The Active Advantage

Phelonious Ponk

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The discussion of active systems in The General Audio forum has quickly evolved into a standard audiophile argument -- "everything matters." Of course it does, it's a matter of how, how much, and to what effect, it matters in context. In the context of that discussion, the position is being taken that active systems multiply the amplifier investment by the number of drivers in the system, making active systems much more expensive. This ignores what I think may be the core active advantage - individual amplifiers tasked to individual drivers, based on the requirements of the drivers in question, rather than the unknown of whatever passive speakers the amplifier buyer may choose, and the need for that amplifier to drive all the drivers in the box, through its nest of lossy, passive components, at once.

From this link, posted in the other thread by ESLdude:

If we were to make a blind, blanket statement about active vs. passive system efficiency differences, we could say that active systems are roughly twice as efficient with their amplifier power than passive ones. If you were to take the utmost extreme (and dishonest) scenario, you could set up a test case that would show an active system as four times as effective with a given amplifier rating as a passive loudspeaker system, based entirely on how loud you could play that particular signal before the amplifiers clipped. It's not really an accurate example outside of the lab, but some of that example would be applicable as a matter of illustration.

The truth will, of course, be variable, and probably lies somewhere between the blanket statement and the utmost extreme above, but the point is that applying passive, audiophile principles to active designs is overkill, at best. It's like changing from Wilsons to Klispchorns and insisting that you still need 1000 watt Krells because they're "the best." I'm not engineer, but the fallacy in this argument is clear to me. From another article about the advantages of active:

The magnitude of the frequency response of both active and passive loudspeakers can be controlled, with good design, to be within 1dB of one another. However, the phase component of the frequency response will always be better in an active system. The active filters produce better filter roll-off characteristics at crossover. Combine this with the inclusion of a variable all-pass filter at each crossover point to correct the phase response of the drive units through the crossover regions and the result is a loudspeaker with much better group delay characteristics. The benefit to the listener will be improved polar response and therefore radiated power response. Such an active loudspeaker will have a large stable sound field with stable imaging and source location. Very difficult and costly to achieve with a passive loudspeaker system.

A passive crossover will only operate correctly into the load impedance of a particular loudspeaker drive unit. However, the impedance of a loudspeaker drive unit will change with the amount of power input. This is because loudspeakers are very inefficient and most of the input power is dissipated as heat in the voice coil. As a result the temperature of the voice coil will rise and because copper has a positive temperature coefficient of resistance the impedance of the loudspeaker drive unit will rise. The result will be frequency response errors as the filters move from their designed response with increased input power. This effect does not occur in active loudspeakers where the filter response is maintained independent of input power to the loudspeaker.

From the same article, on amplifier choices:

The Separates amplifier manufacturer, has no idea what is going to be hung on the end of his product. Hence the need (as would be the case in the car analogy), to massively over-build to ensure that the amplifier will sound good with almost any speaker impedance and cable. It is not surprising that the massive amplifiers that typify the high end today are both costly and power consuming.

These problems of efficiency, size and cost are much reduced in the case of amplifiers designed for Active loudspeakers. Here the designer has the luxury of designing an amplifier pack containing separate mono amplifiers that only have to power one drive unit, whose every performance characteristic, bandwidth, frequency range, power handling, and shortcomings, are known to the designer.

Because the amplifiers in an active loudspeaker system are only required to operate over reduced frequency bands the intermodulation distortion products present in a passive system will be dramatically reduced, by typically 20dB, in an active system.

For a given amount of amplifier power, an active loudspeaker can be expected to produce approximately 6dB more level (twice as much) than the equivalent passive system. Furthermore, power for each drive unit may be more optimally specified in an active system. A tweeter, for example, requires much less power than a woofer to produce a balanced system performance.

