Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

@donavabdear ,

@thespeakerdude I wanted to ask you about WMTMW it seems to not make sense but as you mentioned there are many great speakers that use this. Seems like the low and mid frequencies would interact a few feet out. no one would ever use a microphone setup in that form there would be to much phasing.

We obviously test a lot of our competitors, but these companies are not our competitors, so we would never test them, not to mention too expensive to purchase and tear down!

I expect how they behave is, like all speakers, room dependent. Over a range of frequencies, it should help with vertical room modes and since people are least likely to treat the floor and ceiling, from a practical standpoint, that could be quite a good thing. It's not going to replace multiple subs for room averaging, but it may help a bit though my mind says watch for peaks and valleys with varied ceiling height.

@rick2000 , many people could list their speakers, cables, dac. and amps for sale, take the cash, buy a set of Dynaudio Focus speakers, get an upgrade, and have money left over. I think they won't because it is too hard to let go of the OCD that often comes with this hobby. Fortunately their is a new generation getting into this hobby that will benefit greatly from a plug and play, value priced ACTIVE system like this.

Much of the hobby survives on the satisfaction people get from spending money. I don't know if that is variety is the spice or life, or whether people need to feel they are moving forwards even if they are moving sideways or backwards.

@donavabdear , That is a more intelligent design, the cylindrical enclosure in particular. It still has problems but it is much better than the stuff you see from Rel, ML and just about everyone else. Here is what I do not like. You can hand it a digital input but all it's outputs are analog so it has to have a DAC on each channel. It has a general digital output but that is all. I guarantee you they are not very expensive ones. The ideal system is run by one central digital processor with an ADC for analog inputs and a high quality DAC on the generated outputs after all the processing has been done. In my case, a 2.2 system, there are 4 DAC channels. This eliminates a lot of back and forth and allows DSP on all channels not just the crossover but full range room control and EQ capabilities. You also have more control over the DACs. You can even use outboard ones if you want. I still prefer outboard subwoofer amps. The Genelec is also not a balanced force design so it is going to shake. It is however a big step in the right direction. 

@thespeakerdude When I started in sound we got to use a new technology called TEF (Time Energy Frequency) an acoustic computer made by Crown. It would show the acoustic reflections on the screen, we found that unless the speaker was next to a wall the main reflections are from the floor then the ceiling. We did discover that there were some walls that were very reflective, in fact reflected more energy than they were receiving which is impossible turned out if the wall was vibrating sympathetically with the frequency it could push out more energy, this was a new finding in acoustics at the time. 

In a WMTMW speaker design the midrange drivers could be 1 foot from each other that is roughly a 1k frequency very important for vocals There is an old rule in recording called the 3 to 1 rule and it means the distance between the source and first mic is 1 the next mic should be 3 times that distance if you want less phasing. Looking at speakers this rule isn't followed at all especially in the WMTMW design. Physics is a tough competitor it always wins. Perhaps to audiophiles it's like not understanding that synergistically designed amps and speaker drivers are best practices, maybe they will never get it.

@thespeakerdude

Much of the hobby survives on the satisfaction people get from spending money.

Too late, I just spent more money🎧. I wanted to try a nice headphone rig and have been thinking about getting a 2 CH preamp for my home theater. My active speakers have both RCA and XLR inputs with a toggle switch to connect two preamps. So, I pulled the trigger on the Sony Signature headphone amp/dac/preamp, the TA-Z1HES.