I think it was very fair and certainly as fair as your own conclusions about active vs passive PMC’s even though, it now turns out, you didn’t do a like for like comparison either… why’s my opinion/comparison worth less than yours?
I never said the CA was a better streamer than the streamer in the HE but, with the rest of my system, it kinda was into passive 19’s vs HE into 19a’s… nobody is more surprised than I am but there it is. I could easily afford an HE but I’m just not interested.. price difference just under £2k!
Have you heard a CA streamer? Probably not!
I never thought something so small and inexpensive could sound like it does; I only bought the CA to dip my toe into streaming (but still using CD as main source). I didn’t think for one minute I’d like streaming but I’m a complete convert now
The Naim cd player now sold but luckily I have a couple of other decent cd players to use if I want to
If you cannot or will not understand the difference there is no value in continuing this debate. It certainly won’t assist the OP, who asked only about the Atom and Atom HE.
Dalmatian I would suggest you go for passive speakers as you will have a huge choice whereas active’s are few and far between
That would mean going for the Atom (non HE).. but make sure you audition the Atom with your choice of speaker before purchasing, especially as the Atom has a fairly low output
I would suggest that the OP compares active speakers with an Atom HE but definitely also compare the passive’s of the same speakers with an XS3/SN3 with a separate streamer…WiiM or otherwise
The idea of active speakers driven by something like an Atom HE is intriguing to me. Active speakers seem to be something very much favoured in the pro market. It makes for a nice neat simple system with potentially excellent sound. To me the downside is that upgrading such a system could be difficult and certainly a lot less simple / more costly and with less choice than with passive speakers. You are pretty much locked into the active speaker route without making big and costly changes. If no upgrading is desired or planned then this is irrelevant. But I would suggest to the OP that if any upgrading of source or speakers is envisaged in the future then the passive speaker route is more sensible and conducive to that as it will give you far more flexibility.
I see the “lock in” as probably the most important aspect of going for active speakers and Atom HE. That you are not able to spend ridiculous amounts of extra money adding power supplies, amps and other things to the solution (many of which arguably make absolutely no difference to your enjoyment of the sound) is very attractive. That said, this is probably a better option for those the have already spent (wasted) many thousands building up multi box systems and now seek a simple solution as opposed to those starting on the first rung of this ladder.
I think it all depends on what your long term goals are and the sort of performance that you will be satisfied with. When I owned Naim equipment I found that adding power supplies made very worthwhile improvements. The multi box system that I had sounded superb. But one box systems have the attraction of much greater simplicity, which may or may not be imprtant to you. But they will never equal the performance of multi box systems. Again this may or may not be important to you. Within the context of one box systems the Atom HE + active speakers is potentially capable of superior performance to standard Atom + passive speakers. But you have limited your options for the future. Again, whether that matters to you is a very personal thing and depends on your intentions. These may well change over time. No right or wrong here, no one size fits all I’m afraid.
Within days of the Atom HE being launched, my dealer was wanting to match it up with AcousticEnergy active speakers.
Nowhere near as good as your PMC . I have followed your enjoyment of the AtomHE and PMC with interest, as my desire has been to downsize the box count and to simplify the system
Agreed. The point I was trying to make around adding the extra components (cost / benefit) was not that these things don’t make the system sound different and have greater scale etc but more that the enjoyment of the music very often doesn’t “improve”. Absolutely correct that these things are very subjective.
Yes very true IME. One gets an instant ‘hit’ after upgrading but after a while the performance then can often feel no more enjoyable than it was before. This I think is one of the great ironies of hi-fi. I said on another thread somewhere that there has been very little correlation over the years between the cost of the equipment I’ve been using and my enjoyment of music. There’s a lesson in there somewhere I’m sure.