Generally speaking, it's mainly size and volume/power. And quality at low volume/dynamic range. There are two main advancements:
1. You've got stronger magnets which means you can get the same Power out of smaller speakers, they can especially be flatter. 2. With active speakers and class D amps you don't need passive filters but you can have a separate amp per channel with an actively controlled frequency response. This means you can use much smaller boxes. Also, you've got much less losses, both of this means you need much les power because you don't have to overbuild all your components. Generally speaking you were able to tune a speaker to any sound you wanted already 15 years ago. But because passive filters are so much more limited than active ones you had to make sure you don't have big inequalities in frequency response of your chassis. Which means you had to over-size them. Same for amps. Since you want to stay away from extremes you need to over-build an amp, this of course gets worse due to the higher losses in the speaker and the filters. But, because you want to stay away from extremes this hurts your low volumes. As if my experience you can get similar results at a quarter of the volume, these days. -- pippin --- see iPeng, the Squeezebox iPhone remote and *New: iPeng for iPad*, at penguinlovesmusic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ pippin's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=13777 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=88582 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
