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Speakers with their own amps

Was just wondering,

Are there speakers out there that have their own amps to drive the whole speaker?
Not just internal amps to drive the subs but also amps to drive midrange & treble.

I see 2 advantages to this.
1. One could drive the speakers with just a preamp avoiding the cost of amp/amps.
2. Would allow the designer to voice the speaker to their design and how they wanted them to sound.

Would probably still allow the consumer to balance their systems sound, to one's liking, via a preamp, processor, cabling, etc.

I have the ability to drive my speakers from my preamp leaving my amp to drive the mids & highs.
I've come to like this option.

Thoughts?
128x128joysjane
csontos
1,311 posts
 
Check out the "Do active speakers belong in a high end system " thread. It's further down the column.
plato
1,543 posts
 
I believe most of the ones that are available use solid-state plate amps. I'm not saying this can't work well, but if you wanted to use a nice sounding tube amp you'd be out of luck.

That said, depending on the particular speakers, you might be able to use a decent sounding tube preamp to sweeten the sound a bit.
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doggiehowser
672 posts
 
I had a pair of Focal Solo 6 Be and I have to say they were phenomenal. It doesn't have the nice piano finish of the Focal Electro 1007/8Be but it has the important guts where it matters. W woofer and Beryllium tweeter - trademark of Focal's high end stuff for a fraction of the price.

The only downsides are that most active speakers have a pretty low input impedance (10 or 20kOhms) and this might be an issue with some tube preamps especially those that don't use negative feedback (ie the better ones).
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