Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

@kota1 , they are straight analog. Measurements is someone else's room does you no good. The measurements have to be taken in your room. Analog crossovers are distinctly inferior to digital ones. The ultimate approach is to have digital crossovers in connection to a room control system that measures the speakers in your room and then sends each driver the right part of the signal. You could also completely digitize an active speaker and I do believe some of the better studio monitors do exactly this. I can make your system sound way better by using outboard amps and digital processing/crossovers. Your speakers may sound better than similar passive speakers with certain components, I could not say. But, you can not beat the power of modern digital processors. The potential is there to any uncorrected system sound better.

I can make your system sound way better by using outboard amps and digital processing/crossovers.

Perhaps this is true in this specific case as these are old designs. However, it ignores the tight coupling of application specific amplification with the drivers. Using external amplifiers, no matter how good, does not address this.

@mijostyn 

I like straight analog 😀.

I agree about the benefit of the DSP and it done by my processor, you can also see the attention to detail I have given to acoustic treatments. 

Speaker of the year over at Twittering Machines. 

@thespeakerdude @mijostyn

I have two amps (one 50w and one 125w) for 175 watts total per speaker. In essence each DRIVER has its own monoblock.

Times 13 active speakers = 2,275 watts. There is no way it would have been practical to fit the individual amps (even if I didn’t use a monoblock for each speaker) in my room. Another benefit of active.

Now, Anthem is Paradigms partner. Their 5 channel amp costs $3799. I would have needed 3 of them if I used one channel per speaker. I would have to use two channels per speaker to biamp, that means 26 channels or roughly FIVE of those amps X $3799 comes to around $19K. I am not even going to figure out what the speaker wire would cost, but it would be a lot.

Another benefit of active.👍