Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

Did Andrew Jones built a powered speaker yet?Honestly nothing wrong using powered speakers? But I preferred to use my own choice of amplifier.

@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.

Yes, you do have full control over the drivers - if the context implies the omission of a passive cross-over with dedicated amp channels looking directly into each driver section. Any "next level direct driver control"-claim (my own wording) essentially put forth by the bundled active speaker manufacturers, if it were to distance themselves from a claimed inferior outboard solution, actively configured as well, would seem dubious to me, whereas they would be right to do so with a passively configured speaker by comparison.  

 

@phusis , I am not sure we are understanding each other.

I could put the active portion of the speaker in the speaker or in an outboard box. That much is obvious.

What I can't do is replace my electronics with anyone else's electronics. As noted, the connection to the driver may require 4 wires (or more), and only I, the MFR knows the intricate details of what is needed to optimize how that speaker element is driven and I won't be sharing that. That is I/P.  The other case I noted is multiple similar elements being driven to accomplish a specific function. That is far more than just adding some external amps to replace internal ones. It is like saying just give me the car, and I will put my own engine in at that point.

 

@thespeakerdude @phusis

per Andrew Jones:

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.

I like giving this control to the speaker designer to match the amp to the driver because it sucks when you misfire. I have a beautiful Parasound Zamp but it never got my JBL 230's to really open it up. Swapped it out for a Carver with more power and tracking down conversion and BOOM wall to wall sound stage. This is not fun for me to burn cash chasing down a match when I can get it pretty much perfect in a bi-amp (or even tri amp) off the shelf, first try, with a good active speaker. YMMV.

Obviously @brianlucey likes his DACs, amps, and speakers, and how they are connected, but they are but one combination and even assigning a ranking, like 3rd best DAC made or best amp you can buy is purely one person's opinion, no matter how experienced they may be, they still have their own conditioning and biases that influence their choices. They may be great speakers, but would they meet the criteria of accurate? I honestly don't know. I know the Allnic amplifier cannot be neutral. It must, by virtue of its design, impact a unique sound that other amplifiers may not or will not.

Many active speakers are designed to offer a low system cost. Professional sound reinforcement are active for reliability and ease of use. The highest end professional monitors are active for accuracy, dispersion, and consistency. An expensive external DAC or tube amplifier will not make them more accurate, it will make them less. They are not the bottleneck. Next generation active speakers, professional and consumer will make further strides in improved accuracy, and continue the trend on the consumer side of dispersion control.

It is a philosophical difference of approach. If I add something to the sound, some may like it, some may not, it may work in some situations, and not in others. Some things I add can be taken out by external processors. Others cannot. Some things can be accomplished with external processors, and acoustic treatments, others cannot. If I provide the customer with something that has inherent accuracy, that has as few warts as possible, and is even flexible in how it radiates the sound, then I am giving them a canvas and brushes to paint the picture they want, not the one I want to sell them.

Inherent accuracy, Neumann:

 

Fred 60

I can tell you what it costs to repair an ATC active amplifer. The same as it costs to repair a regular [passive speaker] amplifier; perhaps less as with passive speaker amps, often the damage is inflicted by connectrors, or shorts in cable, etc. Active amp failiures are often (in analog amplifiers) one failed circuit part: a through hole resistor, sometimes a MOSFET or output device.  Passive system amplifers can be that, but are more often multiple burned output devices or other failures from self inflicted shorts (from speaker cables or connectors). There is essentially no differnce between an internal analog amp and external one.

In active, if an amp fails, you take it out of the back of the speaker box with a screw driver, disconnect the wires to the drivers and ship it in by itself for repair. If a passive amp fails, you are diconnecting it from the drivers and sending it in for repair. IN either case, you aren't sending the entire speaker in.  Saying active is a problem due to reliability is like saying a tube amp is more reliable than a solid state amp because you can "see" which tube is out. Or a class AB amp is more reliable than a Class A amp because Class A amps get hot.

Unless your idea of active is all this cheap chinese crap beng sold on amazon, or entry level active speakers, there is no difference between reliability in an active and passve -depending on how its engineered.  ATC, the brand Ive worked with for 20+ years, the internal amp pack is 100% all analog and hand made in factory by people, not machines. It is not cheap, it is not unreliable. By itself, the amp pack cossts about US$6,000. 

