Last year I traded in a pair of powered loudspeakers for passive speakers. It seems like heresy to give up a modern speaker with built-in amplifiers, DAC, and wireless streaming for a passive wired device that's been around for decades.

I was using a pair of Kanto Yumi's since 2015, their former flagship bookshelf speaker. They are a good sounding yet flawed loudspeaker, though I can use basic treble and bass tone controls to make them sound as neutral as the M5HP.

https://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/ubbthreads.php/ubb/printthread/Board/6/main/8357/type/thread

I decided against another powered loudspeaker system because I was looking to upgrade to a multichannel set up. Unless you go for the expense of an AVR with pre-amp outs, it made no sense to choose anything but a passive loudspeaker.

Then it occurred to me: why not take a page from the subwoofer playbook and add high level speaker inputs to a powered loudspeaker setup? This seems like a great inexpensive way of future proofing your loudspeaker to accept any future changes without being locked into a proprietary ecosystem.

If Axiom or Bryston patents the idea, feel free to send me an EP800 in walnut.

Thoughts?

The powered speaker market consists mostly of those who want sound without gear. There's also a small subset who want multi-channel without wires. The common denominator is wireless; not wired.

Wireless is a hot mess. I don't see any opportunity for an open standard in wireless audio transmission beyond BlueTooth. The average consumer has no patience in pairing and troubleshooting dropped BT connections. Every one else (KEF, Sonos, Bose, Enclave, etc.) have their own proprietary wireless standards that lock you into their ecosystem.

I do like the idea of less gear though. Minimalists like myself are enthusiastic about adding lightness through heavy hitters.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m51pmrel77zcfw3/1992-Feb_0022.jpg?dl=0

BTW, that sub-sat image is no big deal today, but it was mind-blowing heresy back in the early 90's. It was the equivalent of a Macintosh showing up an x86 DOS PC in the 1980's.

Audio Critic reviewed the Modulus, and it had major midrange issues and poor sub/sat blending. An M2 and EP175 would run circles around it; an M5HP with EP500 would alleviate any concerns about room-filling volume.

Here's how I look at it. I'm currently a healthy manly-man with coarse, dark, thick chest hair and gobs of gonadotropic hormones coursing through my gnarly 'nads. My brain, honed from decades of wisdom and experience, is sharper now than any youngster's who might know how to do something but doesn't know what they should do or why they should do it. While I'm still enjoying my fine form, I'll siphon the money the folks at my neighborhood pubs spend on sex, drugs, alcohol and Ford F150s into audio. That means no frilly, fruity, piss-ant wireless speakers but rather gear that grips my savage soul and shamelessly smacks it to remind me how great it feels to be alive!

The days will come however where no amount of prunes will stir my bowels. And on the rare month when they wearily wake, they'll lazily pour putridity into a pathetic diaper that a careless care-giver will have hastily fitted on me. Nothing will matter to me by then because my brain will have the IQ of a chunk of Bubblicious.

The day will come when my final directives will be fulfilled. Those call for dumping me and my trusted Cold Steel Leatherman Semper-Fi saber-ground, razor-sharp clip point blade in my right hand and Tanto point blade in my left, into a den of vicious bears and wolves that haven't eaten in weeks. I'll howl in delight as we choke, chisel and chew on each other in a final celebratory orgy to shock the grey goo in my skull to life once again.

As I gurgle my final dying gasps, I'll smile knowing my gear has a home with my heirs, who will revel in dynamics rather than puny sound.

My heirs wouldn’t know what to do with my stuff … probably hold a garage sale and sell it off for nothing.

So Mojo, when you read my name in the obituary, run don’t wak, make sure your the first in line to pick up the Actives for $10 and don’t miss the ADA amps for $15

High level inputs for powered subs or speakers are a workaround at best. I think they are offered as a way to connect legacy gear, but would never recommend designing a setup this way.

Subs: Full range signal is sent to sub and low passed (hopefully) via a dial on backplate.
Pros: Dont need to know much about audio setup or a new amplifier to cobble a sub to the setup.
Cons: Latency. A full range signal intended for mains arrives at the sub at the same time. The sub amplifier and cone have delay. It is impossible to time align properly although you can phase align a cycle late. Mains still play frequencies duplicated by sub, so phase cancellation abounds.

Speakers: Full range signal is sent to speaker backplate (as in some hypex plates) and re amplified and processed to suit powered speaker.
Pros: Use existing speaker level and avoid running new low level (rca) signal cable to new powered speaker locations. Use existing or other amplifier that is low power to “drive” high power monitors.
Cons: Noise floor and gain structure of setup will be tough to predict or correct if problem. If connected to an AV setup, again latency becomes an issue and lipsync will have to be corrected. Cant do that with a “dumb” amplifier ahead of the speaker so must deal with in display. Pretty cludgey.

Main problem is you are not able to time align drivers at crossover frequencies unless you can delay the main to suit the sub latency.

Latency is easily detectable and measurable in phase plots. Once corrected it is a night and day difference. Cant do that in this setup.

I'm quite generous so I'll gladly give them $20 and $30.

Love the BT on my cheap Android phone. My homies and I are at my 'hood's skate park listening to Houston Blues Radio via Simple Radio over BT on my Prunus J-288 radio.


PRUNUS J-288 Radio AM FM Small... https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07H2XBW22?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

This inability to go wireless or be flexible probably means that loudspeaker and traditional stereo component manufacturers will consolidate or disappear as they get supplanted by the wireless soundbar market.

I know that I was very close to getting one instead of a traditional 5.1 system like I did. I was never concerned about high SPL levels or channel separation, but I was concerned about their ability to have a neutral sound profile. That's easily remedied by going bigger, such as the Sennheiser Ambeo. I can see a day where sound bars might get an Olive score in the 4's and 5's.

Bigger is better.

https://youtu.be/O1v7xkL6hKI