Buchardt A500, KEF LS50 Wireless, etc. What are your top 3 downsides?

Wow, good to know about that about genelac.
I think that having just amplified, or self powered speakers, seems to be more reliable.  Takes the dac and dsp out of the equation.  Besides, the dac is really what we want to upgrade.

But then theres the whole controversy over what effects having your electronics inside the speaker cabinet have on your speakers as well.

I’ve always thought that you can compile a better system with various components from different manufacturers but MBL is one of my favorite and both times I heard them, they were complete MBL systems.  

@mfgillia
decooney When one small thing went wrong with the A500s Mads sent me out a new module, which contains all of the electronics inside one small box. It took about three days to arrive and five minutes to install. Didn’t ship anything back nor did I ever pay for shipping.

That’s an impressive level of service delivery. I don’t think I’ve received much of anything lately in 3 days, not from any merchant.

I looked up Buchardt just now, remembering they are from Denmark. Makes sense now, all of the best sounding speaker drivers I’ve used all come from Denmark. The Danes take their products and services very seriously with great passion. And their audio too. Thanks for sharing :) Those Buchardt A700 speakers are nice too.  

Good to know!

At the end of the day, everyone makes their own best judgement  about whether they worry or care about spending money on a speaker with internal parts likely to become outdated. The sound, convenience of these speakers are hard to deny, and there's nothing inherently better about getting something that lasts (or can last) a long time. Some people just don't care about that aspect -- and after all, we throw out computers, phones, TV's, air conditioners, etc. so often that the idea that one would hang on to speakers is quaint. (And environmental, of course.)

Perhaps the two points of greatest friction for me are (a) the ability of other components (such as DAC, streamer) to become outdated *so fast* that the combo unit (the speaker+) doesn't even make it out of infancy. One solution for that would be similar to the the Schiit approach, where modules can be swapped out down the road without trading in the whole unit. Don't know if that could work on a speaker. The other possible point of friction would be price point. Perhaps people are willing to have a speaker become outdated at $1.5k-$2k. But what about $5k? Or $10k? Now, it's not sounding like it's worth the risk.