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Audiophile Active Speakers?

Bracing for a flame war on this one - but are there any really seriously good sounding active floor standers? The new Dynaudio XEO 6's intrigued me.

Here's why I'm interested. I recently acquired some great Verity Audio speakers that I realized my entire cabling, amps, preamps etc were too warm for. Problem is I'm getting past the point where I see this as a hobby and am just looking for good music reproduction without tons of system matching experimentation etc.

One interesting option would be selling all my electronics, cables, etc on A-gon and just purchasing a good DAC and good sounding Active floor standers. I could therefore afford decent speakers (up to $7K or so), pocket some cash, simply the system (and save lots of time and grief shopping for matching components).

Am I expecting something that would sound as good as the Verity's with appropriately good electronics? No - not even close.

But a quality audiophile sound I could live with and possible tweak with the right sounding DAC that could make me more or less satisfied is the goal. The don't have to be magical like the Verity's. Any thoughts?
larrybou
loftarasa
171 posts
 
Larrybou, on dedicated preamp vs dac-pre into actives, this
is totally dependent on the quality of the dac-pre in
question.

If you don't need analogue input selection, then a dac-pre
is the best way to go for purity and transparency. IME, it
makes utterly good sense to eliminate an unncessary
active/passive stage, plus the extra interconnect and power
cables.

Then again, not all output stages in dacs are made equal,
and it will be a question of synergy as per normal system
matching. There will also always be transparent and
synergistic preamps that will work well, but the trade-off
is generally significant extra cost (which could have gone
back to improving the source component).

I don't seem to like the built-in volume controls of certain
DACs like the ESS Sabre and Wolfson chips. OTOH, the one in
my NAD M51 is heaps better with my ATC amp than the
Benchmark DAC2 HGC and also the iFi iTube buffer, which I
tried out. At a different price range, the pre section of
the AMR DP-777 is meant to be very, very good.

If you're going active like with ATCs, you'll also
absolutely want to be going with a dac-pre with balanced
outputs, also.
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b_limo's avatar
b_limo
2,277 posts
 
Interesting thread as I've always liked the idea of powered monitors. I've had the KRK rokit 8's and also a mackie srm450 at one point. Both good for what they are and I've always been intrigued by self powered speakers.

Didn't know atc is so expensive... Those focal's with the berrylium tweeters look nice too.

What would be some better dac choices with good volume control (or could I continue using my lightspeed?) and balanced outs?
theophile's avatar
theophile
245 posts
 
My KRK Expose E8Bs surprised me more than any speakers I've heard in 35+ years. More so as I have used the insight that they have given me into the rest of my system, to fine tune the upstream sound.

I've not heard the active studio monitor competition at the level that they compete, but I have heard a decent amount of equipment and systems since the late '70s and the E8Bs on the end of a decent system do right by the music.

Good luck getting a demo where the partnering equipment will do them justice.
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