A power amplifier designed specifically for the limited frequency range of an individual drive unit gains further benefits in efficiency, due to the fact that the wider the amplifier bandwidth, the less efficient it is. A well designed two or three way mono active power amp, for a given input and power rating, will always be capable of safely reaching higher peak SPL levels with less distortion than the equivalent single wide band power amp. This additional safety margin is now essential for coping with the wider dynamic range of DVD-Audio, SACD, DTS and Dolby Digital film soundtracks. In an active system the absence of both passive crossovers and long cable runs, together with a known amplifier damping factor, prevents the modification of the loudspeaker drive unit "Q" ensuring better controlled low frequency performance.

Maybe over here we can discuss this without veering off into arguments that ignore the basic principles and advantages of active systems. I don't expect anyone to provide any measurements; I certainly don't have the wherewithal to do that, but hopefully some of our smartest engineering-oriented audiophiles can explore the subject without being interrupted by the standard, irrelevant audiophile arguments. This is one of the audio subjects that interests me most, because I have experienced these advantages, even on the small scale of my monitors. I'd love to get the educated perspectives of some of the members who frequent this sub forum.

Tim
 
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Groucho

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It is also one of my favourite audio subjects. I think active speakers are the most exciting development in audio - like re-experiencing the first time you ever heard a hi-fi stereo system, each time you listen to them.

One of the rules of thumb of conventional speaker design is that crossovers are a problem - they're audible and are to be avoided in the "critical vocal range" or similar. Another convention is that the more drivers (and crossovers) you use, the more complex the speaker becomes and the more difficult to design successfully. There are a great many two-way designs even at the audio 'high end', for these reasons.

An aspect that interests me is that because active speakers (particularly DSP-based ones) are highly accurate and stable in terms of the acoustic crossover (phase, amplitude and delay), the crossover becomes, effectively, 'transparent'. This really is the case, in my experience. You can play with the crossover points and slopes in real time and hear virtually no change. Indeed, if it isn't the case then we have a problem: this multi-way speaker is not doing 'what it says on the tin'; multiple drivers are not behaving as a single driver, so it isn't a 'valid' design anyway.

With an active design, the designer can go three or four-way without problems. By splitting the signal into more bands and using more drivers, everything is improved: intermodulation (including doppler) distortion, dispersion/beaming, lobing. I would go so far as to say that it turns good speaker design into an exercise in cranking a handle. The designer can concentrate solely on the interesting parts such as the enclosure shape and appearance, whether to go omni-directional or not etc.

In terms of measurements, it would be trivial to show that the system was doing what it was supposed to be doing. ( But this would not satisfy everyone of course.)
 
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Phelonious Ponk

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It is also one of my favourite audio subjects. I think active speakers are the most exciting development in audio - like re-experiencing the first time you ever heard a hi-fi stereo system, each time you listen to them.

One of the rules of thumb of conventional speaker design is that crossovers are a problem - they're audible and are to be avoided in the "critical vocal range" or similar. Another convention is that the more drivers (and crossovers) you use, the more complex the speaker becomes and the more difficult to design successfully. There are a great many two-way designs even at the audio 'high end', for these reasons.

An aspect that interests me is that because active speakers (particularly DSP-based ones) are highly accurate and stable in terms of the acoustic crossover (phase, amplitude and delay), the crossover becomes, effectively, 'transparent'. This really is the case, in my experience. You can play with the crossover points and slopes in real time and hear virtually no change. Indeed, if it isn't the case then we have a problem: this multi-way speaker is not doing 'what it says on the tin'; multiple drivers are not behaving as a single driver, so it isn't a 'valid' design anyway.

With an active design, the designer can go three or four-way without problems. By splitting the signal into more bands and using more drivers, everything is improved: intermodulation (including doppler) distortion, dispersion/beaming, lobing. I would go so far as to say that it turns good speaker design into an exercise in cranking a handle. The designer can concentrate solely on the interesting parts such as the enclosure shape and appearance, whether to go omni-directional or not etc.

In terms of measurements, it would be trivial to show that the system was doing what it was supposed to be doing. ( But this would not satisfy everyone of course.)

