The active speakers club

Doesn't seem there are any stockists in the UK, but then I'm in Sweden

(Not that I'm getting any anytime soon, although I may go for a demo when my upgrade is finalized, as they would suit er indoors rather well).

What sort of price do they go for over there?

Roughly from around £900 to £3500 a pair.

The award winning Cambridge Audio Stream Magic 6 looks like the perfect one box solution for use with active speakers.

It has all the digital inputs you could want, wireless conectivity to your router and other devices, remote control apps for phones/tablets and of course that all important built in pre-amplifier so that you can connect it directly to a pair of active speakers without needing a separate pre-amp.

It's rather good as well.  Dunno what they'll think of a 700 quid streamer over in that other place though...

£700 seems like a reasonable price considering how much functionality and flexibility it offers.

It's a true 1 box hifi system - just add a pair of active speakers.

Or an amp and some passives...

Hey, thats crazy. An amplifier and passive speakers, thats a very traditional view after all this chat about actives, nah. That will never catch on...

please keep the discussion in this thread about actives. Let's leave debates active vs passive outside this threa and keep this one for reference material. You see how easy it is to spark a debate, but will it be useful here? I dont think so. Please keep it useful.

+2

very good option imo. Personally I would prefer a larger screen. Not just on this one, but on any streamer. They seem to all have tiny screens unreadable across a room. Sb touch has the biggest I think but even that could be bigger imo. Bigger screens - gooooood.

Please keep the discussion in this thread about actives (etc)

Hy everyone,

being on the speaker hunt after selling my Monitor Audio BX2's, I wanted to make a quantum leap and buy the Kef ls50.

While watching an interview with Johann from Kef at some audio-show about the ls50's, he also introduced the X300a

brand new speakers. It was then, when I realised what I really need are active speakers!

I only ever listen to music from my laptop, and I don't want to spend too much time worrying about upgrades next year, (college starts) a pair of active, especially from Kef would be a wise choice.

This would mean selling my Marantz PM6004, and my Teac udh-01 dac.

Sound quality-wise I would guess they would be similar to the q100's. Have to wait and hear.

SHOULD I MAKE THE CHANGE, OR NOT?

The screen is a bit small but I don't think that would too much of an issue because most people will probably use their phone or tablet as a remote control.

As far as I can see this is the only 'all in one' source solution for active speakers. This is because other streamers don't have a built in pre-amp like the Stream Magic does. I used to think that the SB Touch could be used as a one box solution for actives until you pointed out that it doesn't have a pre-amp.