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.

128x128donavabdear

For the last 4 days I've stayed up two nights rewiring and rearranging 3 sound systems in my home, my theater and both systems in my listening room. You guys have inspired me to make everything sound better. 

I've come to the conclusion that I don't care about being accurate with my systems that are for enjoyment but I do want the most accurate system I can get for my professional mixing system. There is such a big difference between the two in terms of sound it's startling. You can't have both accurate and magical for now because the technology doesn't exist yet IMO.

Yesterday I herd a choral group from a local high school sing Carol of the Bells with only piano the singers were positioned around the auditorium no PA system, the sound was perfect. It was so beautiful, of course I was thinking about the acoustics and the phasing between the singer that were close to me and the ones that were farther away, it was beautiful and so far above anything I've ever heard coming from microphones or speakers. 

My entertainment listening systems are hissy run by tube amps and sound magical there is no question about the depth the warmth and the enjoyment. My professional system is quiet sounds articulate edgy and naked, very few things look good naked. 

This idea does have to do with powered speakers and technologies that make playing back music more accurate, until we can get microphones, speakers, electronics, and the processes that your brain goes through when translating sound to music there will be a detachment between playing back sound and music. OMG maybe I'll totally give up and go out and buy a record player.

@mijostyn, @thespeakerdude 
I was a part some of the original acoustic research on line arrays when I worked with the new computer system that Crown made called TEF (Time, Energy, Frequency) our findings were just as thespeakerdude said. At first we thought all our readings were messed up because we didn't know how sound in a line array would become so additive, we also didn't realize how poorly they worked inside small rooms, line arrays work best in open spaces and large rooms. In small rooms the material the room is made of and the rigidity of the walls play a very strong roll. We kept getting impossible readings because of the drum like effect so many walls made at particular frequencies, we were getting 1+ gain meaning we got more gain than we sent out the speakers, impossible, turned out this was because of the drum effect the interior walls gave, the main engineer coined a term for it that was new to acoustics. This effect we thought was impossible so it caused a long pause in the research we were doing for Crown and later JBL. I was only in college when we were doing this so many things could have change since then but it was fun to be able to use the TEF and actually see the ray tracing models of sound for the first time. Later I got to write some of the math for the ray tracing algorithms, my very very small contribution to the world of acoustics. 

There is no such thing as accuracy in audio, everything from the microphone to the playback speakers changes the sound .

@invalid i understand what you are saying but look at it this way, if you have a standard strawberry pie that everyone agrees that is how a strawberry pie should taste then you put extra strawberry flavor in your new pie that pie may taste better and everyone may eventually buy your new strawberry pie but it will not be accurate to the original. I worked with Tom Cruze, Anthony Hopkins, Jack Nicholson, etc they were making in the neighborhood of 20M for the movies I was recording sound on. There voices were a known commodity and I had to bring the most accurate recording equipment the most accurate microphones or I wouldn’t have a job after the director and producers watched dailies.

The audiophile world is a fake world that is searching for something that is unscientific but using the language of science to find their way. Accuracy is not reaching for the EQ it is not fixing phasing and acoustics, accuracy is what Anthony Hopkins voice sounds like when your are eating lunch with him.

The audiophile world is a fake world that is searching for something that is unscientific but using the language of science to find their way.

and the more "scientific" they get, the more they obfuscate (or fake) their ability to find their way.