United States

American loudspeakers were shaped by an argument between two coasts. On the East, the acoustic-suspension bookshelf came out of Massachusetts in the 1950s — a small sealed box trading efficiency for bass extension, made viable by cheap amplifier power. On the West, the cinema and studio industry drove the opposite solution: large horn-loaded systems built for efficiency and output. Both lineages are still running, and the modern American scene adds a third strand of DSP-heavy, direct-to-consumer engineering.