It's not just "kids these days", look at the popularity of sound bars as well. Sure, they're better than what comes built in to a modern TV but as you note physics is still physics and small speakers will never sound as good as large ones.

Hell, we can even chase that one back further, remember how much money Bose spent in the '90s convincing people that tiny speakers plus magic can somehow sound comparable to a proper stereo or home theater system? They were absolutely full of shit, but a ton of people believed every word of it.

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qlm 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

While I don't disagree, I find that small speakers are dramatically better today than they were even 15 years ago.

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7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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bsder 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> While I don't disagree, I find that small speakers are dramatically better today than they were even 15 years ago.

Then why is what comes out from my "modern" soundbar so crappy compared to the one I bought 15 years ago?

I had to retire my ancient soundbar because it had Bluetooth without security and would regularly pump out 100db of some show that our neighbors were watching at random times.

However, the sound quality was vastly better than any soundbar I can buy now--even my wife complained about the soundbars we tried--they were that obviously worse. I had to suck it up and buy a full blown sound system to match a stupid cheap-ass JBL soundbar from 15 years ago.

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zwnow 2 hours ago | parent [-]

JBL is unfortunately one of the brands that people buy nowadays and think of as "good". Well already was a thing 8 years ago... Please do not buy JBL nowadays. Its crap made for being thrown away after a few years. Real speakers are repairable usually. The expensive ones we sold even had 70 year - lifetime warranty. Its true that old speakers often have really good sound though. A lot of it is mechanical which didn't change a lot in the last decades. Modern speakers have electronic shenanigans that might work, but doesn't provide a noticeable difference in my opinion. Except for noise canceling.

	▲	bsder 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No argument. All the "modern" JBL soundbars were just as crappy as the rest of the "modern" soundbars. I remember buying that soundbar (back at Fry's!) and all the soundbars were pretty much just as good (well, the Bose ones were garbage and overpriced, but let's not get started about that ...). They weren't audiophile quality, but they were good enough that an amateur like my wife really couldn't tell much difference. What the hell happened that caused soundbars to go to shit?

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beagle3 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I vaguely remember reading about heterodyning speakers in the mid 90s - the physics does check out, and such technology should be able to deliver perfectly flat response along the entire audible spectrum and with a tiny footprint. I guess they never managed to make it work or cheap enough or safe enough (yes, it’s also supposed to be flat at the harmful subsonic frequencies)

IIRC the idea is to have two crystals, one at a constant e.g. 100khz, and the other at (100+x)kHz for x corresponding to the sound you want. By physically connecting them, you get the sum (ultrasonic, lost energy but not a problem) and the difference - which is the sound you want - with most of the physics across half an octave so easily flat. Something along those lines.

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thewebguyd 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

To be fair to those Bose speakers, to someone that didn't have a proper stereo set up, nor ever experienced one, they sounded amazing and people are notoriously bad at discerning audio quality