I'm a big fan of two-way active systems for all the reasons you mention and a couple more in theory, but what I hear is greater midrange clarity and remarkably good imaging from boxes. I'm looking forward to getting a Linkwitz LXmini system in my home next year, and hearing what happens when the box is opened and the entire room is energized. I may love it; I may end up selling it. I know I heard Linkwitz Orions years ago and thought they were exceptional, so different from box speakers that comparisons are kind of pointless. Is that difference superiority or a sonic hat trick? We'll see.

Tim
 
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LL21

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Thanks Tim...have posted here just to make sure i receive the updates to follow it. Looking forward to learning more.
 

esldude

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http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/690thiel/index.html#oyD2hzRCZV3GxXrH.97

Worth looking at this review of the Thiel CS5 from years back. Jim Thiel certainly was into rational measurable design. You can skip over to the measurement page of the review to see impulse, step and square wave results rarely seen in speakers. But oh the passive crossover needed, and the cruel load the speaker presented. It combined low efficiency with a low impedance below 150 hz where the power is most needed. Here is a description of the crossover:

The CS5 crossover is itself also heroic. Constructed on a single hard-wired board, it incorporates 87 elements realized with 114 components. Only—only—55 elements are directly related to the first-order high- and low-pass filter functions, the rest being used to fine-tune the system's time response. The two midrange units, for example, are electrically "moved backward," by the equivalents of ¾" and 3/8" respectively, to bring their acoustic centers into the correct alignment. All coils apart from one are air-cored, and the capacitors are polypropylene and pure polystyrene types, the latter custom-made with tinfoil plates and copper lead-out wires. The internal wiring is a polypropylene-insulated solid-core type.


Now I think this is an illustrative counter example. I think Jim Thiel could have made a better speaker for less money had he taken an active approach to start with. He may have thought there was no market for such though I of course can't know. In any case creating a coherent source speaker, adjusting delay for drivers etc could be much more effectively done actively.

thiel xover.jpg
 

microstrip

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The discussion of active systems in The General Audio forum has quickly evolved into a standard audiophile argument -- "everything matters." Of course it does, it's a matter of how, how much, and to what effect, it matters in context. In the context of that discussion, the position is being taken that active systems multiply the amplifier investment by the number of drivers in the system, making active systems much more expensive. This ignores what I think may be the core active advantage - individual amplifiers tasked to individual drivers, based on the requirements of the drivers in question, rather than the unknown of whatever passive speakers the amplifier buyer may choose, and the need for that amplifier to drive all the drivers in the box, through its nest of lossy, passive components, at once.
(...)

OK, let us deal with the technicalities of your core. Individual amplifiers optimized for drivers will have power supplies of different voltage, a more globally expensive power supply system. Unless they are truly independent you will have problems with many speaker current paths flowing through ground lines, that are shared by signal grounds, inducing distortion. All this costs money.

Can I ask you what is your technical idea of "amplifiers tasked to individual drivers"?
 

microstrip

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(...) One of the rules of thumb of conventional speaker design is that crossovers are a problem - they're audible and are to be avoided in the "critical vocal range" or similar. Another convention is that the more drivers (and crossovers) you use, the more complex the speaker becomes and the more difficult to design successfully. (...)

Kevin Voeks, the man behind Revel speakers, at that time Director of Technology at Harman Specialty Group, expressed a different opinion on these matters - quoted from http://hometheaterhifi.com.

Sumit: Have you ever thought of designing an active loudspeaker?

Kevin: Yes, we’ve looked at that and we have found that compared to active implementations of our existing loudspeakers, we’re really able to achieve the kind of equalization that you would want to do in the mid-range and top-end with the passive filter networks. The response of Revels is so flat that you’d be hard pressed to see an improvement if you were to be actively equalizing just the loudspeakers response themselves. At low frequencies, obviously with subwoofers, that’s an advantage in terms of size. And then we’ve taken advantage of the real opportunity there by providing equalization for the particular room situation beyond what the loudspeaker does.
 

