Which component has advanced the most in the last 40 years?

Gotta agree it's in the digital realm that the most improvements have been seen. My first CD player sounded just awful, with spitty highs and grain, and that put me off digital for a long time (not so bad since I then focused on grabbing all the LPs folks were dumping).

Today's digital sounds quite good, pretty much the same as my analog setup.

Totally agree about some early CD players sounding harsh and grainy. My first one was a lower end Technics from 1987. Just awful. My second one from about 1992 was a nicer Kenwood. Still sounded bad.

Only recently have I gone back and discovered TOTL 80s players - including ones with the TDA1541A chip, and the better Burr Brown's. These sound amazing, and my vinyl rig now sounds the same as my CD player.
 
Totally agree about some early CD players sounding harsh and grainy. My first one was a lower end Technics from 1987. Just awful. My second one from about 1992 was a nicer Kenwood. Still sounded bad.

Only recently have I gone back and discovered TOTL 80s players - including ones with the TDA1541A chip, and the better Burr Brown's. These sound amazing, and my vinyl rig now sounds the same as my CD player.

The difference between early lower-end CD players and higher-end units is pretty amazing. Overall, that might be the biggest change that I have personally seen in the past 30 years - massive improvements in the cheap disc players.
 
Agree with Sam, there are several nice CD players in the $150 range. Most have very decent DAC's. Mine has me listening to my CD's a lot more.
 
Oh yeah, even my new and cheap Sony DVD player sounds great playing CDs. Whatever the problem was that caused the early cheap ones to suck, they've fixed it.
 
Being able to carry gigs of music with me at all times is quite an advancement.

I hope that the Audio Gods bless us with quantum leaps in streaming quality.

Were I to convert to digital, purchasing/borrowing and ripping thousands of CDs to take the place of my record collection isn't going to happen. No time to climb this mountain.

Streaming quality has certainly improved. Hopefully it will soon make this list as the most improved.
 
I know I answered speakers early in this thread. I've been thinking about it a bit (good topic) and still go with speakers. Started thinking about the best 15 to 20 speakers I've ever heard and all of them were designed in the last 20 years. Don't know how far down that list I would go before I'd get to a vintage speaker, perhaps the ESL-63. But it goes that the current production version of the -63 sells for around $12K/pr. Also thought about it in terms of if I had $25K to $50K to spend on speakers, are there any older speakers that I would consider? No. The best of the current speakers out there are incredible.

I do agree that streaming holds a lot of promise. With ever expanding amounts of storage and bandwidth, I would hope that real high end fidelity can be had via streaming. Although so far, it has been mostly in the other direction. Some popular streaming services serve up 64K and 96K bitstreams.
 
Portable sound?

1970ish
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Today:
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Speakers came of age in the mid-late 1970s, with attention being paid to time/phase pulse testing and diffraction management, tho' not everyone went along or cared.

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I have not availed myself of internet music other than to sample various selections. I was a constant user of radio and earphone listening from the late 1960s thru the 1990s, mostly with self-made/modified gear until the early 1980s, then with the new Am/stereo FM /cassette pocket gear. Not so much anymore, I've mostly lost interest in constantly having it in my ears, so haven't tried the digital players or music thru my smartphone.
One thing that really improved was SQ of in the ear phones from the mod'ed hearing aid receivers I used until the early 1980s.

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Analog gear has improved, but that's not the same as "advanced."

Everything that has happened in analog has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and mostly in the areas of reliability and performance delivered vs cost (which is why plugging the cost of a vintage piece of gear into an inflation calculator doesn't tell you squat about what it would cost to get the same level of quality today).

The most obvious audible part of the difference between speakers today and 40 years ago is not the result of any revolutionary advance in their design, but in the establishment of design targets based on research into listener preferences conducted in the 80s. Today's speakers "sound better" to a majority of today's consumers because they've been designed specifically to suit the preferences of the majority of consumers.

The revolutionary advance is clearly digital sound. Not just "advances in digital sound," but digital sound itself. 40 years ago, digital sound didn't even exist on a consumer level, except as a few analog LPs that had been pressed from digital master recordings. 30 years ago, the first consumer digital recordings were introduced, and a lot of us thought they sounded awful. But within 10 years, they had improved to the point where they had buried analog delivery. Today, CD sales are already trailing digital delivery sales, and the CD is on its way toward joining the 8-track and the cassette as obsolete formats that will someday be collectable objects of curiosity. So digital sound is not only the biggest advance, but it's also undergone the most rapid evolutionary changes.
 
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Breaking out advances in digital toys a bit further.

DSP ... not a lot you can't do with DSP ... there's pretty much a widget or plug in for most anything nowadays. Just when you start thinking it can't get any better, well ... they go and make it better!
 
My vote is for digital amplification. What blows my mind is the price/performance ratio of TPA3116-based amps. For under $50 you can have an amp that will comfortably *compete with the very best power amplifiers of yesteryear, and many decent offerings of today that are FAR more expensive. It would not surprise me if, in a few years, there will be an entire system (minus speakers, of course) that fits on a single circuit board, and sounds phenomenally good.

* Not in every category, as the TPA3116 realistically tops out around 30WPC.
 
Speakers haven't advance much at all. Because more computers are used nowadays for speaker design doesn't mean anything. I mean big whopty doo. Speakers been pretty much perfected since the 60's/70's...

Only amp tech that been advancing because it's becoming more in practice and use are switching amps. Experimenting with different switching PSU and output stage types have became very more common nowadays but, other then that, they haven't changed much since the good ol' valve days...

I say DACs and digital processing advance the most. The very first DACs and digital mediums such as CD players and laser discs were complete hog wash. DACs have improved so much that even our little tiny annoying touch phones are very decent sounding pieces of gear. I think DACs are only thing truly advancing but, pretty soon gonna hit a halt like everything else.
 
Speakers haven't advance much at all. Because more computers are used nowadays for speaker design doesn't mean anything. I mean big whopty doo. Speakers been pretty much perfected since the 60's/70's...

There's been some good work in the last 15 years with high-excursion designs and making subwoofers that have linear travel that could only be dreamt of in the '60s. XBL^2 being a prime example...
 
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