> I'll bet modern engineered speakers will beat those high quality speakers, at a fraction of the price.

You'd be surprised how shitty most "modern" speakers are.

Size is still king. Doesn't matter how fast your fancy microcontrollers are. The big-ass cabinets from the 80s and 90s still sound incredible when you put them next to the typical experience you'd find on the shelves of Target or Best Buy.

Correct. The only downside on some of those large speakers is the paper cones can get brittle and break, but when properly repaired they sound great.

Often the woofer on the speaker is larger than a modern 5.1 subwoofer.

Yeah, I'd probably ditch the big stereo system if I were starting over from scratch at this point. But that would be in the interests of downsizing, not because I have any illusions that a soundbar is as good as my surround sound setup with large speakers and a subwoofer.

The one argument I can see for modern speakers is materials: theoretically we can have better materials science-- better foams and rubbers for the gaskets and such, better insulating batting.

However, it is frustrating that I can't get modern speakers anything like my parents' three-ways with a 12 or 15 inch woofer without finding some esoteric offering.

> However, it is frustrating that I can't get modern speakers anything like my parents' three-ways with a 12 or 15 inch woofer without finding some esoteric offering.

You can get "modern" builds of the very same loudspeakers right now with major brands like Klipsch - https://www.klipsch.com/heritage-premium-audio The AK6 is still considered by many to be the best loudspeaker you can ever own.

Eh, speaker tech—outside of miniaturization—seems to be the one area that feels pretty static.

Mainly because the market did large speakers is so much smaller now. Feels like the price/quality trade off is about the same as it was 40 years ago.

The speakers that are “a fraction of the price” now are there, but they’re really terrible Chinese-made junk for the most part.