Many of the amps talked about favorably here use mostly chinese boards built by machines. How that is so much more comforting than a 100% hand made pure analog amp? ATC amp packs are built better than most of the audio gear out there.  There is no magic dust or other hidden process.

In this active discussion, everyone keeps ignoring and bypassing the #1 issue of passive: how adding a whole lot of parts and wire between amplifier and speaker is a good thing. It amazes me that this "truth" is just ignored. Would you want to run signal through a "speaker level" preamp after your amp? Or some "speaker level" processors? People freak out over running a speaker level switcher, that this affects performance (and it can); a passive crossover is not invisible or transparent in any way. A passive crossover is a series of filters designed for speaker level instead of line level - when line level is where it can be done with low distortion. Speaker level is the WORST place to attempt using lots of copper wire and filters and then hang even more speaker wire after that. Why can’t people see that as a major issue? Is it because we’ve been doing it that since 1950 and damn it, we are gonna keep doing it?

Its true that passive can be good, very good in fact, but how does that mean active has to be worse? That active is somehow is inferior becasue we might not understand it as clearly?  People that deny active are not understanding the basics of what a passive crossover does vs. what an active crossover does. I sometimes feels like this active vs passive argument is right up there with the sun rotates around the earth or electric cars are inherently better for the environment (while we dig up lots of litium to put in batteries and your electricity is supplied by a coal fired plant).  

Brad

 

Once I had active Avantgarde Acoustic speakers, they have costed around 10k new. For all the reasons above mentioned I thought that it could be a good concept. I was wrong, because I did not liked that particular sound. No matter how I tried, with few combinations (with Burmester 011 preamp and Burmester 001 cd player, than with ARC Ref 3 and Dcs Puccini) I could not escape hearing their amps, which simply were not to my liking.

My point is simple. No matter how ’concept’ might be good looking on the paper, everything has its imanent sound. For example, I do not like the sound of ATC. I like Sonus Faber much bettter. Than again, I would never use the amp from SF (they had few models as well)

So, there are so many great speaker brands and so many great amp brands. Until the ones you like them most start packing them into one box (which is an illusion ) there aint going to be ’best’ speaker/amp one box solution, no matter how ’accurate’ somebody claims they are. This discussion is pointless, imho

Back in 1999 I had the idea to build a fully horn loaded speaker system with the bass being played by folded corner horns back in the corners and mid range (actually wide range) and super tweeter horns being well out into the room where they could image better.  Obviously DSP was needed to correct the large distance difference between the various horn drivers.   It was 2004 before I found a DSP unit which would do everything I needed at a price I could afford.  That DSP was the initial commercial offering from DEQX.  I built the system then.  It was initially somewhat disappointing.

Over the next thirteen years I changed woofers, folded corner horns, midrange horn drivers, added horn super tweeters and went through six different changes of amplifiers as well as upgrading the DEQX.  I programmed and reprogrammed and reprogrammed the DEQX over and over.  Programming the DEQX  is neither quick nor easy.  I had the system sounding really good, but I always felt it could be better.  Then in 2017 I engaged the services of a DEQX company approved DEQExpert, Larry Owens,  Mr. Owens, a very smart man, connected his PC to my PC which was connected to the DEQX,  and we communicated via a Skype call while he did speaker calibration and correction, time and phase correction, room correction and crossovers.  If I remember correctly he took a total of about seven hours in two or three sessions to complete the process.  Crossovers were set at 200Hz and 8 kHz with all roll offs being 96 dB/octave.

The speaker/amp system finally sounded as I had imagined it back in 1999.  Modesty prevents me from using all the superlatives I feel my system deserves, but when fellow audiophiles come for a listen and say things such as, "that's the best I ever heard that song" I am immensely gratified.

Thus I have an active system with drivers and amplifiers of my own choosing with every element being easy to change.  I think I have the best of both worlds.

 

@mijostyn  - not sure what you are responding to with your batteries statement. Also you didn't answer my question about what % of the time you listen to digital vs. records.

 

@kingharold great story, I’m sure there was a lot of frustration, so glad you hung in there over all that time.

@lonemountain great post and you are right it is important to keep the signal the same level as best you can, doing crossover work at speaker level is silly everyone knows it, reason # 847 why speakers and amps need to be made for each other. Funny how right you are no one mentioned the many reasons why working on the signal after the amplifier is definitely suboptimal.

