Vintage vs New

Today’s best is tomorrow’s vintage.  It sounds good today, take care of it and it’ll sound good tomorrow.  Today’s worst is also tomorrow’s vntage, so you can’t generalize very well.  Good is still good even if it’s not THE BEST! (He says as he jams out to some glass tubes and a 15 year old cool beast of an amp).

If the music you listen to is from the vintage easier times then buy some vintage speakers...the best you can find from the era.....they were voiced for the music of the day and they still hold their own with most music from today,,,,again if you go vintage do your research and get good ones from that era,,,,Tannoy and Klipsch are really expensive...and good but you can do some research and find others for less

Can only relate my experience. In the day, I had biamped Dahlquist DQ10’s with double subwoofers, driven by an Audio Research SP6B and either two GAS Ampzilla or else a C-J MV75A-1 driving the DQ10’s. Pretty good. But my modern electronics- Cary SLP05 ultimate upgrade and SSt Son of Ampzilla II just crushes my old electronics, even after they had been rebuilt and recapped. My ATC speakers have better resolution

And far greater sense of dynamics. New stuff really is better.

Some while back I reclaimed my mid- 80's Proac Studio 2's from extended loan to my parents. Put them back in my current system whilst listing them on eBay. They sounded stunning. You can't replicate the build quality of the cabinets (for the modest outlay), by current standards. Marine ply rather than MDF, 2" inch thick baffle and real wood veneers of choice. The better the gear the better the Proacs use to sing. On the subject of cabling, I recall my Hi-fi shop had one specialist speaker cable for sale, as for mains leads as MC says there weren't any in the UK. I remember my dealer ringing me to tell me about Van den Hul's Revelation speaker cable when it first came out - specialist cable really was a rarity item back then. Hobson's choice so to speak.