Marvin8

All true. Easier to sell pretty boxes and separates. More profit too. Like I said, that's why the high-end dealers have gone out of business. Most folks buy their speakers at Best Buy now.

Will have to try using the balanced in's sometime, but the regular single-ended are working just fine for now. Am also using a Velodyne DD-12 for the lower end, which just makes the whole system sing. I use it for both audio and video sources, and am on the fence right now about losing the matching center channel. Don't really need it all that much since I don't have people off to the sides very often. DPL II phantom image works just fine for me. We'll see. Once you go active, and I don't care WHO makes it, you'll never go back. Too bad that consumers have been snookered by the high-end industry, which has been dying for over two decades now.

I rode the "high-end" speaker roller coaster for many years until I blind-purchased a pair of the Quad Active 12L's. That was the end of my search. In fact, I purchased an extra pair as a backup in case Quad decided to stop making them like Paradigm did with their Active 20's. The reason you don't see more Quad Actives in studios is that the monitor's features are geared a little more toward the consumer than the pro-user. The finish is an easily scratched black laquer. The woofer only gets 60 watts and the tweet only 40. Also, some high/low pass features on the back are missing. As a home user, I would have appreciated some kind of auto-sensing turn-on feature, but I think Quad either cheaped out or didn't want to put something in the signal path. Bottom line: I would never go back to passive speakers again....period. As somebody pointed out above, the LACK of resales is often a clue as to the desirability of a product.