Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

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.

@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.