I Was Considering Active, Then I Watched This ...

In Munich I was surprised how poor the Kii room sounded.  They claimed that with DSP on board they were able to get them sounding room-perfect.  But to my ears it was very dry and analytical.   It did sound more like the studio monitors in the studios I sometimes work in.  But pleasant to listen to?  I don’t think so. 

The eternal debate about active vs. passive speakers is exactly that, an eternal debate.

The truth:

Pros and cons are complicated. Only in the consumer land the raging debate tends to exist only because there just isn’t that much of a difference for us in terms of class of product.

In the end, the quality of the sound we experience is really complicated and the final result is the only way to compare two choices, and for that you need to get very specific.

I can imagine that there’s some future where two speakers sit in my living room, with no cables, no power supply, no amplifiers and are quantum linked directly to a performer’s recorded brainwaves. I’m literally going to buy a hologram of an integrated amplifier before I enjoy that experience. :)


Best,

Erik

@duckworp

Yeah, setting up a good sounding room curve is hard work.  Lots of ARC systems out there and only a few IMHO get it right.  Toole doesn't really like any of them, but I think a couple like Anthem and Dirac and JL Audio have come along in making better choices.

People still don't understand that automatic room correction does what a human told it to do, and you might not like that. :)

Best,

Erik

imho no...

At 2000£ retail one could challenge the passive dogma and go for actives and there are plenty of decent models out there. 
But you can’t get a dCS Vivaldi inside a speaker enclosure. You can’t shrink a Pass or a D’Agostino or your favourite valve amplifier. You can’t have a hefty power supply with separate wiring for analogic / digital. 
The manufacturer might be able to give you a reasonable compromise on a budget. But the word “budget” is key. Active done right is separate sources / crossovers / amps. 
I suppose a massive enclosure could accommodate some of the above. But there is a reason why people separate streamers from dacs, dacs from preamps and so on. The fact that it can technically be done doesn’t mean that it should or that it sounds better. 
I tried most room corrections on the  market - now I am playing with Room Perfect. If room correction sounds BETTER there is something wrong with your system / room.