Speaker Technology over the last 10 years

Objections to cones

cabinet colorations: Get rid of the cabinet or build a properly designed, sealed, and damped enclosure.

driver coherence: Put the crossover at the correct frequency for the size of the drivers, and move the crossover in front of the amplification.

metal based tweeters: Use silk domes.

Panels are great, and compared to most box speakers far better. What many fail to understand is that the qualities of panels are achievable with cones. A thoroughly thought out cone speaker is capable of the same qualities as panels, and at the same time, will avoid the pitfalls of large radiating surfaces.

Mr.T:

I would also wager that you, and most anyone, definitely can tell the difference between panels and at least 9 out of 10 cone speakers.

To say they sound like big panels; not in every way, but with the positive attributes of panels, the openness, transparency, and resolution, yes. The very attributes that we value so highly. And without the lobing/beaming, dynamic restrictions, and low frequency limitations.

One such example is the open baffle Linkwitz Lab Orion, and a few other active, omnidirectional designs.

Alright, enough Mr.T bashing. One of the most appealing aspects of large panels is the oversized soundstage—great on large scale recordings, and although unrealistic, quite attractive on intimate small scale recordings, such as, solo guitar, lute, violin. If one is completely sold on that scale of soundstage, box speakers can be underwhelming no matter how good they are in other respects. As an analogy, years ago when Fujichrome was first introduced in the US, many people went gaga over it. It wasn't because Fuji was better from a fidelity standpoint, it wasn't by a long shot. Ektachrome had far more realistic color rendition. It was because the high color saturation was so appealing. Could it be said that panels have a "higher soundstage saturation?"

It's too bad this thread has taken a detour from new technology. Has there really been anything revolutionary or only incremental improvements?

The only newer things I'm aware of are the MBL radialstrahler driver, Manger driver, the Impact airfoil, all bending wave drivers of some sort. Haven't heard any of these. What is almost universal is that new or exotic technologies usually do high and sometimes mid frequencies well, but low frequencies still need to be handled by conventional cone drivers. The exception to this is the Eminent Technology's rotary woofer. Quite an ingenious approach to infrasonic sound production.