the direct connect of the amplifier to the drive unit helps greatly to provide an effective damping factor to ensure proper control.

JC

 

[lindsayt]

Formula 1 car engines are heavier and less powerful than they were 30 years ago. This is down to rule choices made by Formula governing bodies. There was a time in the 1980's when Formula 1 cars had 1.5 litre turbocharged engines producing 1150hp.

The UCI bicylces used by Bradley Wiggins to win the Tour de France last year are slower than certain cherry-picked non UCI bicycles from 30 years ago.

There are self imposed rules that most modern speaker manufacturers apply to themselves that means that most modern speakers sound worse in key respects than certain cherry-picked speakers from 50 years ago.

There is, of course, nothing to stop a manufacturer of today copying a cherry-picked speaker from 50 years ago and tweaking it to sound a little bit better than the original.

 

[Pete68]

According to a friend of mine it's not only speakers that have barely changed over recent times but amps also. Apparently, modern Quad amps are fundamentally the same amp as they were 30 years ago.

 

[matt49]

Devialet (OK, not speakers, but an example of dramatic technological change in hi-fi).

 

[davedotco]

The best loudspeakers I ever heard in a hi-fi configuration were a set of Martin Logan Statements, nothing else has ever come close and that was about 30 years ago!

Around the same time I owned a pair of JBL 4333 studio monitors, big 15inch, three way systems that while not on the same planet as the Logans hi-fi wise were hugely entertaining. I used to get to go to lots of really good parties!

 

[Gravenhurst]

The Design of speakers (excluding things like electrostatic speakers) has not changed much over the years and you can spend only £500 these days maybe even less and get amazing speakers.

The same can be said of all hi-fi - in what way is today's Naim, Arcam or Rega amplifier better than what they were offering ten years ago?

Probably also true for turntables not that i know much about them, but apparently the Roksan Xerxes and some other tables have not really change much over the years.

 

[Gravenhurst]

30 or 40 years ago, paper cones of one sort or another were about it. Nowadays we have all sorts of polymers, composites, etc. etc. tp play with tha simply weren't around (at least outside Area 51) 30 or 40 years ago. Similarly, the most exotic materials used in cabinet construction 30 r 40 years ago were fancy plywoods. Now we have the ubiqitous MDF and a whole shedload more to play with.

and some manufacturers still use paper cones and there is nothing to say they are not as good or if not better than other more exotic materials, we may have more materials to play with now but have speakers really moved on?

Interesting responses so far.

So how about the future of speakers?

Personally i think they will probably sound different to fit what people at the time like but wont necessarily be better.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Formula 1 car engines are heavier and less powerful than they were 30 years ago. This is down to rule choices made by Formula governing bodies. There was a time in the 1980's when Formula 1 cars had 1.5 litre turbocharged engines producing 1150hp.

Yes. But in those days you were lucky if such an engine made it through practice. They used to run different (less powerful) engines for the races.

Nowadays a Formula 1 engine makes somewhere between 750 and 850 horses (depending on who you believe) but lasts not only through pracice but the race that follows, and F1 teams are limited to 8 (?) sealed (?) engines a season.

The UCI bicylces used by Bradley Wiggins to win the Tour de France last year are slower than certain cherry-picked non UCI bicycles from 30 years ago.

I thought the biggest change in bicycle performance came when they finally managed to make the riders stop taking drugs....

There are self imposed rules that most modern speaker manufacturers apply to themselves that means that most modern speakers sound worse in key respects than certain cherry-picked speakers from 50 years ago.

50 years ago most people had to build their own stereos (like my dad did) or buy really expensive kit. Comet probably pioneered hifi for the masses in the 1970s. In real terms the price of a budget stereo. like all electronics, is peanuts compared to what it was 20 years ago, let alone 50. My dad tells me the first colour TV he bought (a SABA 26-inch that took the men in brown coats from Dingles a whole day to set up) cost him a month's pay. Nowadays you can buy a 60-inch full HD plasma for about a week's pay relatively speaking.

Point is what modern speaker manufacturers build down to for the masses isn't a true reflection of what's possible, just what's cheap enough for the masses.

There is, of course, nothing to stop a manufacturer of today copying a cherry-picked speaker from 50 years ago and tweaking it to sound a little bit better than the original.

Agreed. I'd like to see real wood cabinets (or at least decent veneers over the MDF) rather than the ubiquitous black ash MDF, but alas, we're running out of mahogany trees....

