For the past couple of months I've been trying to decide on what pair of speakers to buy because I badly need an upgrade. The listening distance would be about 1 meter at most times (they would sit next to my desk - I'm planning to buy floor stands) but I also want to put them in the living room sometimes when I have guests. That would mean I'm looking for near/midfield speakers. I read a lot of reviews here and looked at the preference ratings and my first pick was Elac's DBR-62. They look great on paper and have everything I want like bass (sub 50hz is a must) and clarity in the highs. I listen to a lot of different music genres but mainly classical music, jazz, and electronic music (especially bass heavy stuff like house, techno and atmo drum and bass). The only problem with Elac's is that they need a beefy amp that costs as much as a pair (where I live the total cost would be around 920$). I decided I don't want to spend that much and to limit my budget to 570$.
I already have a DAC so the obvious thing would be to consider active speakers. You could say I should have done it from the start but I had my reasons. I was quite worried about the many internal conversions and 'cheap' amps being used. Most of the active speakers I see especially in this price range have internal DSPs so that means AD conversion and then DA conversion. It led me to a conclusion that no matter how good my DAC is and how high the sampling rate is these speakers are always going to significantly 'downgrade' the audio signal quality.
Recently tho I started thinking that maybe I'm missing something because active speakers dominate the market. Should I stop worrying and just go for Kali LP-6v2 (JBL 306P MK2 wont do it for me as they look horrendous and cheap) or maybe there is a better sounding passive alternative in the same price range (amp included)? How big of an impact do these conversions and 'downgrades' have on the audio quality in the real world? Is it as big as I think it is? For the passive alternatives I considered JBL stage A130 as they would not exceed my budget with an amp and have a good preference rating. I would also want to add that I'm planning to get into music production in the future so It would be nice if they were good for it but the emphasis is still heavily on the listening experience.
I already have a DAC so the obvious thing would be to consider active speakers. You could say I should have done it from the start but I had my reasons. I was quite worried about the many internal conversions and 'cheap' amps being used. Most of the active speakers I see especially in this price range have internal DSPs so that means AD conversion and then DA conversion. It led me to a conclusion that no matter how good my DAC is and how high the sampling rate is these speakers are always going to significantly 'downgrade' the audio signal quality.
Recently tho I started thinking that maybe I'm missing something because active speakers dominate the market. Should I stop worrying and just go for Kali LP-6v2 (JBL 306P MK2 wont do it for me as they look horrendous and cheap) or maybe there is a better sounding passive alternative in the same price range (amp included)? How big of an impact do these conversions and 'downgrades' have on the audio quality in the real world? Is it as big as I think it is? For the passive alternatives I considered JBL stage A130 as they would not exceed my budget with an amp and have a good preference rating. I would also want to add that I'm planning to get into music production in the future so It would be nice if they were good for it but the emphasis is still heavily on the listening experience.
Last edited:
