30 Years of Loudspeaker Technology

I’m as hooked on social media as any pre-teen out there! Of course, I have many interests outside of home theater and high fidelity which makes social media even more fun for me!

One social media category I like to follow centers on Vintage Audio. I love reminiscing about the good old days. And I totally get it. We all had audio products we lusted after during our formative years, me included. I wanted all kinds of awesome gear that seemed like it would never be within my financial reach.

So, now that I’m older and have some money, it would be great to grab a pair of vintage Yamaha NS 1000 speakers with the beryllium dome midrange and tweeter drivers. I pinpointed these speakers in my remarks because, years ago, one of my high school friends had a pair of them in their basement. They belonged to his dad who enjoyed classical music. The NS 1000s were part of a very unique system because they also had an Audio Pulse Model One reverb machine with rear speakers. This system was a technological juggernaut! At that time, it sounded amazing on large-scale orchestral works. However, when his dad was away, we would listen to rock music on the system. In contrast, this system was bright and lightweight sounding on rock music. My friend’s dad eventually wound up adding a couple of subwoofers to the system which meant the Yamahas, with their 12” woofers, were being used as satellites! My point is that I so wanted these speakers for my personal use but, in reality, their performance as a full-range loudspeaker was not up to the price point these speakers commanded.

In retrospect, I get it completely. Music hits differently when you are in your teens and twenties. So, it stands to reason that the gear you wanted then is what you still want now. We feel that getting our hands on the gear we dreamed of may rekindle our youthful selves even just a little bit. Is this tantamount to a mid-life crisis syndrome? I think it partly is in much the same way that older audiophiles tend to listen to the same music they have enjoyed for decades, eschewing most new music that is being released nowadays.

Getting back to the gear, let’s say you want that 40-year-old pair of loudspeakers for your current system. The odds are it will need major TLC even to get it back to its original performance level. I’m thinking you would need to re-cap the crossover, at a minimum. Then you may also need to have the surrounds replaced, and old paper or pulp drivers may need to be re-coned. But, in my view, the biggest reason to opt for a new model is this funny thing we call technological advancement. New speakers are generally better than very old speakers because they are built with the advantage of advancements in design, driver technologies, materials science, and, in general, research and development including subjective tests as well as measurements. The best speaker companies are not standing still and are using gained wisdom and knowledge to improve their products year over year.

I am not being hyperbolic when I say, “year over year” and I have the perfect example. I visited the Klipsch room at CEDIA in 2010. Here is what I wrote about the demo I heard that day, “I was most impressed with a demo of the updated Klipsch Reference II speakers. The fine people from Klipsch had an A/B demo set up to compare the latest version of the Reference IIs to last year’s model. All I can say is that the demo really impressed me. The old speakers sounded good, but when the newer ones were toggled on, I heard a whole new level of detail, openness, and a sound that was unrestrained by the cabinets.” I mean, the comparison wasn’t even close. The improvement in sound quality in just one year was very significant.

Over the 30 years since Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity was originally founded, loudspeaker technology has improved dramatically, and I want to offer up another example to support my thesis – the PSB Alpha series of speakers and their various incarnations over the years.

The original PSB Alpha speakers were released in the early 90’s. They have now evolved into the Alpha P5s. These speakers are two-way stand mounts that are modestly sized and very affordable. The progression of these speakers was from the PSB Alphas to the PSB Alpha A/V to the PSB Alpha Bs to the Alpha B1s then to the PSB Alpha P5s. The below table summarizes the changes implemented as the PSB Alphas have evolved to the current model, the PSB Alpha P5s:

It would be important at this point to highlight that PSB is a Canadian company and Paul Barton has had access to the facilities at Canada’s National Research Council over all these years. This gives him a leg up (at least it did early on) over speaker companies from other countries when it came to refining his designs.

My main point is that each iteration of the PSB Alpha speakers improves on measured and subjective performance attributes. The frequency response is incrementally smoother and more extended. Also, the staging and dynamics improve with each generation. The prices rise, too; but the fact is they are in line with the cost-of-living index. So, you pay approximately the same price and get more performance to boot.

But this kind of R&D isn’t just for the Canadians. A great example would be the work being done by REVEL speakers. REVEL famously has a testing facility in Northridge, CA where they do continuous research to update and improve every aspect of their speaker design and implementation. I’m most impressed by their work to really understand how design changes play out in real and useful subjective tests. Here is a short YouTube video about their process –

All the best companies are constantly innovating in materials, driver design, cabinet designs, crossover technologies, etc. And now we are seeing more and more active speakers coming to the market. Active speakers have many advantages, one of which is that the amplifiers are mated to each speaker, sometimes even separate amplifiers for each driver. Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and noise shaping can also be employed to enhance performance significantly. Active speakers may be the future of high fidelity and home theater. They didn’t exist as a viable product category 30 years ago.

There are some technologies that one may consider mature, and some were already mature even 30 years ago. I’m thinking of planar speakers, electrostatics, and horns. Those technologies are also subject to improvements over time. Let’s start with horns. My Klipsch example above is relevant. Klipsch is constantly improving their drivers and the horn shapes can be updated for better performance, much of this driven by computer modeling that was not realistically available in 1994.

Also, look at MartinLogan and their electrostatic drivers. They have continuously refined these over the years to reduce arcing potential, implementing thinner membranes, and they’ve improved the stators along with the overall shape of the panels. There is always room for improvement with any technology.

Regarding planar speakers, you can look to French manufacturer Diptyque and what they are doing by taking Magnepan’s design concepts and pushing them further with more powerful magnets and revised, stronger membrane designs. I would venture that Diptyque will continue to update and refine its loudspeakers with each new iteration.

In conclusion, I want to posit that loudspeaker technology, in my opinion, has improved the most over the last 30 years; more so than almost any other product category (aside from the obvious advancements in DACs and other digital products). I love reading about vintage gear, dreaming about vintage gear, and listening to vintage gear (many of my friends have vintage systems). Personally, I am not in the market for anything vintage at this time. I like my modern gear just fine, thank you very much.