@kingharold +10, my hats off to you, you curated the entire chain, even the programming support from DEQX until you got what you wanted.

@lonemountain +10, great post and having owned both reference level passive and active speakers you can definitely hear the difference it makes without a crossover at speaker level, I especially notice it on very dynamic content listening at loud levels. No strain, no compression as you start to crank it, my active speakers kick in and just run full throttle without a complaint. I imagine that's another reason they like them in the studio.

@brianlucey , first of all let's get this straight,  music and sound reproduction are two entirely separate subjects. I can love music on a table radio. Accurate reproduction is accurate or it is not. A 20 foot wide piano is not accurate. A guitar right in front of you and the voice of the guitarist 30 yards away is not accurate. There are innumerable surrealisms created by bad mastering and engineering which is what makes the really talented engineers shine. What is the difference between a bad recording and a great one? Are you trying to tell me there are no bad recordings? 

Do me a favor. Please do not feel sorry for me. I do not deserve it. Save it for someone who really needs it. 

@sokogear , Stressless chairs can now be ordered with battery power supplies. They do not need to be plugged in which is really nice if you have three of them. You charge them up every 3-4 months. For serious listening I would say about 50/50 digital/analog. In the shop it is 100% digital for obvious reasons.

 

@mijostyn wrote:

@phusis , trust me on this one. Adding a processor like the Trinnov or DEQX is in no way shape or form a "plug and play" solution. They try to market them as being simple to set up, but if you are perfectionistic they are not. You have to experiment and learn to get the most out of them. It must have taken me 2-3 years to get my TacT tuned the way I wanted the system to sound. Most of this was learning manage the power of such a sonic tool and get the most out of it. It is far more complex and involving than any "active" speaker I am familiar with.

Absolutely agree, it’s a process for sure and not for the faint of heart. Very much worth it, though.

You are right about amps. Any amp can drive any driver, the question is how well. That choice can be made by any knowledgeable person. I do not like my choices being made by other people.

People here seem to make a fuss about amp-driver matching with active configuration in particular, but while it lends a lot more opportunities here it’s also the far lesser issue per se vs. matching an amp with a passively configured speaker. A paradoxical way to assess amp-driver/speaker matching here, if you ask me.

@thespeakerdude wrote:

@phusis , I am not sure we are understanding each other.

I could put the active portion of the speaker in the speaker or in an outboard box. That much is obvious.

Check.

What I can’t do is replace my electronics with anyone else’s electronics. As noted, the connection to the driver may require 4 wires (or more), and only I, the MFR knows the intricate details of what is needed to optimize how that speaker element is driven and I won’t be sharing that. That is I/P.

Should make sense, though not really interested in the "secret sauce." I’ve had my own share of intricacies to dig up - while fairly straight forward coming down to it - getting my own active setup sounding the way it does now, and it’s been a lengthy process I’ve enjoyed, and still does. Every worthwhile permutation in hardware config. potentially requires subtly resetting filter values and speaker placement - no big mysteries there.

The other case I noted is multiple similar elements being driven to accomplish a specific function. That is far more than just adding some external amps to replace internal ones. It is like saying just give me the car, and I will put my own engine in at that point.

You’re making it sound as if using external amps in an active configuration, certainly in my case, is a careless and crude affair, but that’s really only assuming the worst of it while promoting your own business of an inboard solution as that which harbors the best of active. For you information I didn’t replace anything, I merely worked from an outset and over time, a few years by now, have gotten to a place where the amps used, their place in the driver configuration (with quite a few permutations with a range of amps), speaker placement, digital filter settings and overall synergy in my acoustic surroundings forms into a sonic outcome that easily compares to any preassembled and bundled active speaker I’ve heard, and should I say handily beats them in vital areas with the accommodation to physics afforded with an outboard solution - something that inboards can only dream of as per their typical incarnations. And no, it’s not about loud per se..

@kota1 wrote:

per Andrew Jones:

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.

Nothing here at odds with my own approach to matching amps with driver sections - makes sense. Thanks for posting this.

I like giving this control to the speaker designer to match the amp to the driver because it sucks when you misfire.

