Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

@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

@kota1

Ask ATC how much it costs to repair and/or replace the internal amp in a speaker. Or any brand. My Paradigm (great brand btw) subwoofer internal amp died after a decade. It was in auto/on mode for most of its short life. I paid $2500 for it. Paradigm wanted $1750 to replace/repair the internal amp in the sub. I laughed at that. Going to replace it with a REL HT-1205 for $699. My Audio Engine desktop speakers also died after a decade of service. I paid $250 for them, they offered me a 30% discount on buying the next pair. Instead I bought an inexpensive pair of PreSonus speakers, which sound great.

My guess is that ATC would charge quite a bit of cash to repair a blown amp in one of their speakers. Why take the chance that this happens at all? I’d be petrified that one day I wake up to find that one of the speakers isn’t working. Passives you never have that problem, unless you mistakenly blow out a tweeter. I’ve never had that happen over decades of listening. BTW--I’m not against the idea of active speakers, just my take. I have a pair of JL Audio’s for my main rig. Cheers.

@fred60 , I love your energy but no, I won’t contact ATC customer service for you, please use their website. I am sure a professional rep that can be trusted will do much better than kota1 in a chat room for these types of questions.

I will share something that happened to my actives. I had a driver damaged in my active 20 due to vandalism, someone renting the condo I had them in cut it with a knife. I pulled the driver, sent it to Paradigm, they re-coned it in their factory and I am back in business. The price was extremely fair and much less than the cost of the driver or a new speaker. The speaker is out of production and they had no problem fixing it.

Given your past experience I get your point.

Kota 1 good post thank you very informative, Iam not surpriseHe likes simpler. He never has cdp or turntable on his ELac room? Always tablet he has to play music.