Difference between today and yesterday.

One of the areas where speakers have not, for the most part, improved, according to HP, is the midbass. The other area is the upper midrange. In MY experience, and I have reviewed for several publications, including Ultra Audio, many speakers STILL cannot get the upper midrange AND lower treble correct ALONG WITH the midbass. It seems that either one or the other area fails.
Using that logic, it's great that newer speakers are "clearer," lower in distortion. But if a speaker cannot get the dynamics right in these two regions, along with the upper bass and lower midrange, in my humble opinion, they are hardly superior, given the improvements in other components, such as amps, digital and cartridges.
Therefore, it is less the perspective of older being better/worse rather than newer speakers having solved the frequency/dynamic domain sufficiently.
Also, are we using live music as the comparison or other speakers? I would NEVER use another speaker as the basis for comparison in an experiment, I would only use live music, and in that experiment, that would depend on how familiar the listener is with it (live music in different venues). From what I read, quite a few reviewers only refer to other equipment when they compare. Using an imperfect, man-made item, and comparing it to another imperfect man-made item is foolish. Hence the absolute sound as a basis. If we don't know what it sounds like, how can we make a comparison to anything???
So, in summary, of COURSE some older speakers will best some current designs, if the designers are unfamiliar with live music. Good luck with that!

in order to compare live music with a recording, it is necessary to compare the recording with the source. this means one must have access to a live performance in one's listening room. orchestral music is out of the question.
it may be feasible to record a single instrument and compare the recording to the live performance, if a musician will copperate. still, the project has other difficulties.

aural memory is unreliable. trying to compare one's memory of the sound of a piano. eg.g, to a recording of a piano is probably an invalid procedure.

thus, it reverts to preference and opinion regarding the issue of current production vs vintage components. subjectivity and opinion are the main elements of our listening experiences.

Mrtennis- If a person attends live performances on a regular basis, it's natural to become accustomed to certain things that ARE consistant. IE: the sound stage of live venues, the SPL of live music, impact of a kick-drum, how the size and timbre of a piano(or any instrument) are perceived, How the wood of a double bass(and rosin on the bow) can be felt, the breath over the reed of a sax, the "hole in the middle" of a concert orchestra, the human singing voice especially, breaths taken, and how one can actually hear the resonance of the chest cavity in person(I could go on). As I suggested: If one were to listen to a particular music group live, then take a recording(hopefully a well engineered one) of that group's music home to play on their system: they would have a better idea if the system was accurate. That wouldn't take much aural memory at all. And yet: It's not hard to retain the sound of "live" IF you know how to listen to/focus on individual sounds/instruments. All it takes is a DESIRE to train one's ears and brain to do so. But- most are satisfied with their preferences as their references, and that's fine too. I have the benefit of access to musicians, instruments, live music and original recordings all the time. It's cost me dearly over the years to try and re-create the gestalt of live music in my home, but my system is only the vehicle to deliver what I love, and not what I love.

MrTennis-We did exactly what you propose many years ago: We recorded a flautist, a lute player a soprano and even a string quartet in one of our friends music room, recorded it on tape with a big professional Revox in stereo of course and then played it back through various rigs. I don't recall all the speakers, preamps and amps we compared the music with. It is too long ago. I remember Lowthers, the famous small BBC-Monitor, forgot what it was called and several others. There was GAS gear, Soundcraftsmen, original US Marantz, ML the man and a lot of European stuff. I only remember the gear, that came out in top to all our ears, because it was my rig:
Beveridge preamp, 2 Audio Research D-79s and stacked Quads, which I exchanged much later for quadrupled 63s, Sequerra ribbon speakers and Maggi bass panels.

Rodmann, I wholeheartedly agree with you. You can train your ears to become intimately familiar with the sound of live music - and singers voices for that matter. The capacity of our aural memory is stunning, were it not so, you would not be able to identify familiar voices over the telephone within a split second....and that is only the beginning. If you are sort of steeped in live music of what ever kind, you will within the space of listening to the first bar of a piece know at once if a system sounds right or not and after a few seconds be able to pinpoint quite accurately what is wrong. There are quite a number of afficionados amongst us, who taking live music as a reference, will be able to judge the sound of a system or of a single component under their scrutiny with a fairly high grade of objectivity. ( Not objectivity in the sense the natural sciences demand from us of course, but which the old Gestaltpsychology would probably be fairly happy with.)

Quite apart from that, I don't know if I'm right, but I have the faint suspicion that with the ongoing decline of sales of recorded classical music and the painfully slow progress of the digital medium both in soft- as well as hardware to render a truly satisfying experience of a big classical symphony, modern speakers are built to best render that kind of music, where digital excels in and likewise most CDs are sold or rather songs of that genre are downloaded. That would explain, why so many lovers of classical music seem to stick to analog and in the search of a "perfect" speaker often go back to the "old", hardly out of nostalgia, as has been proposed, but rather, simply put, because to many concert goers of classical music most modern non planar speakers, even those with the big names, simply don't sound "right".

There are some other variables which make things even more difficult to isolate in terms of deeming certain speakers more "accurate" or true to life, such as:

Hearing loss due to age or exposure to too many dB's
Engineering of the disc/album
Equipment used in Engineering
Synergy (or lack of it) between components

I have not seen it discussed much, but I would assert that certain people innately (not learned, not through experience) are able to identify natural/true to life sound more accurately than others. In the same way that some can run faster, think more lucidly, etc. so also I would suggest that some have the ability to hear and identify with uncanny accuracy that which sounds most gratifying and natural to most people.

I, of course, am one of them! ;)