How, or to which degree would it "misfire" with an outboard active config. and finding the proper amps for the driver sections here - have you tried it? I mean, it’s not going to blow up. It’s about perspective; matching amps with drivers actively makes for less of a variation between the amps vs. passively, while harnessing the bigger potential of amps used actively. On the other hand an active config. is more revealing with regard to source changes, and cables as well.

I have a beautiful Parasound Zamp but it never got my JBL 230’s to really open it up. Swapped it out for a Carver with more power and tracking down conversion and BOOM wall to wall sound stage.

JBL Studio 230’s, so passive speakers? As I said, with passive speakers the variations between amps and how they’re (usually not) impervious to load differs a lot, while reflecting perceived sonic presentation accordingly.

This is not fun for me to burn cash chasing down a match when I can get it pretty much perfect in a bi-amp (or even tri amp) off the shelf, first try, with a good active speaker. YMMV.

An outboard active solution by contrast isn’t plug-and-play, that’s for sure, but for those willing to invest the time and effort you’ll most likely find yourself very much rewarded, and with a carte blanche slate to work from. IMHO.

@lonemountain wrote:

Many of the amps talked about favorably here use mostly chinese boards built by machines. How that is so much more comforting than a 100% hand made pure analog amp? ATC amp packs are built better than most of the audio gear out there.  There is no magic dust or other hidden process.

Well said. 

One issue is that all speakers (that I am aware of) designed to be driven with an off the shelf amplifier have a cross over that cannot be bypassed to directly connect to the driver. Hence any external amplifier is handicapped by the crossover.

 

From several pages ago @lonemountain ​​​​.  However that's not to say you may not still have some larger passives in the drive circuit of an active speaker but they are part of an integrated solution.

 

 

@phusis when I said misfired it meant mismatched. The Parasound amp is very, very transparent but it didn’t have enough mojo to let that speaker outperform. The 230 is a passive speaker and I really like it. I didn’t know how much I liked it until I paired with the Carver AV505 from the A Series (on the TAS list of 10 most significant amps of all time). This is a BIG 5 channel amp and I only used two channels. The tracking downconverter is like a carburetor, it can move power to channels as called for. OMG, the soundstage opened from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. I was in shock as they never sounded like that before. That was basically luck on my part. For around the same price of that desktop rig I could have gone with these and got room correction too:

r these:

 

You're making it sound as if using external amps in an active configuration, certainly in my case, is a careless and crude affair, but that's really only assuming the worst of it while promoting your own business of an inboard solution as that which harbors the best of active. 

 

Careless? Not at all. Crude only in a comparative sense. I don't think you are understanding the variables that are available though for active speaker implementation. I don't expect a hobby implementation to compete with a large R&D budget so don't take offense. 

@thespeakerdude , do you work in the industry? I may have missed that, really enjoy your posts, thanks.

So what’s the difference in my Protools / Genelec Dolby atmos system and my personal system, both cost just under $200k, are in the same room but 90 degrees apart. My personal system has all passive speakers except the subs 2x 3k W each and the hybrid low frequency part of the Paradigm 9hs that have a 1.4K W amp in each cabinet. The personal system has tube amps and a tube preamp which makes that system sound much more pleasing warm and gives the music or movie a much more pleasing tone, I realize I have a lot of bass but wow is it fun. The personal system is much noisier than the active system even though I’ve spent my share of money trying to find the best boutique tubes there are. The personal system has about $25k of AC power regeneration with 2x PS Audio P20s and new power circuits in my home but still there is a little noise between songs. All the speakers have beryllium high frequency and midrange drivers these from Paradigm were much less harsh than the Focal speakers I almost purchased, I’m exceptionally happy with the mid and high frequencies. The bass is finally ok with essentially 4 subs. The Genelec system sounds awful in comparison it’s not warm and fuzzy the Sub is 1.1k W I think, it’s odd looking in a round cabinet made by Genelec also. This system is not harsh in general except when music comes on that is recorded harshly this system is instantly dynamic and all over the place. The Genelec system feels like a teenager that is about to have a nervous breakdown on one song and then turn into Ella on the next song. These speakers reveal every mistake the engineer or musician made, they are more unforgiving than forgiving, They remind me of Mr. Barcus in high school english they are a very hard task master but if you work really hard they are rewarding friends. I would never want to show the distribution people my movie on this system because it would show all my shortcomings in experience and taste. When someone calls a system “revealing” that often means a justification for the expense of the system it doesn’t mean that system is exceptionally phase coherent and time aligned perfectly. Actually the more revealing a system is means the worse it sounds for a much higher percentage of music or movies that aren’t recorded or mixed to the highest standards. In other words revealing systems sound awful most often

@lone mountain

Wrong.  You are comparing Class A amps vs most internal speaker amps that are Class D.  Class D amps are not repairable.  ATC might be an exception (not Class D?  I don't know), but you don't answer the question: how much would ATC charge to repair an amplifier inside one of their 25K per pair speakers?

