Your Side by Side Experience With Best Vintage vs Newer Expensive Hi Tech Speakers

I work with the most modern of transducer I design loudspeakers have been doing so for over 25 years. I sort out designs for other manufacturers as well as design transducers. Many products on the market have a bit of me in them. I also collect and restore vintage. I became interested in vintage designs as my knowledge of loudspeaker design grew and I read researched much of what the talented designers of the past wrote or created again much of this is still in use in audiophile products. When I started collecting vintage designs I looked for the best of what the past offered never expecting much beyond that it was cool and interesting expecting that it could never be a equal to my audiophile systems. But I found the opposite many of the best loudspeaker designs of the past were better or equal to modern offering and some with just  a few modern upgrades are SOTA today. Some offer levels of performance unavailable to audiophiles buying only new designs. Sure if wanting a bookshelf sized loudspeaker you may not find what you like in vintage but if you can handle 12-15 inch woofers than give it a try buy right and if you dont like you can break even or even profit on resale. Still its not all vintage is great its some vintage is and honestly most all will need a few modern updates if expecting SOTA.

Michael

i would read it :-)

Michael Green, you've got my interest. I'm here to learn and confess my ignorance of the "tuning" you speak of and no idea what the "recorded code" is. I am teachable though, so bring it on. 
When you said tuning I thought of my 5 band built in equalizer on my Mac 6200 integrated amp. I use it often, very often, because I can "tune" a recording to what sounds best to my ears. Mood affects my turning of those dials as sometimes I want a different sound. If I want more sizzle from the cymbals, I can get it. Mood for more bottom end, I got it. I'm not an always "neutral" guy. It may not be how the guys mixing it in the studio intended, but hey, it's my gig in my listening area. I'm sure some would say I'm not a purist, but you listen to what makes you happy. Like Popeye said, "I am who's I am".

Michael, virtually every modern speaker does well without tone controls. That's why they've virtually disappeared from high end gear. Sure, there's a few speakers out there that have adjustment jumpers or interchangable resistors for tone control, but that's a very rare thing. Flat response really is a fairly well defined idea these days. Nobody is selling bright, shouty speakers like JBL was trying to hock in the 70's and 80's. Nobody is selling speakers like those dark Rogers 3/5 clones of the 80's. 
You talk about some mysterious "code" in recordings. I guess every producer has their own idiosyncratic preferences, but I don't buy that there's some code I need to manipulate my system to interpret. I suppose if you really wanted to hear the music as the producer intended you'd need a system that could emulate the speakers, amplifiers, and mixing rooms of every studio in the world. Of course that's assuming there's some huge variety between, which there mostly isn't. Most use thoroughly modern equipment that conforms to that widely held belief of what flat response is. As long as my stereo performs roughly inside that envelope of acceptable flatness, there's no need to fiddle with controls, which I do have but never touch. Besides, I hear variations between any two tracks on the same album. Should I get up and tweaked some 32 band EQ to make sure every track sounds the same before the next song plays?