Hi all, my two cents. I’m a 40ish year audiophile. For those of us on a budget. Say less than $5K total? Quality active studio monitors are a VERY strong value proposition.
Although this is a hobby, most people do not have the money or time on a limited budget to mix and match / buy and sell speaker and amp combos endlessly to get lucky and find that perfect match of synergy. Further problematic that we only have three seconds of solid audio memory (true for color memory as well). So unless you have the funds to keep multiple sets of amps/speakers in front of you so that you can A/B test within the three-second window (That what Harmon Kardon lab does, Schiit as well in a recent user invitational test of the different versions of Yggy). The differences in the combos will only be memories of impressions, not accurate to the actual sound.
To me playing around with speaker amp combos (I have done quite a bit of it) has been fun but expensive fools folly.
So my pass. Yes in theory class D boards inside the cabinet might do something bad from vibrations? I personally have not experienced that. And thousands of professional studios making their living on the accuracy of sound, that insist on near-perfect accuracy have not experienced that theoretical issue either.
I’ll list my setup at the end. So in the audiophile world, bi-amping is a big deal. Benefits from greater dynamic range, due to splitting into two more powerful amps, maybe skipping crossovers, etc etc. In my 3 way studio monitors. Each speaker has it’s own individual 300 watt hyperion amp. For spec junkies, the hyperions measure near perfect. Each speaker is tri-amped. Not quite true, but this is in spitting distance to saying I am running six monoblocks. Yeah that’s some pretty audiophile mojo. In addition, since the crossovers are handled right before the amps at XLR voltages, the crossovers have less of an impact on the sound.
So here we go. A close to perfectly matched three speakers per cabinet, three amps per cabinet. Analog all the way, no DSP. No muss no fuss, allowing me to focus on other parts of the system.
To the colors of sound. OK, first up everyone’s room is different, and coloring about 60% of what you hear. So now you have the trifecta of hobby swirl. Matching speakers, to amps, to your rooms sound? Man that’s a ton of expensive variables to chase.
The variables that I enjoy chasing are DACs and Preamps. Since I know my actives are stone accurate. Then I can get really nuanced in my perceptions of DACs and Preamps.
So what is my come from presenting these opinions.
My listening environment is a small professional Audio/Visual studio. 12" * 14" with 14" wooden ceilings. The floor is carpeted, with additional thick rugs. The walls and, to a degree, the ceilings are treated with 38 sound blankets. The room is not quite deader than a doornail, but very close. My goal is/was to completely remove the room variable from my critical listening experince.
The speakers are supported by a set of Isoaccoutics feet, and each speaker is placed upon about 200lbs of concrete cinderblock stands. Yes it does make a difference. :-)
The audio gear stack gets it’s own 200lb stack, placed well behind the speakers, and each piece of gear also get’s it’s own Isoaccoutic feet. Blaspheme! That really made an audible difference.
Punchline is I can really hear the gear for what it is and isn’t, no imagination. The gear cannot hide from me.
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My current rig:
$1,600 Hedd Type 2 studio monitors. (Purchased literally beat to living crap from a touring band.)
$1,800 Schiit Yggy OG (Love that thing, been through many DAC’s)
$500 Shitt Freya S (Hot rodded with an upgraded TI Opamp, truly amazing)
$800 Schiit Freya + (With added cooling fins. And some wicked, I’m not gonna tell rare tubes)
$400 Tubes (Where I settled after a lot of buy and sell tube rolling experiments.)
$900 HSU 15" sealed sub. (Carefully placed 4’ above the floor, shooting down one of the walls. Each room want’s something different from sub placement to get accurate.)
$6,000 in my room at the moment.
Oddball geek note blaspheme. I do run my preamps through each other in many combos. You would be surprised what you get in a revealing system. These two preamps give me I think a total of seven combinations of signal path color that I can run? Effectively behaving like owning seven preamps that can all be A/B switched within the 3-second window.