 

 

 

@fred60 +1

@mijostyn sadly you’re not only wrong you’re wildly overconfident. There is nothing accurate about sound reproduction anywhere. Not your ears. Not any system. It’s all degrees and taste. Dogma is dangerous in life and in audio. Right or wrong is dangerous too. People with your worldview are antithetical to great music making and the enjoyment of music. Each person sets up a system with technical and subjective features. Nothing absolutely right about any of it. Let’s get that straight. Lol. Mental illness is the refusal to see grey as grey. People do this for clearly personal reasons. Ironically. There is no proof of a right vs. a wrong here. Rightness is another matter.

 

@donavabdear everything you’re saying is subjective. I would cringe at what you call the best work on your Genis. If you’re happy that’s all that matters :). A great listener doesn’t need the system to tell them what could be better. And there is no polarity of good : bad work. It’s all in degrees. A system that blinds the degrees is adding it’s own thing.

Why can't you repair class D amps? You can't fix them just replace the components that have failed. I have no experience working class D amps. 

With the right tools and parts why would Class D be any harder to fix than any other amplifier. It is rare for the amplifiers to fail. It is more likely the power supply fails.

@donavabdear do you have a room response comparison for your two systems?  I would not be surprised if the difference is more frequency response than anything.

Also I have what should be a very good headphone setup, Focal Stellia and a Naim amp designed for headphones. the headphones and amp were about $8k 

The headphones sound ok they have never really thrilled me. I thought having expensive headphones and a dedicated class A amp would change my life. It's good but nope.

@thespeakerdude : what are YOUR speaker(s)? Cin. Thanks

OP,

I also have a good headphone system. While I occasionally use my Focal Utopias, which sound amazing, I normally use my Sennheiser HD800’s. My system is amazing and incredibly musical and natural… the amp is a Woo 300B (my systems under my ID). It is so good it caused me to completely redo my main system with all tubed components.

 

@donavabdear

You resolved the confusion, when not sure to get active or passive, get both. 😀

That is only partly funny because I did the same thing. Active in my HT and desktop, passive in the man cave. They are all fun, and different.

@brianlucey got me thinking about my next build. I never gave Atmos in headphones much thought. I never gave Atmos and analog much thought. His posts made me think. I think I want to build an Atmos/analog tube based headphone rig as my next "system". Jim Fosgate and Black Ice audio collaborated on a SOA headphone amp that they demoed at CEDIA 2022. Will see what happens once it is released. The FOZ says it is his finest creation, how everything he has done before has led him here. I have never done tubes or headphones seriously, hopefully this will be a good introduction to both.

@kota1 I never took headphones seriously either until Atmos. It's really important to understand that we do not have any releases in this format that represent the highest end of the format.  Early days.  I'm working in the format every day right now developing techniques and what's clear is that great Atmos sounds just like stereo in terms of cohesion ...  but better ... bigger, and more dynamic. 99.999% of what's on the market falls short in terms of cohesion never mind harmonic, distortion and frequency balance.  Early days. 

@donavabdear you bought a brand. Not a great set up. Sorry to say. I’m happy to suggest DAC amp / headphones options given a number. For 8000 you can do better. 

And someone's ego grew three sizes that day. 

@brianlucey That's exactly what I did Naim was supposed to be good and class A but I compare my headphone setup with my personal system and it sounds more like my Genelec system. I think the headphones are good what would be a suggestion for the amp/dac? I definitely think headphones need tube amps just on a guess, tubes sound much better to me and if I need to monitor for accuracy the ss system, but for fun the tube system. 

Also I understand your philosophy of sound but it is self refuting if you think about it, ultimately sound being recorded as accurately as possible rather than sounding better subjectively is best practice. Our brains just like sex are the most important organ in hearing and interpreting music but the standard is nature and real acoustic instruments along with natural sounds we hear everyday. Our brains will always hold real sounds as a base line. I remember the B&K omni measurement mic was considered the only accurate reference mic for many years by a government measurement group.

