Are active speakers worth it now?


I've been paying attention to recent reviews and product announcements for active speakers.  Mind you, I'm a convert, I think active speakers are the right answer for many, but I'm a conditional fanboy.  For me it's conditional on the overall value. 

In the residential high-end ATC has long been a darling of audiophiles, and of course many studio monitors are active.  Recent reviews for the Grimm, Focal and Dynaudio active in Stereophile make me hopeful this trend will continue, but at what cost? 

That question is literal.  Admittedly these speakers have amps built in so that is one less component and cables to buy, but ahem, those prices leave me unimpressed.  I'm just one minor voice though, so I ask you, A'goners, if you've been thinking of going fully active like me and what do you think of the price/performance of the marketplace, both in the pro arena and residential high-end?  Do these prices say "bargain" to you or "simplicity for a price?" 

erik_squires

An active system, absolutely, which I assume you are already aware of since, if I remember correctly, you are using powered subs with a miniDSP.

Active speakers…depends. If the manufacturer gives you full access to the DSP engines or you are using them in a very well treated room, definitely. If you don’t have access to the DSP and your are in an untreated room, then I believe that most of the benefits of an active speaker would be lost to the room. Though, having the ability to control, at the very least the output ratios between drivers, can offer significant improvements to your listening enjoyment.

I agree with ditusa, using external active balanced electronics will allow your system to achieve its highest potential. I say balanced, because with external electronics you can be in the position where you could be using several feet of extra cabling and possibly several gains stages and running single ended leaves the door open for too much unwanted noise to enter the chain.

I'm not sure about good value but I do know ATC makes some incredible active speakers if buy in a heartbeat 

An additional thought. Good amplifiers put great thought and effort into reducing physical vibration control. Putting the amplifier into a vibrating speaker box is completely antithetical to this. I can hear improvement in my system by putting vibration control on my separate amp. While my speakers weigh 134 pound each, the vibration their sound is creating is easily measured between the speakers. This is one of the reasons that Townshend Podiums are so effective at improving the sound of my speakers.

Vibration is the enemy of high end sound reproduction.

An active system, absolutely, which I assume you are already aware of since, if I remember correctly, you are using powered subs with a miniDSP.

This is true, but in my case I have 3-way L, C and R speakers with integrated 3-way plate amps.  They are DIY so you can’t do the same math as for commercial speakers, which is what I wanted to talk about.  In the commercial land, the passive to active markup seems astronomical. 

Honestly I think many readers are interpreting my question as "are active speakers any good" which is fine but I wanted to focus more on the $$$ delta between active and passive, which I think is also worth discussing.