Blizzard

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http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/690thiel/index.html#oyD2hzRCZV3GxXrH.97

Worth looking at this review of the Thiel CS5 from years back. Jim Thiel certainly was into rational measurable design. You can skip over to the measurement page of the review to see impulse, step and square wave results rarely seen in speakers. But oh the passive crossover needed, and the cruel load the speaker presented. It combined low efficiency with a low impedance below 150 hz where the power is most needed. Here is a description of the crossover:

The CS5 crossover is itself also heroic. Constructed on a single hard-wired board, it incorporates 87 elements realized with 114 components. Only—only—55 elements are directly related to the first-order high- and low-pass filter functions, the rest being used to fine-tune the system's time response. The two midrange units, for example, are electrically "moved backward," by the equivalents of ¾" and 3/8" respectively, to bring their acoustic centers into the correct alignment. All coils apart from one are air-cored, and the capacitors are polypropylene and pure polystyrene types, the latter custom-made with tinfoil plates and copper lead-out wires. The internal wiring is a polypropylene-insulated solid-core type.


Now I think this is an illustrative counter example. I think Jim Thiel could have made a better speaker for less money had he taken an active approach to start with. He may have thought there was no market for such though I of course can't know. In any case creating a coherent source speaker, adjusting delay for drivers etc could be much more effectively done actively.

View attachment 23769

Passive component's for loudspeakers have come a long way since that design. Those parts would be considered bottom of the barrel these days. I have a bin that weighs about 200 lbs full of solen caps and inductors.Those sand cast Bennic resistors are horrid as well.
 
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esldude

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Passive component's for loudspeakers have come a long way since that design. Those parts would be considered bottom of the barrel these days. I have a bin that weighs about 200 lbs full of solen caps and inductors.Those sand cast Bennic resistors are horrid as well.

You illustrate the point perfectly. Your audiophilia nervosa based approach would mean spending on passive parts for the crossover more than the cost of the entire speaker once was. Much of that spending is of questionable value as you can't measure any useful benefits for the extra money spent.
 

Blizzard

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You illustrate the point perfectly. Your audiophilia nervosa based approach would mean spending on passive parts for the crossover more than the cost of the entire speaker once was. Much of that spending is of questionable value as you can't measure any useful benefits for the extra money spent.

It's actually about achieving a good balance between all aspects of the design at the price point the product will be at. Back in 1990, those parts were SOTA. But things have changed. We have learned much in the last 25 years, and there's much more selection of high end passive loudspeaker components on the market to choose from. If someone comes to me and says "build me the best passive speaker you can for $5000" I will select the best balance of components between drivers, cabinet materials, construction techniques, dampening materials, wiring, binding posts, and passive components possible to achieve the intended goal at the price point.
 

Groucho

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Kevin Voeks, the man behind Revel speakers, at that time Director of Technology at Harman Specialty Group, expressed a different opinion on these matters

Is he actually talking about what I was saying? I was just passing on the general idea that crossovers are conventionally considered to be the least 'transparent' regions of a speaker's frequency range, and that DSP can help to make them transparent.

He talks about "flat" response, but there is no mention of phase. One of the problems with passive (and non-DSP active) crossovers is that they can introduce phase shifts through the crossover region. The overall response may be flat in terms of amplitude, but the phase may have gone through a rapid transition which causes audible colouration. I suspect that the general view that crossovers are not transparent is related to this. Different crossover filters (with different slopes) have different phase responses, so the passive designer cannot change one thing without changing others.
 
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microstrip

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Is he actually talking about what I was saying? I was just passing on the general idea that crossovers are conventionally considered to be the least 'transparent' regions of a speaker's frequency range, and that DSP can help to make them transparent.

He talks about "flat" response, but there is no mention of phase. One of the problems with passive (and non-DSP active) crossovers is that they can introduce phase shifts through the crossover region. The overall response may be flat in terms of amplitude, but the phase may have gone through a rapid transition which causes audible colouration. I suspect that the general view that crossovers are not transparent is related to this. Different crossover filters (with different slopes) have different phase responses, so the passive designer cannot change one thing without changing others.

Some of these problems were addressed before in the interview: http://hometheaterhifi.com/volume_11_2/feature-interview-kevin-voecks-4-2004.html. Surely it is just his opinion, I have read differently from other authors.