@donavabdear ,

 

You use monitors that are accurate. Cinemas are professionally set up so there is some level of consistency from cinema to cinema in term of frequency response. You can't assume that with consumers. You are working from a flat response so the only deviation in perception would be your own ears. The customers system may not be flat or accurate but the deviation is only from the flatness of your system and your ears.

 

If you were to mix and master with a system that was pleasant to your but not accurate, wouldn't that compound the deviation a customer would experience? And that's just you. If someone else doing the same job had a different preference of setup and tuned their working environment system differently couldn't the end result at the customer be a complete swing in tone?  That sounds like a formula for added variability when the customer is looking.

Wouldn't that contribute to why some albums sounds great and others do not, but someone else may have a completely different view?

@thespeakerdude A few things, 1. flat is not useful or preferred. We like a little low bump and high end cut, assuming a pivot at 1k. Flat responses leaves people with no way of working except fear based perfectionism, which is antithetical to great music recording. 2. Translation is the job of mastering, and it’s a skillset ... again see: 1. If everything was about flat response a robot could beat a great mastering job. Doesn’t happen. You are living in polarity: pleasing vs. accurate, and that is a false paradigm. You are imagining, from your own concern aka fear (as stated above) that human emotions and preferences are getting in the way of great recordings, and that is backwards, they are ESSENTIAL to great recordings. We can be passionate and technical at the same time. Both at once is mastery.

@donavabdear This statement is from idealism and perfectionism which are fear based, and this statement is false. "ultimately sound being recorded as accurately as possible rather than sounding better subjectively is best practice." You’re trying to take human emotion and individuality OUT of the process of music, Music is about connecting humans, and that happens when humans are emotionally engaged and the sounds represent that. Music making USES science but music making is NOT A SCIENCE PROJECT. You and @thespeakerdude are both missing the point of music making and music playback. It’s a balance of both subjective and objective. The balance is our choice, and the skill and taste of the chooser is #1 in music recording.  

@thespeakerdude That's why groups like the AES exists to set up standards and practices so the music industry and the film industry will be sustainable. it really is amazing how consistent music and films actually are. To audiophiles with expensive systems it's amazing any music sounds good at all. In a perfect world the studios would use perfect equipment with perfectly consistent practices but we all know that is impossible. Studios do spend millions on equipment and hopefully will keep quality as high as possible and that will translate all the way down to us. There is nothing creative about standard practices but both can live together.

@thespeakerdude ​wrote:

Careless? Not at all. Crude only in a comparative sense. I don’t think you are understanding the variables that are available though for active speaker implementation.

I know enough to be able to get a great sounding outboard active system with nothing imposed with regard to physical restrictions of speakers. Yours is a business venture with all that entails.

I don’t expect a hobby implementation to compete with a large R&D budget so don’t take offense.

Please let me know about the basic outlay of your (possible range of) speakers, and then we’ll take it from there. Or is that a secret as well? Sounds more like hiding to me, as well as some hollow flaunting a prowess that’s really about trying to make up for what’s likely a physically restricted package and make it appear as if you’re holding the holy grail of audio reproduction - not an atypical position coming from a MFR.

@fred60 wrote:

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.

ATC speakers are as bomb proof as they come, as well as being the overall best bundled active speakers I’ve heard (certainly the largest models). It’s not a fair comparison with the other brands you mention - to ATC, that is. Indeed I’d feel more secure using active ATC speakers that most any passive setup, and if any issue should occur with the ATC speakers you’d be given a great treatment and service that’s also a very reasonable reflection price-wise relative to the product at hand.

 

@ghdprentice Wow that is an amazing headphone setup, I lived 14 hrs a day with my headphones on working on films for 35 years and came to the conclusion that your brain fills in so much of the gaps in just a few hours of listening. I have the Stellia because I wanted closed back but I think I regret that choice also. Please tell me about your DAC and amp setup. Thank you so much.

In the rare instance, should active ATC electronics fail, an ATC dealer will remove the amp pack from the speaker and ship only that to their NV facility. Turn around time is very rapid.

