Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused


17 of 23 speakers in my studio and home theater systems are internally powered. My studio system is all Genelec and sounds very accurate. I know the best new concert and studio speakers are internally powered there are great technical reasons to design a speaker and an amp synergistically, this concept is much more important to sound quality than the vibration systems we often buy. How can an audiophile justify a vibration system of any sort with this in mind.

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@kota1

Ask ATC how much it costs to repair and/or replace the internal amp in a speaker. Or any brand. My Paradigm (great brand btw) subwoofer internal amp died after a decade. It was in auto/on mode for most of its short life. I paid $2500 for it. Paradigm wanted $1750 to replace/repair the internal amp in the sub. I laughed at that. Going to replace it with a REL HT-1205 for $699. My Audio Engine desktop speakers also died after a decade of service. I paid $250 for them, they offered me a 30% discount on buying the next pair. Instead I bought an inexpensive pair of PreSonus speakers, which sound great.

My guess is that ATC would charge quite a bit of cash to repair a blown amp in one of their speakers. Why take the chance that this happens at all? I’d be petrified that one day I wake up to find that one of the speakers isn’t working. Passives you never have that problem, unless you mistakenly blow out a tweeter. I’ve never had that happen over decades of listening. BTW--I’m not against the idea of active speakers, just my take. I have a pair of JL Audio’s for my main rig. Cheers.

@fred60 , I love your energy but no, I won’t contact ATC customer service for you, please use their website. I am sure a professional rep that can be trusted will do much better than kota1 in a chat room for these types of questions.

I will share something that happened to my actives. I had a driver damaged in my active 20 due to vandalism, someone renting the condo I had them in cut it with a knife. I pulled the driver, sent it to Paradigm, they re-coned it in their factory and I am back in business. The price was extremely fair and much less than the cost of the driver or a new speaker. The speaker is out of production and they had no problem fixing it.

Given your past experience I get your point.

Kota 1 good post thank you very informative, Iam not surpriseHe likes simpler. He never has cdp or turntable on his ELac room? Always tablet he has to play music.

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