VEC7OR

Be careful for what you wish for

Thanks for doing this AMA!

I have a rather awkward question - one female friend of mine worked in the UAE, but I guess that is different from Saudi Arabia, and the question is - she views things that you and I consider oppressive as good in a way - she said husbands are being for the most parts protective of their wives and this 'overprotectivness' results in the oppression the outside world sees, how much truth is to that ?

Does this situation differ in different social circles - ladies who live with rich/wealthy husbands live as queens, and in poor families it boils down to 'shut up woman' ?

You are now mod of /r/audiophile

Not AA, but I'll bite,

1. They already do, digital signal processors are very cheap and ubiquitous right now, and widely used, a chip that costs a few bucks can do EQ, various corrections and contains an amp that can drive said speaker. A lot of speakers, especially in PA are designed in a way that don't care about getting it right in the first place as much as EQuing it in software later.

2. No idea.

3. FEA, other computational methods as well as new materials already advance speaker design by miles. IMO there is no 'next big thing' as most of the stuff was figured out in the 60-70-80, or even earlier, take for example Altecs Big Red monitors - made around 1974, they'll slap around most of the speakers made today. A lot of cheap speakers/drivers became really good.

Right now everyone is working around IOT, and other similar 'connected' baubles, also computations are very cheap so yeah, beamforming, room correction, etc.

Tubes are tasty, but aren't accurate or powerful, its all about those rich even harmonics that make it sound so so good, its all been figured out a long time ago.

Future ? Not really. Niche - very much so.