Who actually uses digital speakers?

Hi Erik,

Just to be clear "wider isn’t worth the extra floor space" in my context is "with (our Apollos and) DSP/Room correction wider isn’t worth the extra floor space".

If you are building a line array without digital room correction (or passive) and have a decent size room I would encourage you to try a wide baffle. Flat baffles are by far the easiest to build.

To the OP: Like the all-inclusive active systems, our system has digital inputs as well. We sometimes use our transport or server directly in. Not having a DAC and preamp between the digital source and processor sounds a little different, both good just different. In our system the quality of the digital source becomes more apparent when connected directly. My preamp is tube based, BTW. My experience is that the quality of the components and a correct interface make a much bigger difference and is more important than worrying about another conversion.

wolf_garcia I appreciate your sentiment. I hear that concern from time to time from people interested in our speakers. I agree with the concern. Fixed systems, whether digital active or passive are tonally "tuned" by the speaker designer. The better automatic DSP/Room correction systems deal mostly with addressing room issues. They don't alter tonality unless manual adjustments are done. It is easy to negatively affect the SQ with excessive manual adjustments. I encourage people to try different settings so they learn. It's easy to go back to the default so no harm done.

Mike

@erik_squires You put me in a bind- I can't avoid making you wrong; if I don't jump in, then I made you wrong, If I do jump in, I have to say there's no such thing as a digital speaker...

Seriously though IMO powered speakers are not the best choice unless you're pressed for space. The first powered speaker I heard was the old Acoustat. The speaker was pretty good but the hybrid amp it used was kind of terrible. It taught me an important lesson: If you want to improve either the amp or speaker, you have to change out both if your speaker is self-powered.

This hasn't changed in the class D era. There is as much variance in the sound of class D amps now as you hear with the spectrum of all tube amps. Some are musical and others are not. If you want to improve the amp in your speaker, you're likely going to have to replace the speaker.

IMO/IME better if you can work out a decent speaker and then if the amp doesn't suit, get a different amp.

And so the same applies if there is a digital only input. How good is the DAC in there? Its only been recently that DACs have gotten good enough and small enough that doing something like that might make sense. But what if you want a better DAC or amp or speaker....

Hey @atmasphere 

I am with you in terms of absolute audiophile-ness.  Separate dac/amp/speakers offer absolute control over every aspect of the reproduction.  Powered speakers however reduce clutter, improve efficiency and even let us do things with cabinets we couldn't do otherwise, not to mention perhaps let us better tune for room placement.

The digital powered speaker is in a way the ultimate integrated however.  Just put a coax or Ethernet cable in and out comes music.  That has to be appealing to many.

Still, my real question for this thread was more about whether or not the digital input speaker has evolved very much since I first became aware of Meridian.