Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

@pcrhkr

When you buy Levinson separates you are able to mix and match passive speakers until you find the match you prefer. When you buy a powered speaker with a plate amp you have the ability to mix and match preamps. Whichever you prefer is up to you. I have passive and active versions of the Paradigm Reference 20 speaker and I could never get the same bass extension with the passive speaker, regardless the amp. If I already had $20,000 monoblocks maybe they would sound better matched with the passive Paradigms in the soundstage or the mids. At the end of the day it would be "different" and is a matter of preference and budget.

@kota1 Thank you I’ll look into it.

@secretguy Look at it this way if you buy very expensive speakers and very expensive amps how do you know they work together with the best efficiency, impedance matching, power efficiency per driver, particular driver power matching, driver frequency matching, just to name a few things. The answer is amps and speakers don’t work together most efficiently if they are not designed to work together. If you don’t like speakers with amps built in then get speakers that are designed to be run with outboard amps and crossovers. How could this not make sense. Audiophiles are very confused.

@donavabdear ,

That you for continuing to carry the torch. @lonemountain same, here and on the other thread. Some people want to learn. Some people want to move forward. Others don't want to learn. Others don't want to move forward. Some who don't want to move forward, don't even want others to move forward, and even some who do move forward don't want other to move forward faster than they are.

I have noticed just how few people from industry, even the audiophile industry post here. There is one amplifier designer / vendor. There are some who sell questionable products, but I don't count them. Given how my posts have been met, I am not surprised. I provided some links above, some heady reading, some pretty easy on where active speakers can and are heading. The only reply, derisive.

Are audiophiles confused? Perhaps. Perhaps they just don't want to move forward and don't want others to either.

@thespeakerdude Are audiophiles confused? I think I know the why of the answer. Great music is emotional when it sounds great and you've spent 100s of thousands of dollars getting there it's not only emotional but it crosses the line to something that stock traders call overconfidence bias as its name implies the person thinks they are right about the equipment they've chosen and how it sounds. Audiophiles rest on many emotions even peer pressure to show how cool their equipment is. All these emotions add up to someone who will pay $1000 for an AC cable 3 feet long that sits between standard Romex and 16 gage internal wire in an amp, not to mention the $400 custom fuse that sits between PC board tracers. 

Moving forward in sound is a little like dating a beautiful woman you must be very careful of the emotional issues which make the actual practical issues more difficult to see and understand. Music is close to our hears and our wallets both are fragile and self serving.

@pcrhkr My question is not that you bought a great amp and speaker, but that you are listening not to the speaker, but mostly wire. IF anyone realized how much wire is in a good LF inductor, then additional wire in the other inductors for midrange etc, they would be horrified. It's tens of feet -maybe even a hundred feet of wire in a giant LF inductor set up for a very low crossover point. We all know what 3- 6 feet of speaker wire between amp and speaker can do, imagine all that wire in the [passive] crossover does AND YOU CANNOT CHANGE IT.   Does anyone actually think they are using Cardas in that Inductor? In active, there is about 12 inches of wire and no big inductors in the single path.

Brad