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.

donavabdear

@donavabdear , about to run out the door, but the high end Focals, like some other speakers in that space, B&W comes to mind, have too much off axis energy at high frequencies and by today's standards poor directivity control. Unless they are in a heavily damped room, they will come across as bright. Same problem with Focal professional monitors like the aforementioned Solo/Trio6 Be from Focal.  The Focals probably could sound very good in the right room.

w.r.t. tearing out crossovers and DIYing, back to one of things I said early in this thread. To make a good active speaker, you still need to start with an acoustically good speaker. If using simple external active crossover, then you need to start with good low distortion drivers too.

@thespeakerdude 

To make a good active speaker, you still need to start with an acoustically good speaker.

If I have $40K and want a home theater of active speakers what would "acoustically good" system would YOU recommend? 

 

@donavabdear

I was wrong about my purchase

+1- As you make bad purchases inevitably ask your self if you were starting over would you still buy that same component. If the answer is no you should sell it immediately, no sense being miserable. The opposite happens too, you have something you like and sell it for an "upgrade" and then miss what you sold so bad you have "sellers remorse".

--it happens ☹

@kota1 When I bought the Focal Stella’s and the Naim amp I was thinking that they made these units for each other the Naim Adam HP edition has many upgrades above the normal Adam Unity amp the Stella headphones were upgraded around the same time seemed to me like these should have been made synergistically Focal and Naim / Anthem and Paradigm etc. I’m not sure I can use my Naim for it’s streamer somewhere else and buy a tube headphone amp and save my headphones, they are to analytical. Do you see the connection between the headphones and the headphone amp being made by the same company and speakers being powered by amps that have been made for them?