Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

@thespeakerdude

Colleagues would argue, correctly I must accept, that amplifiers, speakers, and the room form a system.

I agree (this is the 20% of a system providing 80% of the benefit IMO). The OP is NOT which is better, passive or active, it is about confusion. As @brianlucey stated one of the benefits of active is cost and convenience, Those are HUGE benefits when you have a budget and limited space. I have about a dozen active speakers in my HT that are all internally biamped with a total of 24 channels of A/B amplification (specs are posted in my profile). I would need a dozen two channel amplifiers or five 5 channel amplifiers to power this system in the same fashion, you are talking $$$$$. Next I would need $$$ of long runs of quality speaker cable and another one or two racks to store the amps. I have already compared the Paradigm Studio (passive) 20, biamped, with the active version. They both sounded great but my preference was the active.

So, to make a "system" of the amp, the speaker, and the room in the most CONVENIENT and COST EFFECTIVE fashion I think we are ALL in agreement here, active speakers PLUS a processor using good DSP is a good strategy.

So, if you want a convenient, cost effective, great sounding system use active speakers. That isn’t confusing at all, right?

@donavabdear , thanks for posting your C/V, very nice creds, congrats on all the awards. Would love to hear your thoughts sometime about mixing atmos for movies and how to setup an atmos HT in a convenient and cost effective fashion.. That might be a great topic for a future thread

kota1, I'm not an expert in Dolby Atmos even though I've got a system, I just bought it to do a movie I was going to produce and pay for myself. I have a technical background, Physics and engineering in college and got to do some wonderful acoustics at the beginning of my career which helped all the way through. Live sound, music recording studio work, orchestras, did help me in production sound for films but my specialty is production sound (recording the actors and efx on set). It was nice when I could get into the post mixing stages because I was usually working on the next show. 

@donavabdear / @brianlucey 

Are you hearing any rumblings in regards to a heavy push on concert pay per view, both delivered in specially equipped theaters and for home?   Our growing world means far too many large markets for performers to perform in live, with tickets at those events exceeding the budgets of most fans.

For concert livestreams check out: