Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

@phusis , trust me on this one. Adding a processor like the Trinnov or DEQX is in no way shape or form a "plug and play" solution. They try to market them as being simple to set up, but if you are perfectionistic they are not. You have to experiment and learn to get the most out of them. It must have taken me 2-3 years to get my TacT tuned the way I wanted the system to sound. Most of this was learning manage the power of such a sonic tool and get the most out of it. It is far more complex and involving than any "active" speaker I am familiar with. You are right about amps. Any amp can drive any driver, the question is how well. That choice can be made by any knowledgeable person. I do not like my choices being made by other people. 

@sokogear Then we will agree to disagree. Yes, Ekornes is the parent company's name. I bought mine purely on the look and reputation of the brand. Glad to hear yours was bullet proof, if not sokogear proof:-) We are very happy with them so far. Eventually the batteries will die and will have to be replaced but that is the price you pay for not having power cords lying around. 

@donavabdear , I think smart people hate being bored. They always have to be doing something. The piano produces a very complex sound from the percussion of the hammers to the vibration of the strings and soundboard, but it is all sound. It is the job of a HiFi system to reproduce sound, for better or for worse. Because there is so much variability in the way any piano will sound in any room it is hard for us to distinguish real from reproduced if the recording and system are good. Even in extremely distorted form on a terrible system you will still recognize it as being a piano. You can even tell if it is a synthesizer piano or a real one. This in no way reduces the coolness of your digital player piano. 

@brianlucey , and that is the art of mastering. Some are good at it, others not so much. It is why a lot of us prefer the old 2 or 3 mic live classical recordings. IMHO the goal should be to fool the listener into believing they are hearing a live recording. In some cases the artist may desire a surrealistic result like Pink FLoyds The Wall and art certainly has it's place. I hear mastering mistakes all the time like pianos and drums that stretch from one side of the stage to the other. Voices on echo and instruments not or some instruments on echo and others not. That makes them sound as if they are in two different environments at the same time. I do not know if this is bad mixing or the result of listening to the systems you are using. These mistakes seem to be much less frequent on live recordings even though most of these are multi tracks from the sound board.

@mijostyn  they are not "mistakes".  You have an idealism and perfectionism basis to music that's not real life.  Two speakers can't do the live event.  Atmos is better but cant.  It's an unreachable goal.  What's creative and joyful in pop music since Bing Crosby relied on the early Altec "birdcage" mic to have vocal power and a career or Madonna relied on early Eventide vocal tuning ... was the freedom and possibilities of doing things that were NOT REAL LIFE.  Your worldview is limited.  I feel sad you're missing out on so many joyful possibilities.  There is no reproduction. No perfect anything.  It's all art.  Craft.  Personal.  Music is a global and timeless language of connection. Not perfection.  

Did Andrew Jones built a powered speaker yet?Honestly nothing wrong using powered speakers? But I preferred to use my own choice of amplifier.

@brianlucey , what 3 headphones do you use to master Atmos? Thanks.

@jayctoy , yes, Andrew Jones has designed an active speaker, this is from his interview with SoundStage. He actually confirms my earlier post, if you want a great sounding system that is cost effective (Andrew states he can’t get the same performance as an active speaker from a passive with the same budget) and convenient (or as Andrew says, simpler), use active speakers:

GB: I’ve always been a big believer in active speakers, but they haven’t been well accepted by audiophiles. How are the Navises being accepted?

(This opening frame of reference about active and audiophiles goes directly back to the OP, here is Andrew Jones on the topic)

AJ: They’ve been shipping for a couple of months, and have received great commentary. I showed them at a few dealer events last year, and these went really well. There were a lot of die-hard audiophiles at these events, and I expected to hear comments like, “I want to be able to choose my components.” Instead, we had people telling us, “I’m at the point where I’m looking to simplify. We have a lot of boxes cluttering up the house. I want good sound quality, but I want it in a simpler format.”

The fear with active and powered speakers is that you’re losing some choice in how you put your system together. But it seems we’re getting past that point. In the past, when we talked about active speakers, people would ask, “What do you know about amplifiers? Why should I trust that you’ll use a good amplifier?”

I came up with a way of addressing this question. When people listen to one of my Debut speakers, they don’t ask, “I wonder what this would sound like if you used this SEAS tweeter or that Vifa woofer.” They just accept the choices I’ve made. In an active speaker, I’ve gone one step further in adding another component. But now I have all the benefits of an active design. So [they] just accept them. With passive speakers plus a single amplifier, I couldn’t have achieved that performance at that price.

Each amplifier is matched to the driver, and only has to operate over a limited frequency range. It’s operating into a simpler impedance, so it’s not going to have high-current demands. Also, the temporal characteristics of music change with frequency. High frequencies require very little average power, but have a lot of peaks. Bass requires much higher average power, but has far fewer peaks. You can match the amplifier to those characteristics as well.

https://www.soundstagesimplifi.com/index.php/feature-articles/80-active-voices-part-one-elacs-andrew-jones