@brianlucey , As I said before, the enjoyment of music, music itself is a totally separate issue from the science of sound reproduction. Sound reproduction is not a matter of taste. Amplitude response is important and if you look at my system page you will notice that we agree on target curves. I intentionally put a " bump" in the low end and the high frequencies are rolled off depending on the dynamic loudness curve in use at the specific volume. I think where you and a lot of sound engineers have trouble is with casting a realistic image. I mentioned specific errors before. These are mixing errors which are unfortunately common with multitrack recordings that have instruments and voices added at separate recording sessions frequently in totally different environments. It in no way sounds like you are listening to a band on a stage or in a room. This can be intentional for artistic reasons but most of the time it is not. I am not and do not pretend to be  recording engineer, but I am an extremely experienced listener as are many of us. Yes, I am perfectionistic. In my head there is only one way to do things, the right way. There can always be several right ways. To make the furnisher I make you have to be perfectionistic or you produce garbage. 

As for my enjoyment of music, that is really none of your business and not the point of this forum. I find it interesting that you are dictating to me how much I do not enjoy music. Can you climb into everyone's head like that? 

@mjoslin13 Again perfectionism is an imaginary ideal. It’s a narcissism of our own imagination. There is no perfection. And in music production there are no mistakes. Teams of people make choices. Positive compromises. Your mind is on display in every post. I don’t have to guess but yes that’s my job daily. Making music sound its best to the most people on every possible system. I know how folks think and listen. It’s not about a live event. That’s another illusion of older aged audiophiles. I’ve heard the best systems. Still sounds like recordings. And creativity in production for decades takes us beyond a live event as a goal. Very small thinking. Very old. I’m sure your system is not perfect. Although I like those John Curl Parasounds for my atmos surrounds. And there is no perfect music. No imperfect music. I’m sorry your life is this small that you need this illusion. A craftsperson seeks the highest standards yet knows perfect is an ever illusive goal. Clearly you have been mistreated along the way and are taking refuge in the illusions of perfect and mistakes. High standards are real. They are not perfect. They are taste plus math. Positive compromise is the essence of all music creation and music reproduction. No dogma. No absolutes. Principles and practice diverge. Sorry. It’s a more uncertain reality than right and wrong.

 

@vinylvalet yes.  Brad is the ATC rep. In Vegas.  They do a great job at customer service.  A friend for 20 years.  

This thread has a great "mix" of perspectives of members that create content, members that create hardware/speakers/cabinets, and in the end we are all "consumers’ using our personal systems. As a fellow member it has made me think and rethink my approach to improving the entire chain (right down to those great recliners I see in @mijostyn setup). At the end of the day none of these posts are wrong or right (except ATC speakers are as "bomb proof" as they come), it is just a reflection of each posters experience. What I see as a common denominator among all of the very thoughtful posters here is attention to detail of the entire CHAIN. To me, that is one of the best takeaways so far. @donavabdear has fleshed out a professional system, a personal system, and one with LIVE music (the piano), that is amazing.

You have the attention to detail of making the actual speaker (@ghdprentice, @lonemountain ​​​​@thespeakerdude and I think @phusis).

Then you have a perspective of @brianlucey who has mastered recordings in stereo at the highest level now getting a fresh start in early days of Atmos. A funny coincidence is I use passive speakers for my top middle/VOG channel on the ceiling (see the pic in my profile) and what do I power them with? A Parasound amp, the same brand he is using for his Atmos surrounds.

All of the speaker makers/ reps have basically confirmed my choices for going with active speakers, thank you.

The fact that a seasoned pro like @donavabdear is using the same brand of speaker (Paradigm) and virtually the same setup (Atmos) in his personal rig as well as active speakers in his professional is another HUGE confirmation of my personal choice/preference.

@brianlucey posts about the quality of Atmos music confirmed my own experience, Atmos done right has a LOT of advantages over stereo.

When you are working with budget you hate to have to start over, the flip side is when highly experienced members confirm your personal choices it gives you confidence to keep going in that same direction. Unlike most members here I did NOT go down the path of a high end two channel rig. I tried to stick as closely as possible to the Dolby standards for Atmos and the THX standards for Audyssey DSX (which I use a lot for upmixing 5.1 content).

The majority of posters here don’t use active, don’t do atmos, and focus on two channel, high end (luxury) rigs. My system is kind of an outlier in that regard so having all of these confirmations as I stated above is nice. Thank you everyone!