Sumit: What crossover slopes are typically employed in Revel designs?

Kevin: Our networks are always tweaked to result in the smoothest possible transition between transducers. Because of that, their electrical characteristics don’t meet the textbook definition of classical filters, which is why we don’t specify them in our literature. However, the resulting response of the transducer/enclosure acoustic and the filter’s electrical response is close to a 4th-order (24dB/octave) Linkwitz-Riley characteristic.

Sumit: Have you ever heard a good loudspeaker that uses a low-order crossover?

Kevin: I have heard good loudspeakers that use low-order crossovers. I haven’t heard great loudspeakers that use low-order crossovers. They run into these problems. It’s inevitable.

Sumit: Do you feel that time-coherence is an important property of a loudspeaker?

Kevin: No. We’ve done a lot of research in the area. In fact when I made my first loudspeakers at Symdex in 1976, I thought that it was important because that was the fad at the time. With some people, it’s still a fad. But if you look at the way the human hearing functions, you’ll see that time-coherence isn’t important. I actually credit Dr. Stanley Lipshitz at the University of Waterloo with bringing this to my attention, to put it mildly, in the 70’s at Mirage. He and Dr. Vanderkooy came up with a box that would let you alter phase response without altering amplitude response, and by using it you could do listening tests to determine the audibility of phase errors, or time-coherence. It was quite evident then that if you are in an anechoic chamber or you are using earphones, you can detect the difference especially with special clicks that are made to hear it. You can’t always say which is right or better, and as soon as you introduce the room it’s 100% inaudible. The importance of phase is in the crossover region because that’s an indicator of the blending of the transducers that are being crossed over. So in and of itself it’s not a significant thing. And in order to try to optimize it you really sell your soul in terms of things we know are really, really important to sound quality. That is a key fact. It’s not like it’s cost free, audibly, to optimize that parameter.
 

Blizzard

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Some of these problems were addressed before in the interview: http://hometheaterhifi.com/volume_11_2/feature-interview-kevin-voecks-4-2004.html. Surely it is just his opinion, I have read differently from other authors.


Sumit: What crossover slopes are typically employed in Revel designs?

Kevin: Our networks are always tweaked to result in the smoothest possible transition between transducers. Because of that, their electrical characteristics don’t meet the textbook definition of classical filters, which is why we don’t specify them in our literature. However, the resulting response of the transducer/enclosure acoustic and the filter’s electrical response is close to a 4th-order (24dB/octave) Linkwitz-Riley characteristic.

Sumit: Have you ever heard a good loudspeaker that uses a low-order crossover?

Kevin: I have heard good loudspeakers that use low-order crossovers. I haven’t heard great loudspeakers that use low-order crossovers. They run into these problems. It’s inevitable.

Sumit: Do you feel that time-coherence is an important property of a loudspeaker?

Kevin: No. We’ve done a lot of research in the area. In fact when I made my first loudspeakers at Symdex in 1976, I thought that it was important because that was the fad at the time. With some people, it’s still a fad. But if you look at the way the human hearing functions, you’ll see that time-coherence isn’t important. I actually credit Dr. Stanley Lipshitz at the University of Waterloo with bringing this to my attention, to put it mildly, in the 70’s at Mirage. He and Dr. Vanderkooy came up with a box that would let you alter phase response without altering amplitude response, and by using it you could do listening tests to determine the audibility of phase errors, or time-coherence. It was quite evident then that if you are in an anechoic chamber or you are using earphones, you can detect the difference especially with special clicks that are made to hear it. You can’t always say which is right or better, and as soon as you introduce the room it’s 100% inaudible. The importance of phase is in the crossover region because that’s an indicator of the blending of the transducers that are being crossed over. So in and of itself it’s not a significant thing. And in order to try to optimize it you really sell your soul in terms of things we know are really, really important to sound quality. That is a key fact. It’s not like it’s cost free, audibly, to optimize that parameter.


