I want to chime in. I deal with color in differnt aspects of my business. I don't know if anybody is familiar with the gray scale? Color is measured, but not perfectly, by three primary qualities. Shade, intensity, and depth. The varieties are infinite as far as our eyes are concerned. Musical sounds are very similar, endless varieties. I think where it went wrong for me was going to digital before it could start to produce the endless varieties of sound that analog can. To me digital is better but it is still struggling. Sound systems I have heard over the last +40 yrs, many giving hours of listening, some with good tone, seem to be to restricted to way fewer different sounds than what I like and can achive. For instance I play the guitar, and when I go look at a new guitar I can look at 2 guitars or more, the same guitar, same brand, same model, same person putting it together, same close time of build, same wood from the same batch of wood(same tree and place on tree), everything possible the same and they all always sound different, quite a bit different. Most audiophiles I know (but there are a few that can) cannot hear a difference between such very similar guitars let alone 2 different but similar styled ones. I like to hear what the musician does with his paticular guitar because he may have 10 guitars but he uses the one he is playing specifically for that sound he wamts to achive. That is lost on a lot of sound systems that I have listen to. The same is true of other musicians and their instruments. And I cannot hear the variety of tones in many sound systems that people love and say it sounds like music. I don't deny it is music to their ears, it sounds good and it is musical. But it short changes the colors of sound that I like to hear. That is where I hear the biggest difference between passives and actives. From my experience even though you do get pleasant 'natural type' sounds from tube equipment(not all but most) it sounds very similar with all its tones and the result is very few colors of sound to me. It does do other things that make listening pleasant such as space, air, adds a bit of continuity or flow a tiny bit like analog off a LP. Solid state has it plus' and minus'. I like the LSA because it gives more variety of color to the music being played. But I do respect everyone elses tastes for themselves. Hope this doesn't confuse anybody but actually helps.
