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

russbutton

Great post, thanks but could you clarify this please"

 "So instead of dropping $7,000 on that Threshold Stasis 8.0 power amp. You could spend much less on an active crossover and the various much more modestly priced amps of your choice"

The active speakers I'm looking at are the full meal deal, amps, Dacs, DSP all in. Spending less on an active crossover and purchasing a cheaper amp. This sounds like separates. How does it work? 

Don't forget the seniors with hearing loss who may be best suited for actives firing directly into the face.

Profoundly ignorant doesn't even begin to describe this comment.
I owned the passive version of the active speaker I currently own (Legacy Audio Calibre). Fronted them with a Musical Fidelity M6 500i integrated amp and an Esoteric K-03 player. The passive and active speakers reside in the same location in the room set up the same way. The current set up is significantly better. Micro and macro dynamics, sound staging, inner detail are all improved. Believing the blanket statement that active speakers cannot do these things well is like believing that all horn speakers have resonances and a cupped hand sound to vocals. It is just not true. 

What speakers are you looking at high-amp?

Dutch & Dutch seem very appealing--active done right.  For people who don't want to mess around and for people trying to reduce boxes/clutter, clearly the way to go.

I respect Steve, I do not follow him closely, but in previous videos of his that I have seen, he seems to come from a position of experience and research. In this video he seems to come from a position of speculation and assumption. There are plusses and minuses to everything and the only opinion that matters is yours.

With such lousy room and not really any options for acoustic treatments, a few have suggested that active is possibly a cure-all for this?

The only way an active speaker can help with a lousy room is if they give you access to adjust the parameters in the DSP to allow you to tune the speaker to the room. Active speakers with ARC is one way of adjusting the parameters. Out board DSP units like those from MiniDSP, DBX,  XTA and others, allow you to adjust the parameters via built in interface or computer or both.  You can also adjust some of the parameters with out board analog e.q.s

SG states about ¾’s of the way through his rant that "as the speaker ages you get stuck with the out-of-date DSP”

Any technology will become out of date as it ages. DSP in a lot of cases can easily be kept up to date with software updates downloaded from your computer.