Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused


17 of 23 speakers in my studio and home theater systems are internally powered. My studio system is all Genelec and sounds very accurate. I know the best new concert and studio speakers are internally powered there are great technical reasons to design a speaker and an amp synergistically, this concept is much more important to sound quality than the vibration systems we often buy. How can an audiophile justify a vibration system of any sort with this in mind.

donavabdear

@mijostyn ,

 

Your setup a a good example of where an active speaker could provide benefit. A sub-woofer designed to compliment your speakers could use multiple drivers to create a shaped emission that matches your main speakers more closely. Could you do that passively? Perhaps, but it is much easier to do with DSP, and it is more flexible. There could be options for programming the listener distance to better shape the response as the speaker transitions from line source to other, etc.  Similar to how external DSP can not fix all room issues, it cannot fix all inherent speaker issues either. At the penultimate, a sophisticated active solution could shape the drive signal for the panels to extend dynamic range.

@mijostyn , as for multichannel there are fewer recordings being made than in the past, as for Atmos it is snowballing. Atmos is OBJECT based, not CHANNEL based. It is a different category, not channel based at all. All you need to experience it is a set of the right headphones. Stop by the atmos music thread if you want to discuss. 

 

@thespeakerdude Something we haven't mentioned is the nature of class D amps when they can be designed for a particular impedance of speaker they can be very good, this is why a class D Subs are not so much of a compromise it acts basically like an AB amp. With class D amps being designed for a smaller frequency window of driver the normal problem with class D amps is helped because impedance changes with frequency so the filter circuit can be much simpler. Thoughts?

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