Steve, I would never argue that you are right or wrong, the fun part of the hobby is the debate.
As far as the d/a converter being built into active monitors being the future.....well, the future must be here then. Dynaudio already has that in their Air monitor series...24 bit, 192 d/a conversion. Meridian has done it for years, Genelec has it. Meridian offers upgrades so in their case, you are actually provided an upgrade path. I haven't heard any of these other than Meridian and they were out of my price range at the time so I paid little attention.
Your example of receivers and your knowledge of "the little switching amps most use" is based on assumption. I'm not saying some manufacturers don't use poor quality amplification, that happens in every market where a price point is targeted but PMC uses Bryston at a certain price point and Flying Mole at their entry level. I haven't heard either so I will remain open minded. McIntosh made some pretty nice receivers in their day and their integrateds today are as well. ALOT of integrated amps are thrilling their owners every day and they require 1 less set of interconnects, 1 less power cable, etc. Bel Canto has gone completely to the switching amp camp and their d/a converter and integrated has a usb input.
I'm not saying any active monitor sounds better than any seperates. I am saying that I will be open minded and check them out because I love the music and thoroughly enjoy the quest. Many posters however would benefit from objectively considering that the possibility exists that there might be a different approach that could achieve a very pleasing audio experience. Please post the active speakers you have owned so I will not waste my time listening to those. I do not necessarily agree that a high quality active monitor/speaker is more expensive than seperates. I heard some that, although not of the level I would consider for my own setup, were $499 and just add a Red Wine Audio modded iPod would kick some serious backside for very little money.
There are MANY technologies that us audiophiles have collectively dismissed prior to truly evaluating the benefits. Professional audio tends to be more open minded as they require incremental sound improvements but, if it delivers, they will embrace it. Room treatments? Room correction? Compact D/A converters? Hard disk based music storage and playback? Gordon Rankin at Wavelength and Steve at Empirical have some pretty ingenious solutions that have closed the gap for computer based audio to meet and exceed cd based solutions. Take a look at the new iMac.....$1799 with 320 gig and a fabulous 24 inch screen, feed that into a high quality usb dac into a nice amplification/speaker chain and there you go. EXTREMELY low jitter digital playback. The earth is NOT flat and I believe we should always check out options to see if it offers a better alternative....it may or may not but to not look is surely an incorrect approach.
