Intriguing inquiry, are floor-stand speakers always better than active speakers?

Yes for 99% of the time a quality separate amplifier is of much higher quality

then a low cost class d amp in a active speaker

I wonder how long it's going to be until we start to see GaN Class D in active self amplified speakers? GaN is surprisingly good already. I have heard the LSA Voyager GaN 350, I must agree that it's good, for the money it's very good.

As DAC chips get better and GaN amps also become more refined, the playing field may start to change goal posts, who know?

OP - I wish I could run VitOS on my music server to compare with what I have, I wouldn't be surprised if it bested what I currently have. WinServer 2012 R2 in core mode with Audio Optimizer, Fidelizer Pro with Foobar 2000. (I haven't nutted out how to get my Jplay Femto going yet).

@audioman58 

I would say 100% of the time a QUALITY separate amplifier is of much higher quality than a LOW COST class D amp in an active speaker

I am not 100% sure I agree.
It is also difficult to argue a tautological argument when a “quality amp” if quality, and it the 100% fails, then it was because that amp was not quality,

Then take a Genelec or a Kii, and is that amp inside running through a crossover? Or it is it two amps?
Where they also omitted a bunch of passive parts like coils and caps?

@holmz 

Didn’t quite get the last point, sorry. Frequency response is not the whole story, I hope you would agree. Also, because THIS floor stander has a better frequency response than THAT floor stander is not a reason to judge an entire design model inferior to another

I thought your reference to Kii meant that you considered their speakers as being good and worthwhile to have, and an example where it was worthwhile.

However you (or someone else) seems to have removed that post and the pilots.

@rixthetrick 

Yeah, you can get a RPi4 and install VitOS on it to run!

Ok, “in general”.

preston - If you haven't heard of floor standing active speakers you haven't lived! I've had fully active floor standing speakers since 1976. Good luck.