Pros and Cons of built-in amps?

Mr Tennis: When you are about to purchase a loudspeaker do you try every amplifier in the market to test its compatability with it? Or, when you buy an amplifier do you do the same with every loudspeaker manufactured? If not, how do you know you are making the best use of your monetary resources? Maybe there is still a better amp or speaker out there you haven't tried and would sound even better in your system than the component you settled on. I assume the designer of the active system is a degreed and experienced engineer who wants to maximize the potential of his design and has taken the strengths and deficiencies of both the electronics and drivers he has chosen into account before that system is put on the market. Your freedom of choice is limited by geography, cost and experience.

Dave thinks vacuum tubes make the best amplifier designs. Two of the greatest enemies of the longevity of electronics are heat and dust. What do we have with tube circuitry we do not have with solid state designs: heat, dust, microphonics, phase shifts from the output transformers, weight, degradation of the tubes which will continue to deteriorate everytime they are powered never sounding the same way twice, tubes acting as RF antennas, tube replacement cost, bias adjustments, a rise of ambient heat in the room, poor damping factor because of those same transformers, limited high frequency response, questionable resale value due to a very limited market, among other things. Yes, it is too bad tube circuitry cannot be incorporated into an active design! I guess active designs must be inferior and poor value. I wish my computer had tubes. I have an empty room i could use to contain it.

For Bob Reynolds: I like the way you think. I am intolerant of those who condemn an entire design on belief and prejudice exclusively and not on research and experience. Ultimately, sound appeals to taste but many circuitry implementations are nothing more than glorified and expensive tone controls. Worship often excludes truth, accuracy and adherence to an objective standard.

03-23-08: Bob_reynolds
I'm always impressed with the way Dave presents his opinions as absolute truths.

Readers can look at our comments and decide for themselves. It's also not just my opinion. While there can never be consensus about what the best loudspeakers are, there is some general agreement by magazine reviewers and experienced audiophiles about the companies who make gear that often gets put in the top tier and none of the active studio speakers that you and shadorn constantly praise are regulars on those lists. Of course you are free to pose your theory about the meaninglessness of subjective reviews (professional or consumer) and I am free to disagree with you.

How is one speaker "better" than another? How is one "best"? Without defining the metrics, the terms have no meaning. If measured frequency response is the test and "flatness" is the metric, then better and best have meaning within that context. Likewise, if Dave's perception of good sound is the metric, then better and best have meaning within that context.

I'm sorry that you don't believe in the concept of something being better sounding or more musical than something else. Your obsession with measurements and total disinterest in discussing actual listening is puzzling to say the least. If that leaves you regurgitating specs and measurements in response to various questions, I don't see what value that brings to the table.

High end audio and forums like this one are entirely based on the idea of people exchanging their subjective opinions on gear and how well they believe each piece of equipment serves the music. Is there room for measurements too? Sure, but in your case it's the only thing you seem to be able to refer to. Remember, the whole purpose of this equipment is to bring you (the listener) closer to the intended emotional effect of the music. This makes discussions of how well the gear succeeds at that goal inextricably tied to listening and sujectivity- much like discussions about the music itself. I get the feeling that you would want to discuss Coltrane by pointing to charts and graphs.

If you disagree with my assertion that Meridian makes the best examples of active loudspeakers you are of course welcome to disagree. I would be curious to hear what you think sounds better. Have you spent much time listening to the Meridians?

How about my belief that the very best amplifiers are vacuum tube amps? I'm sure you and others disagree with that assertion also, but if you do, please tell us that you have actually had some real listening experience with the best tube amplifiers from ARC, VTL, CJ, Atma-sphere, etc... To often, I find that people on the other side of this agrument have not.

Everyone on Audiogon expresses their opinions about the sound of gear, and it's not necessary to preface each comment with "IMO" when we all know that nearly everything here is just that.

Professional studios already reap these benefits and in exchange give up the ultimate sound quality for something that is good enough and revealing enough to get the job done. Whether active speakers can ever rise to challenge the state of the art remains to be seen. Perhaps someday.

and

Those who don't accept the superiority of vacuum tubes are probably not going to "get" this one either, but it happens to be true.

and

On paper, active systems seem to have many advantages, but in practice and in the real world, they have failed to live up to those claims.

What Dave says is actually true of many small home studios and local smalltown outfits for TV and radio and making CD's for local talent. Like Hi-Fi - studios are tiered - for many "good enough" is indeed enough and many do everything as absolutely cheaply as they can.

However the idea that the Best or most Prestigious Studios in the World with extremely wealthy clients would use something "just good enough to get the job done" is surely laughable...many of these places have millions invested in just microphones (and they use plenty of tubes too)! They try to attract extremely wealthy clients (who are hard to impress) and suprise surprise quite a few of them use custom designed studios with main monitors that are active. George Massenburg, a legendary designer of equipment, uses actives for near-field and for far-field. Here is a pic of the studio he designed in Nashville Studio C. Do you think he cut corners on the sound - so that it was "just good enough"?