Active Speaker Choice

If you can’t do many room treatments you should look into narrow dispersion speakers and sit near or mid field, you will hear the speaker more than the room. In a room with a lot of hard surfaces, windows, etc.. like you describe you’ll get better sound quality with narrow, look at the dynaudio XD line they’re fairly narrow and the XD60 is full range.

djones51, thanks for the heads-up on the XD60. This is one of the few lines that I can demo somewhat locally.

djones51, I sent you a PM

It must be said for actives, the main objective will always be linear phase and reduced distortion-not just the "all-in-one" package solution.  Actives are not a speaker "rack system" that creates the illusion of a better solution by reducing choices. 

Active reduces losses and errors in the system.  A proper active set up images better and resolves details better than a passive one with the same exact amps and drivers.  I demo this at nearly every hi fi show. 

The effects of copper well discussed within the cable arguments that never end.  It always strikes me why this does not seem to transfer over to the gigantic chunk of copper you know nothing about and cannot change sitting between amp and driver and how it affects the amp/driver sound.  We argue about the speaker wire hung on the back end of the passive crossover, but the crossover itself has such massive coils of copper passing audio!   We wouldn't consider such a thing if we could see it, I'm convinced.  Processing after the amplifier at speaker level will seem so "did we really do that?"  one day.  

Brad

Hey Brad, I see you are an ATC dealer, but I don't see any SCM40's on your website. I have the option of demoing a pair these an hour and a half down the road from me. Have you heard these, is it worth the drive?

djones recommends Genelecs. I was fortunate enough to hear a pair of G3's this past Saturday and they sounded awesome at $1200 a pair. djones51 has the 8341's which are 3 times the price so I can't even imagine how much better they would sound over the G3's. Going to  demo some 8331's in a couple of weeks. 

Heck, just before I listened to the G3's I listen to a pair of Meridian DSP2500SE's and honestly, my wife and I (and the dealer) all though the little G3's sounded better the the Meridians...Go figure.