Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

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