Do active speakers interest you? Also, let's talk directivity

i really like my devialet phantoms (stereo pair) in a room where i don't want other components

lovely sound, tremendous bass response, very good imaging

I like the concept of active speakers, but worry about parts availability and maintenance. I also have a strong preference for sealed vs ported woofers. I think DSP will work better with flush to the wall drivers.

I’m running a pair of Focal Core 6 Be 40th on stands balanced direct from my TT2/MScaler stack.  Took a long time to break in but I love it.  Still searching for that ideal interconnect.

I think if you treat “the chain” well—use quality cables, treat your power, actives can be fantastic.

For a few years now I have been listening to ATC 50 scm active floor standing speakers. A midrange driver covering from about 380 Hz to 3200 Hz, the entire midrange with no crossover. The amps are 200, 100, and 50 watts for the lower, mid and highs. Magnet structures are immense. Very musical, articulate, and you will hear things you hadn’t on other speaker systems. It is easy to distinguish one grand piano from another, and that is a game we play with musical guests...and more. These speakers are exceptional, and with a great front end and superior ICs the musical presentation is embracing. Let me add that adding a regenerator to the setup was worth every cent.  Really good active speakers are not inexpensive .  Every part has to be worthy.

@OccasionallyCurrent - Thanks so much, I deeply appreciate that. One thing that I am known for, locally and in my global network, is finding steals for people. It doesn't matter to me if it's from my inventory, I just want people to have the best audio they can afford. To me, a soundsystem is an important health product, not a luxury item. It's normal for houses to be outfitted with expensive appliances that facilitate daily living. 

I'm not the type to listen to music all day. Listening to music has been about 50% of my work for a long time, and while I tend to love everything that gets submitted, ears to get fatigued. Similarly, I only cook once or twice per day. Regardless, if I had a substandard stove and oven, my life would be abysmal.

Although at this stage in the design, we are not cutting any corners (but rather, rounding them haha), we intend for this product to be accessible. We are just a group of audio nerds, based in the middle of nowhere. Someone mentioned aerogel - right on the money, although like they said, aerogel is too expensive for a commercial design.

We are looking at a new  material which is gaining traction as a sound insulator. No one else is using it in audio. It has the same special quality as aerogel. It comes in bricks that must be hewn, so we won't be constructing the cabinets themselves from the material. Just the baffle, and for the rear cancellation. 

DSP is a big thing these days. I have a couple hesitations.

1) Timing.

This is the big, BIG one. Linear phase equalization ALWAYS causes a delay for ANY DSP that I know of. Linear phase is important, it sounds much better in the high frequencies. If a subwoofer is crossed low enough, it doesn't require linear phase, the phase issues are not audible. Anything above 150hz and you could run into trouble. This has been my own observation and Linkwitz has confirmed it on his personal site. He's a very scientific guy, lots of respect for him. He's also open to anyone repeating his experiments and sharing their observations, he's not a stick in the mud.

For professional speakers, there cannot be any delay from input to output. I know that some of these very advanced developers have code and systems that have no noticeable delay. It's more my experiences performing on early DSP-processed systems telling me to wait until the technology is perfect in the same way that analog is now.


2) Proprietary code. 

I have a DSP code researcher on the team, and I believe that within 5 years, we will be doing work in the DSP area. There is no doubt in my mind that it is the future, and as a mastering engineer, although I learned from someone who used only analog hardware to DAT tape, virtual DSP processors are now good enough, sonically speaking. Latency is the issue, and no one who has solved it is willing to share that knowledge (trust me, I've asked the bigwigs directly, and the answer was a resounding NO)

I'm glad I waited until I had something important to share, instead of becoming known as the guy who beaked all the SET enthusiasts who think that putting more than 1 watt into a driver is heresy (just a little tease - my first job at 14 years was as a comedy writer, and once habits form, y'know)