Is there any significant technological development in speaker technology going on?
I am working on roughly 15y. old Event Tr-8. They did cost about 1k€ back in the day.
Will any recently built speaker in this price range be superior by default?
Sometimes certain older speakers are recommended or even said to be better than "modern crap".
Is technological development the same as in other areas, where, as time passes, less money will buy you better quality whatsoever?

 

Not really. Even ribbon tweeters have been around for ages, but they seem to have come into style over the last few years.

What's most important is to enjoy the speakers you get and to really, really get to know them. This can take years.
Hence why "old people" can mix on shitty speakers like the Yamaha NS10. They sound like shit, but they know them and know how they sound.

Add acoustic room treatment on top of that. Many people think they are settled once they just buy that pair of speakers, when you actually have to pay equeal (or more) for the treatment.

 

Yes, indeed. There is not much going on. Pretty much the same goes for converters. Lavry black da-11 from 2009 still costs ~1300€.

 

IK Multimedia iLoud MTM have built-in DSP room callibration.

 

The one thing that isn't so obvious: We've come a long way dsp-wise... and that really does matter. On an active system we can now have crossover networks that hadn't been possible. we can have group delays of zero down to 100hz at the cost of 1,8ms. that is awesome. that pays in the frequency ranges between the drivers. 'back in the days' you had to guess what's happening between 1,5 and 2,5khz on most 2 way speakers. that was the area all sort of phase issues happened. besides that, today some monitors are 'matched'. take the kh80 from neumann. every single speaker ist tested and it's frequency courve flattened out by telling the firmware how to filter that one speaker.
Of course, we still have metal or silk dome tweeters, some sort of polymer mid/low chassies... nothing fancy there. but have a genelec 1030 compared against something more modern (even half the size as the kh80) and you are like 'blimey, how did they??...'

 

for real; play records you know on them and let that be your basis @SceleJohn

 

Kii Audio Three €10,000 per pair

What Sound On Sound thinks...

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/kii-audio-three

 

It´s an important and certainly overlooked topic by beginners, but tbh it really is NOT the best answer one can give. Getting to know the speakers you buy and take care of your room acoustics is good advice, but is not directly related with to initial question.

 

If I buy any 500€ Pair of Speakers that are built within the last few years, would they outperform my TR-8 which were about 1200€ back in the day?