Why aren't powered speakers more popular?

[humanflyz]

Powered speakers make a lot of sense to me, but they don't seem to be popular in Hi-Fi, so what's the deal? Are there some fundamental disadvantages to using powered speakers, or is it just custom and tradition?

[Dusty Chalk]

Yeah, I think that's it. The only disadvantage is that you have to buy them together. It'd be cool if some high-end speakers came with active crossovers instead of passive, but then you'd be obliged to (a) get monoblocks, and ( get one for each driver set (I.E. normally, in a 3-way design, you'd need 6 monoblocks, but if you had symmetrical midrange drivers or something, you'd theoretically only need one amplifier for both midrange drivers -- but that's the exception, not the rule).

[humanflyz]

Aren't there other ways to tweak if tweaking is what people want? I mean even with powered speakers you can still tweak with the choice of pre-amps, sources, cables, and not to mention room treatment.

[grawk]

They're mostly not popular because they tend towards mid and lofi, rather than hifi. There are obviously exceptions, but the perception remains.

[Dusty Chalk]

Aren't there other ways to tweak if tweaking is what people want? I mean even with powered speakers you can still tweak with the choice of pre-amps, sources, cables, and not to mention room treatment.

It's a guy thing. You know how the only thing you really need to know in a car is the horsepower, but guys still need to know their displacement? It's like that. It's like saying, "I don't want to have to think about the amp, just get me some good powered speakers." They want to know that Bryston made the amps in the PMC Actives (which they do). There's also Meridian, ATC, Dynaudio, and Quad. I'm sure there are others.

[tkam]

I really liked the old Paradigm Active speakers.

[n_maher]

I really liked the old Paradigm Active speakers.

Me too, I demo'd a pair when I bought my Paradigms and they sounded pretty darn good to my then-less-trained ears.

[Guest sacd lover]

Me too, I demo'd a pair when I bought my Paradigms and they sounded pretty darn good to my then-less-trained ears.

I owned a pair of Active 20's for several years. I didnt like their metal dome tweeter. I also had problems with the protection circuitry frequently kicking in. Play them loud and in no time they shut down. The concept is good but if there is something you dont like about an active speaker you are stuck. Furthermore, the metal dome was so hot with mine there was no amount of source, cable, tube changing etc... that would solve th problem.

[bhd812]

to simple and to "Common sense"...

Actives are really popular in the studio market..probably cause Audiophile is more of a hobby and a time waster or money waster as hobbies should be.

in other words audiophiles just like to create more work for themselves just to waste time and money instead of adding in a EQ.

power cords, i/c's and tube rolling is just a hard and time wasting way of EQ'ing the sound..

common sense would tell you just to ad a eq in the line...

but this is Audiophile/hifi...common sense does not exist

hey I tube roll and cable swap..this is my hobby after all.

[aerius]

Powered speakers make a lot of sense to me, but they don't seem to be popular in Hi-Fi, so what's the deal? Are there some fundamental disadvantages to using powered speakers, or is it just custom and tradition?

1) The speakers have to be bigger since you need to fit an amp in them

2) You will be limited in power & sound quality unless you build a fairly large speaker

3) You can rule out tube amps or Class A amps unless you want to set the speaker on fire

4) Related to 1), you can't optimize the shape of both the speaker & amp layout for best performance

There's probably more, but those are the issues I can think of off the top of my head.

[Dusty Chalk]

in other words audiophiles just like to create more work for themselves just to waste time and money instead of adding in a EQ.

Audiophiles don't like EQ because it messes with the sound.

[bhd812]

Audiophiles don't like EQ because it messes with the sound.

lol exactly...

[recstar24]

Audiophiles don't like EQ because it messes with the sound.

I think Billy's point is that essentially tweaking through IC's, tubes, etc. is sort of like EQ'ing the sound. In the end, is there really that much you need for simple musical enjoyment? There are some stupidly simple ways out there to get good sound without all the fuss, and if you know how to handle an EQ you can really lock in the sound you want. I haven't heard any powered speakers so I can't comment but if there was a cheap powered speaker that sounded decent, I am sure it would be a nice rig for someone on a low budget

[Dusty Chalk]

Wait...Billy? Point? Reason? No way!

Seriously: the "sound" of your system isn't just about frequency response. It's about the time domain as well as the frequency domain.

Aerius had a particularly good point with #3 as well as the others. The simple answer to that is to pull the amp out of the speaker, but as soon as you do that, you know that audiophiles are going to want to "roll" the amps anyway.