My cohort and I are just now leaving our twenties, and frankly speaking, I've only ever heard of people buying active speakers simply for the convenience. Most of our parents had some sort of hi-fi (whether in working order and used or not), and we've witnessed the evolution of HTIB kits grow into soundbars with wireless satellite speakers and subwoofers. Unless I'm misunderstanding some of the definitions here, it's usually just people buying soundbars for televisions or active bookshelf sets for their desk, and generally neither are for serious listening. Anyone I know who has even relatively caught the hi-fi or audiophile bug usually has spent some time and research with various modes of listening, from bookshelf speakers and a small integrated desktop amp, to electrostatic headphones and a stack, or IEMs and a Qudelix 5k.
Now you have a lot of people buying disposable, battery powered BT speakers, but those people are usually the ones still buying Beats, Bose, Apple, etc., devices. I'm not attempting to imply anything wrong with those devices, but generally those people, in my experience, buy them because they're what's on the shelf, not because they've done any research into what sound signature they like. They need *something* to play music with, and so they buy what's within reach and within budget. No different than someone who is on the car lot and just wants something in White or silver with four doors and maybe some neat extras, as opposed to someone who orders their car from the factory, or buys a used corvette with the exact spec and color their looking for in just the right mileage.
But from my understanding, hasn't this always been the case, more or less? I think of it like boom boxes; yes some were of high quality for the time, but it was less about the quality and more about the simple convenience. Same with the HiFi stacks that were pretty rubbish, but still looked like something expensive from Sony or AT, and they still played the radio and cassettes just fine to the teenaged ear.
I mean, hell, some of the greatest selling media players of all time were the PSX, PS2, and PS3, for CD audio, DVD, and BD, respectively. While people have argued for their quality over the years, they were bought because they were (relatively) inexpensive, easy to set up, and were a deal since you or your kid could play a video game on them.
It's been the same with the PC ever since the big box, inexpensive releases by companies like Packard Bell, Compaq, etc., where people would buy a computer in a box, put it together, and keep it for years, not adding in video cards or ram or math coprocessors. One definitely wouldn't say gaming PC building is retro, despite it becoming a thing around thirty years ago, just because as a market it's dwarfed by the offerings from companies like Dell or HP.
Maybe it's just my best buy, but the last time I was there, they had a decent handful of passive speakers and amps, and that was outside their fancy pants zone with ridiculous McIntosh gear no one seems to actually buy there. They also had a ton of stuff you could order; I was tempted to save money by ordering my purple Pro-ject turntable in-store, but the $50 saving would have meant a month or so of waiting.
Sounds like it's just typical dribble from the Verge. Seems like a lot of desktop headphone amps are including speaker amp stages as well, as do plenty of wireless streamers. It feels more like proper line level rca outputs are becoming "retro" in the author's sense, meaning chaining together gear has become messier.
