Why are you listening? To hear the mistakes the engineers made or to enjoy the music? I have a pair of unforgiving loudspeakers coupled to an excellent Sophia A/B amp. Listening to re-mastered Hot 5s & Diana Krall is bliss. There's a lot else, any Little Feat CD for instance, that hurts my ears.
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.