 

[hoopsontoast]

There has been nothing essentially new in speaker technology, really. We still use moving coil transducers for the most part, still use a straight or curved cone, still use paper (arguably the best material) as well as metal and plastic based cones.

There have been advancements in motor technology to reduce distortion for example, but things like copper pole peices and fancy suspension and frame are nothing new, people have been doing these things for 50 years.

One thing that is a lot better now is budget speakers are actually good. You can pick up a pair of speakers for a couple of hundred that sound great, a lot better built and finished than they were and there is essentially nothing wrong with them.

One way we have gone backwards is the persuit of smaller lifestyle speakers, genearally. They have to be small and unobtuisive, where in the '60s+, 4-5" drivers were reserved for mini-monitors and 8" drivers in bookshelf were the norm. This ofcourse has something to do with advancements in motor technology allowing these smaller drivers to be more powerfull, have longer linear travel and measurably lower distortion than their vintage rivals but its still not quite the same IMO.

Hifi used to be part of the room, to listen to music you HAD to have a hifi so it was considered furniture. Now you dont need one to access high fidelity music.

 

[BigH]

All those exotic materials have their technical problems to overcome just look at Kevlar crossover problems, lots of manufacturers still use paper. The future is probably more active speakers as the passive crossover seems to be the biggest stumbling block in loudspeakers.

 

[RobinKidderminster]

Can a modern 6in driver match a vintage 12in driver? Fashion has dictated the shape and size of modern speakers. Has the technology kept up with physics? Dunno!

 

[DocG]

Interesting responses so far.

So how about the future of speakers?

Personally i think they will probably sound different to fit what people at the time like but wont necessarily be better.

I think the future of speakers might go in this direction: including everything but the transport, so that all is nicely matched together. And including a DSP with speaker- and room-correction. Plug and play...

Of course, prices must come down for the concept to really break through, but that's the same for all new technology.

 

[andyjm]

Speakers are imperfect mechanical systems. They introduce more distortion and non linearity than the rest of the system combined.

Like many mechanical systems, they can be tamed with electronics - modern dsp techniques allow for a great deal of correction to be introduced. My strong belief is that the majority of speakers will move toward designs with active dsp crossover / correction - quite possibly incorporating room correction at the same time.

My only surprise is that there aren't more of them out there already for the domestic consumer. I had thought that when focal bought naim we would see a range of active / dsp speakers as a result. I think part of the issue is that speakers are a bit of a cottage industry and the smarts to design digital filters aren't present within a team more used to wood glue.

 

[ellisdj]

Interesting responses so far.

So how about the future of speakers?

Personally i think they will probably sound different to fit what people at the time like but wont necessarily be better.

I think the future of speakers might go in this direction: including everything but the transport, so that all is nicely matched together. And including a DSP with speaker- and room-correction. Plug and play...

Of course, prices must come down for the concept to really break through, but that's the same for all new technology.

Thats not new tech its been around for years and still is - look at Meridian speakers - they are very expensive though

I also dont think its the speaker that causes the most distortion its the rooms they are listened in that does!

Most rooms have a lot of glass, exposed wood floors, plastered flat walls with leather sofas miminimal amounts of anything to absorb sound.

Thats the killer there

 

[DocG]

I think the future of speakers might go in this direction: including everything but the transport, so that all is nicely matched together. And including a DSP with speaker- and room-correction. Plug and play...

Of course, prices must come down for the concept to really break through, but that's the same for all new technology.

Thats not new tech its been around for years and still is - look at Meridian speakers - they are very expensive though

Indeed, and the Avantgarde looks less expensive than Meridian already; let's hope the prices keep coming down!

I also dont think its the speaker that causes the most distortion its the rooms they are listened in that does!

Most rooms have a lot of glass, exposed wood floors, plastered flat walls with leather sofas miminimal amounts of anything to absorb sound.

Thats the killer there

That's why I mention the inbuilt DSP with the option of amplitude and phase linearization and room adjustment. Takes the concept of active speakers another step forward IMO.

 

[lindsayt]

Yes. But in those days you were lucky if such an engine made it through practice. They used to run different (less powerful) engines for the races.

Nowadays a Formula 1 engine makes somewhere between 750 and 850 horses (depending on who you believe) but lasts not only through pracice but the race that follows, and F1 teams are limited to 8 (?) sealed (?) engines a season.

Check this out: http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/31679-massive-engines-bmw-turbo-power-video.htm

Interesting little story.