Do Active Speakers Belong In A High End System?

All live events, even pure electronically amplified ones, have the equivalent of a soundstage and imaging, in home audio jingo. What varies is its nature case by case. In some cases, there may be similarities between what is heard live and what is heard at home, but that is never a given case by case. In all cases, what you hear is determined largely by how things are setup, venue acoustics, and location based perspective of the listener. If what you hear at home can fool you into thinking it were actually live with your eyes closed, in at least some cases, you are in the game. If it never does, then you either do not care (which is everyone's prerogative of course) or something may be amiss.

Omsed, exclude me from that list. When I lived in NYC, I didn't even think of having high-fidelity rig that I own now. It was good enough to visit Birdland, Irridium, BBKing, Blue Note, Bottom Line and many other excellent venues for sound and live performances. The larger venues such as Town Hall, Beacon Theatre were also often perfectly set up for good sound.

These are truly high end

http://www.steinwaylyngdorf.com/products/model-d-speaker

Czarivey, good for you, not losing sight of live music that so many do. Hey, that is not evil, liking the equipment more than music and more than live music, specifically. What galls me is that those same folks who have not been out in years and never really went out to concerts at all will pontificate about what system is best, and pointing out flaws without knowing what music sounds like.

I had a loyal audio friend listen to Paul Desmond on a piece where he is playing in the upper registers with his oh so pure sound. He said "that cartridge is not very good, is that supposed to be a sax, it sounds half like a clarinet". Well, in those registers he had so little reed sound (Desmond) that indeed he did sometimes sound like he was playing a clarinet. This guy had never heard the variety in sax sounds to note that there is a big variety, some sounding like Desmond, some sounding the opposite with a reedy, buzzy, brightish sound. Turns out he had not been to a live concert in "many years", as he said.

I thought "Of course you have not been out for years, this is high end audio after all, you KNOW your system sounds better"! Why go???