[stevenr_66@yahoo.com]

Hey, no apologies necessary!    I came to the site to hear about others' opinions and experiences.    Also, we are veering into a subject I developed a sneaking suspicion around, but haven't had the opportunity to discuss, before.

   I first started hitting audio stores selling $1000+ equipment back in the late 1990's.   At that time, the solid state power war was still in full force (China and Russia weren't yet selling off their stock of Cold War tubes, and America just didn't make them, much.    I remember the surge in tubes first hitting guitar players a few years later....but that's another story.)
   
    Anyway, the latest innovation of the day was in high fidelity, super-fast and stiff non-paper cones.   My subjective experience was that I greatly admired the precsion, but also experienced heart breaking ear fatigue in proportion.    The more I heard of the first, the more I typically got of the second.   Those effects were wholly absent from the Magnepan and B&W approaches.

    So here I am with a 1990's Classe DR-15 amp, and I am wondering....

      Do you fella's find much truth in matching the age of amps to the age of the speakers?   It's been around fifteen years that tube amps have been the rage.   Other than a notable step up in sensitivity (I'm seeing a lot of 94+ dB from manufacturers who made nothing higher than 90, back in the 90's), how much do you think the amp trend has altered style of speaker timbre?
      Should old amps get old speakers, do you think?
  Kind regards.......

[FullRangeMan]

Old speakers may be good sound today if they have a musical sound(not clinical or transparent sound signature) current speakers are more transparent now.

I prefer current amps(tubes, SS and Class D).

[JLM]

In gross terms, yes amps from the same vintage of the speakers can work well together.  By that I mean for example 60 year old tiny tube amps with poor damping factors offset high efficiency speakers from that era which lacked deep bass.  But vintage gear needs surrounds and caps replaced, connections/switches cleaned, etc. 

I'm no fan of metal cone/dome drivers, see them as a reaction to solely going for the best specifications and not listening.  Early users of (expensive) ribbon tweeters seemed to produce exaggerated highs to show them off.  But some materials seem to produce muffled/sluggish sound compared to paper cones.  Access to higher efficiency speakers has improved, but only marginally overall in my observations.  I tried getting into the SET scene 15 years ago but couldn't find suitable speakers that I liked.  And just as many games are played with amplifier specifications today as say 30 years ago. 

IMO many current speakers are very thin sounding (lack mid-bass/bass body).  On much music the heart of their bass response is hidden.  It's almost an American version of what the Scandinavian sound from decades ago was characterized as - dry sounding with very restrained bass (small apartment friendly) response.  All this is in response to smaller listening spaces and budgets that the mass market is experiencing.