Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

audioman58, 

How many active speakers have you auditioned in your own space?

No one in this thread has claimed that you can't get a great system with either passive or active. Given the SAME budget you will get better performance from an active setup. 

"I came up with a way of addressing this question. When people listen to one of my Debut speakers, they don’t ask, “I wonder what this would sound like if you used this SEAS tweeter or that Vifa woofer.” They just accept the choices I’ve made. In an active speaker, I’ve gone one step further in adding another component. But now I have all the benefits of an active design. So [they] just accept them. With passive speakers plus a single amplifier, I couldn’t have achieved that performance at that price.

Each amplifier is matched to the driver, and only has to operate over a limited frequency range. It’s operating into a simpler impedance, so it’s not going to have high-current demands. Also, the temporal characteristics of music change with frequency. High frequencies require very little average power, but have a lot of peaks. Bass requires much higher average power, but has far fewer peaks. You can match the amplifier to those characteristics as well."

Andrew Jones

 

audioman58, 

How many active speakers have you auditioned in your own space?

No one in this thread has claimed that you can't get a great system with either passive or active. Given the SAME budget you will get better performance from an active setup. 

Really?
At some lower budget level a passive can be cheaper and better.

@audioman58 , this also is a matter of taste, you like Bricasti amps, you should use them, you will be happy, NP.

For the $20K of a Bricasti and I could get the JBL M2 active speakers, would you consider those reference level?

If you wanted to use Bricasti amps, NP, just don’t buy the Crown amps they are usually packaged with, get the speaker,the external crossover/DSP and you have an active speaker driven by whatever amp you choose.

Don’t like JBL you can do the same thing with Bryston Actives, buy the speaker, the BAX crossover and BYO amp.

https://bryston.com/model-t-active/

@holmz it is possible I guess, but for a beer budget of $200 this is tough to beat. Look at all the controls on the back of it as well, you can tune it for your setup and no need to buy speaker cables saving more cash:

Past weekend I auditioned these.

I was blown away by their sound. Open, rich, tremendous separation of instruments and placement, sound stage wider than the speaker distance, deep yet tight punchy bass, clear highs. Tastes can differ, but these suit Me.

And I like their philisophy ... keep the sound digital until the very end where it feeds the loudspeaker. The speakers feature 4 internal amps and a DSP, via which tuning to your liking is possible, also via a room acoustics measurement system.

I thought they are fun to listen to, and will probably be fun to tinker with.

Big plus ... no discussions on the effect of cheap or expensive speaker cables ... there are no cables. :)