Audiophile Active Speakers?

"I realized my entire cabling, amps, preamps etc were too warm ...I'm just looking for good music reproduction without tons of system matching experimentation etc"

- I would get active ATC SCM50/100/150 ASLs in a heartbeat (if I had the room and cash)! Have you heard the ATC mid? It's uniquely transparent and natural. The whole range has also been recently upgraded with the new in-house ATC tweeter. Benefits of active crossover optimized to the drivers, no more speaker cables, bullet-proof build, tons of power...go audition them!

Larrybou, on dedicated preamp vs dac-pre into actives, this
is totally dependent on the quality of the dac-pre in
question.

If you don't need analogue input selection, then a dac-pre
is the best way to go for purity and transparency. IME, it
makes utterly good sense to eliminate an unncessary
active/passive stage, plus the extra interconnect and power
cables.

Then again, not all output stages in dacs are made equal,
and it will be a question of synergy as per normal system
matching. There will also always be transparent and
synergistic preamps that will work well, but the trade-off
is generally significant extra cost (which could have gone
back to improving the source component).

I don't seem to like the built-in volume controls of certain
DACs like the ESS Sabre and Wolfson chips. OTOH, the one in
my NAD M51 is heaps better with my ATC amp than the
Benchmark DAC2 HGC and also the iFi iTube buffer, which I
tried out. At a different price range, the pre section of
the AMR DP-777 is meant to be very, very good.

If you're going active like with ATCs, you'll also
absolutely want to be going with a dac-pre with balanced
outputs, also.

It seems like most of the active speakers (ATC included) have a reputation of being on the brighter more etched or revealing side. Is this true?

This is absolutely not true. In fact, the older SEAS tweeters (before ATC came out with their new inhouse ones) are quite sweet sounding. Also, the amp design ATC use is AB with class A bias. It's more organic sounding to me than say Bryston.

What people are talking about is ATCs are tuned real flat with low distortion. The bass is also tuned to be clean and tight rather than boomy or sonorous. So there's no second-harmonic euphony, I suppose. On good quality recordings, this makes them incredibly transparent and natural through the midband, especially. Equally, on crappy recordings, you'll hear the crappy mix. This isn't the fault of the gear rather than the producer!

This banks a lot then on the front-end source/preamp to balance out these characteristics. In a home setting, I agree too much ruler flat gear can be brutal, but it's so easy to find well-balanced sources (say with tube outputs or high class A-biased outputs). It's not at all easy to find pure sounding speakers that don't compromize fidelity in other areas.

I would contact ATC dealers directly rather if you're not having much luck with the distributor, Brad Lund of Lonemountain Audio. Buying used is also an option to reduce the sticker shock. Another brand that works in a similar space with pro and consumer active speakers is PMC, which are also very good.

Bob, it's the same guy, Brad Lunde. He's the US distributor for Pro (Las Vegas Pro Audio) and Consumer (Lonemountain)