The choice of driver plays a large role in choosing slopes as well. harder coned drivers have a peak at the resonance breakup point. Higher order slopes must be used with these drivers to attenuate this peak. Softer coned paper and poly coned units that have better damped cones, don't have this aggressive peak, so simple 1st order crossovers are fine. You also need wide band tweeters to use 1st order crossovers not all can handle the low frequencies without distorting when pushed.

Another advantage with 4th order is they have a 360 deg phase shift which puts things back to 0. So you have an even phase response. The drawback is the extra components in the signal path. However in an active DSP based system, the same amount of components are in the signal path whether 1st order or 4th order slopes are used. So if you go with an active DSP based system you can take advantage of the higher detail of harder coned drivers, and tweeters such as ribbons that can't take the lower frequencies, without the detrimental effect of having the extra components in the signal path.

But the drawback I've found is these types of drivers are highly detailed and revealing. When combined with the fact that there's no passive components in the signal path filtering out details, you have an even more revealing system. This is where the problem of using lower quality electronics comes into the picture. Since the system is so ruthlessly revealing, the shortcomings of the low grade components are brutally revealed.

When people go and listen to these system for a short period of time and sound shows etc, they are so impressed by what they do better than passive systems, that the shortcomings are overlooked. It takes actually comparing the same system with the higher quality parts right next to the same system with the lower quality parts to truly understand this. There's simply no substitute for high quality parts. Even more so with a highly revealing active system.
 

Groucho

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microstrip quoting kvoeks in a magazine interview said:
...if you look at the way the human hearing functions, you’ll see that time-coherence isn’t important...

An interesting contrast with Meridian's claims about timing!
Meridian advertising blurb said:
The ear is hugely sensitive to timing detail. As sounds arrive at different times – microseconds apart – your brain uses this information to create a 3D soundscape. It’s what makes live music such a powerful and emotive experience.

Me, I think that time coherence and phase are bound to be important.
 

Blizzard

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An interesting contrast with Meridian's claims about timing!


Me, I think that time coherence and phase are bound to be important.

It's really apparent when you play with active xover delay settings that timing is important. The soundstage becomes much more pinpoint when your have it dialed in perfectly. And this is listening in a real room. Not in an anechoic chamber, or on the moon.
 
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Phelonious Ponk

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And here they are. You can't start a thread in the science forum without them following you over here and continuing to talk religion. The more money they've spent, the greater their need to be right. Even when they are dead wrong. And they will follow you to the ends of the earth, or at least to another sub-forum, to justify their excesses.

Tim
 
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Blizzard

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And here they are. You can't start a thread in the science forum without them following you over here and continuing to talk religion. The more money they've spent, the greater their need to be right. Even when they are dead wrong. And they will follow you to the ends of the earth, or at least to another sub-forum, to justify their excesses.

Tim

If you want to save money on audio gear I recommend building it yourself. The audio industry standard is MSRP is 6X BOM. So I'm not sure what you consider a reasonable price is to spend on a system, but that price can be discounted by 6X by simply building the system yourself. No religion here, just math.
 

Phelonious Ponk

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If you want to save money on audio gear I recommend building it yourself. The audio industry standard is MSRP is 6X BOM. So I'm not sure what you consider a reasonable price is to spend on a system, but that price can be discounted by 6X by simply building the system yourself. No religion here, just math.

No. The religion is the belief that "better," i.e., more expensive amplification, adds value, even when there is no evidence that it is required to do the job at hand. In your particular case, the "religion" is the belief that the same kind of over-engineered audiophile amplifiers required to drive whatever undefined passive load they may be presented with will deliver a benefit when there is no evidence of said benefit other than your ears, which are exceedingly eager to believe you spent your money wisely. This is the "measurement-based forum." Show me. Or go back to church.

Tim
 

Blizzard

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No. The religion is the belief that "better," i.e. more expensive components, add value, even when there is no evidence that they are required to do the job.

Tim

Well if this is the case, why spend any more than $100 on a system? $100 systems certainly do the job of playing back music. If that's the only goal.
 

Phelonious Ponk

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Lacking any real data to support your own argument you're now arguing against a point that I have not made. I think they call that a straw man.

Tim
 

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