Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

@thespeakerdude 

For all the bluster in the audiophile community for playback, I do not think we have a good handle on what drives people to prefer X over Y.

You will NEVER find what drives "people" by looking for signs in the audiophile community. "People" do not spend $2K+ on speakers like audiophiles. Steve Jobs said people don't know what they want. They would have said faster horses if you asked them before they saw a car. I do not envy your challenge but sincerely look forward to your next invention. The puck is moving toward bundled ACTIVE speakers as far as I can tell.

@donavabdear

This is a simple observation by Floyd but it has been a MASSIVE benefit in my room.

An in-ceiling loudspeaker is used as the Voice of God. Others could have replaced some or all of the elevation speakers. But, knowing that the direct sound has a dominant effect on timbre/sound quality I decided not to compromise, and used high quality bookshelf loudspeakers in custom mounts, aiming them at the prime listening location as shown in the following floor plan.

Placing the matching bookshelf speakers at front and rear heights directly above their bed channel counter parts matches timber as Floyd states, they also better time align with the bed channels and in my experience are incredible at pressurizing a room. A perfect way to demo this is get a copy of Kraftwerks The Catalogue concert bluray which has an Atmos mix and can be played in 3D or 2D (3D is AMAZING if you can wangle it but the main thing is the atmos mix). Talk about pressurizing a room at reference volume levels, it will blow your mind. The bookshelfs as height channels have no trouble keeping up, the smaller in ceiling speakers I just don’t see having enough muscle. My heights are active and so the muscle they add to a concert or action movie are OTT. You can achieve the same thing with passive bookshelfs like Floyd did too:

@kota1 thanks a lot, do you have any idea how much time and effort

you are about to put me through, ( I knew

that would be the answer) thank you. Merry Christmas

@thespeakerdude , There is no accounting for taste. There is no explanation for it, never will be. Some people prefer to listen to systems that are too bright or have too much bass. A sales technique we use to use was to figure out what the person like to listen to then EQ the equipment we wanted to sell to their preference. I got myself out of the Mid Fi world because of the skullduggery. Having dealt with digital signal processing for 25 years or so it is absolutely possible to tailor a system's amplitude response to make it sound like anything from a tonality perspective. The thing is you can not make a bad system image no matter what digital capability you have. It is the most difficult aspect to get right. You can make a good system image better with digital processing.  My experience with multiple speaker set ups is that they only make things worse. My experience in that regard is extremely limited. It seems throughout modern history the industry has tried over and over to shove multiple speakers and amplifiers down our throats always promising a revolution in sound. The results seem to be that all the serious listener's I know still prefer 2 channel systems. There may be more magic you can perform on the recording side. My knowledge of that part is basic at best. 

@mijostyn I very much feel the future is multiple speakers. However when I spend hours listening to surround sound mixes then go back to the 2 channel original it is always the same the 2 channel is better. I don't know why but it is clear 2 channel music is best now. I would say Atmos is best for movies, I don't understand the reason why music now is best in 2 channel and movies are best in multi channel. 

Also dumb question I don't understand using line array speakers in small rooms, I do understand the advantages in efficiency of line arrays but why embrace a phase problem by definition in a small room. I'm sure your speakers sound wonderful I just don't know why someone who is such a careful listener would pick line arrays, this is not a critical note I simply don't know it is my own experience that brings the question I've never seen line arrays in a studio only large room concerts. Thanks