Is dsp like arc as good as designed dsp active speakers

35 years and how much money? I stayed away from dsp because the initial cost of entry was so high and I thought I was in love with a bunch of components I would read about,,, Then it would suck because none of the stuff sounded like music when put together.

Steve, Not all DSP, like everything else in audio, is created equal. Digital Signal Processing can be applied anywhere in the music chain from recording through mixing all the way to just before the amplification outputs before the speaker drivers.

For home audio use there is plain DSP and there is DSP with auto room correction. Often DSP is used in the amplitude domain only. The good units can correct in both amplitude and time domains. Huge difference.

The best DSP/Auto room correct units like the Trinnov work seamlessly when used with conventional speakers. Our speakers are designed specifically to be DSP controlled. The main advantage of our approach is to allows us more flexibility in designing our speakers and a huge head start in dealing with room issues.

To answer your question more directly DSP/speakers systems (like kii) can have some advantages in terms of everything being sorted out and performance optimized and can be more compact in size. Amplification is usually supplied (usually class-D) which can be a plus or a minus. I'm not judging class-D amps, we build and sell them too. Some people don't want to be locked in. Some of their DSP functions are not user accessible and user adjustments are usually fewer.

Both arrangements can yield excellent result, depending on the quality of the DSP and the quality of the speakers.

We chose to make almost all DSP functions user accessible. Our customers can choose which amps they want to use. The Trinnov ST2 we supply with our speakers is very easy to set up and use and allows extreme flexibility. 

Mike