Opinions and recommendations on active loudspeakers

@gosta
We'll there you could be right.  I listen to most of my stuff on ATC's, as do several of those artists in my list.  Since ATC's tell it like it is, you are right, some of the later CD re-releases and remixes can be quite awful.  This is quite obvious in the studio.  I know some of the folks involved in those records and they hate some of these rereleases too.  Funny how little control the artist and the original engineers have over that- the record company owns it and does what it wants.    Shadorne brings that up too, the original vinyl of Crime of the Century was awesome and some of the later CD rereleases and re mixes were not.  Much less the case now, the record companies are mostly gone.
From my perspective, that "sound" of that CD is not the speaker.  The ATC SE50 we take to trade shows sounds absolutely glorious at 105dB SPL IF the recording is good.  All about the source.  And from an ATC perspective, all about the truth.  So if the remix is bad, it should sound that way.

Brad

a recommendation: The AirPulse Model 1-A200 or if you have more money the A300. Get the stands as well. I have the Model 1 and the midrange is as good as it gets at this price range. These are engineered to be studio monitors as well as hifi boxes... if there is a powered monitor better at 800-1200 USD per pair I don't know about them... there is a review of the new A300 in Sound on Sound. 

I agree with Lonemountain's choices of great rock albums.  I think Pretzel Logic is as good as AJA based on my copies.  I guess I haven't heard a great Led Zeppelin LP pressing yet.

I know that this isn’t a speaker building forum....  But my last set of speakers were built entirely by me.  I used an electronically crossed 3 way line array.  I had 16 3.5 inch mid ranges, 32 dome tweeters, and one 12 inch sub woofer per channel.  I used an analog Rane crossover between the preamp and the power amps.  The tweeter array had a 20 watt RMS/ch power amp, the mid range array had a 100 amp RMS/ch, and the woofers had a 375 watt RMS/ch.  There are many reason why active crossovers can be better than passive ones.  Let me list some(they are easier to do if you have a multiple speaker line array, btw):

1.   Effectively (up to) twice the 'real' power of the amplifiers themselves,  as nothing is lost in the crossover components

2.   Reduced intermodulation distortion

3.   Elimination of the low frequency passive crossover, its inherent losses, potentially poor linearity and crossover point inaccuracy

4.  Reduction of the difficulty of the load presented to the power amplifier

5.   No padding is required to align the driver sensitivities, so we are not simply wasting power, and we can choose the speakers based on what we need

6.   The damping factor is greatly improved for both the low and midrange loudspeakers

7.  Complete freedom from any interaction between the loudspeaker driver (and its environment) and the crossover network

8.   Cost savings, since complex passive crossover networks are not needed.  And with a line array they are very complex.

9.  Tri-wiring is included free!

10.  The flexibility to choose amplifiers which are at their best within a defined frequency range--as I did for each section of the array

11.  Ability to match amplifier power to the exact requirements of the drivers for maximum overall efficiency

Hi :)  I'm brand new to this forum and love the opinions on active VS passive speakers.  For what its worth, I am listening to a pair of active Edifier R1700BT PC/desktop speakers (Annie Lennox "Into The West" 44/320k) that absolutely burn to the ground Andrew Jones ELACs in my living room running off a 100 W/8ohms Yamaha amp.
Imaging is outstanding.  Vocals are good enough to make one weep... damn these are clean.  A sub makes these perfect.  Purr-fect.

I think I paid $150 for the Edifiers off Amazon two years ago, and they have even better models available now. 

So although investing $10k in a pair of active mains might be scary as hell, the examples set by some of the least expensive, quality actives point to excellence.