APS Aeon
I'm not a big fan of active studio monitors in home stereo apps. To me, and to generalize a bit because there are exceptions, they can sound decent but not much more. And if they sound fine, they mostly do it negatively. By not exhibiting major anomalies eg. in the tonal balance, by not erring distractingly in their phase behaviour etc.; in short, by avoiding mistakes. The residual sound is OK but lacks all positive colour or tone. Lacks soul. Lacking soul maybe a virtue in a recording studio. But a vice at home.
By "lacking positive colour" I naturally don't mean colourations. Only bad speakers sound coloured. But if one listens to one's beloved music through one's cherished speakers evening after evening, night after night, not to monitor anything but in order to entertain and support one's passion, the mediator should have some positive sound/message of its own, a deep reason to listen to it, to love it. The active studio monitors, the ones I've heard, frequently sing, outside studio environment, without own character and voice.
Maybe the amp module can be blamed? To my tube tuned ears the moduls (Hypex etc.) often found in such monitors, sound honest and healthy but dull and two dimensional, missing finess and subtlty of more advanced amp solutions, whether tube or solid state. I've failed to hear one that would truly impress me. But I haven't heard all of them.
Not that I'd be against the active principle. My horn speaker system is active. The active crossover is hooked to tube amps, and their OTPs directly to huge Alnico magnets of both the compression driver and the woofer motor. But needless to say this is a totally different approach as compared to Class-D modules back to back amplifying the drivers inside the cabinet.
So what's different with the Polish APS Aeon? After all, APS is a manufacturer of studio monitors, and the 2-way vented Aeon is primarily meant for studios. It too sports two amp moduls, one 150 watter (with Toshiba transistors) for 8" paper cone woofers, and a 75 watter (TDA 7294) for a 1" titanium dome tweeter, both by Seas, Norway. And balanced inputs, as is pertinent in this case. The edges of the enclosure have been rounded to reduce diffractions, and an inner wall completely separates the electronic module from the speaker's acoustic chamber.
What's different is that this speaker doesn't sound like a 'typical' studio monitor or a speaker that tries to imitate one. Nor does it sound like the vast majority of passive Hi-Fi home monitors. This speaker sounds like an audiophile speaker with a dry and informative bass/lower midrange performance, combined with not too analytical/bright upper midrange/treble.
Due to the chosen polished and clean tonal balance, there is certain directness in the sound occasionally manifesting itself in slightly constrained tone/timbre of some instruments (eg. piano, saxophone, on some recordings). That takes thoughts back to a studio environment but on the whole it's not harmful, and doesn't prevent from enjoying music.
For the same reason (relative under-representation of upper bass/lower mids, for some not for me ), there is occasional bottom of a well -effect or feeling of hollowness, but again, nothing to worry: the chosen balance is a way better in the way it is rather than other way round. The key thing is that the upper midrange/treble should not be unpleasantly coarse and rough, and it isn't. In this way one can fully enjoy Aeon's wonderful sounding bass/low mids region. Cool. That means a lot in terms of music.
I assume that it's not the easiest thing to do - radiation-wise etc. - to match a 8" woofer with a 1" dome at 1.5 kHz, but obviously the responsible person at APS have managed. The bass notes are produced independently of other bass notes, and not as a bunch (to the extent human ear allows, of course). This results in a clean and intelligible, easy to read bass, not overriding music'al info between 200-800Hz. Vocal music is reproduced in the most relaxed and pure manner. This is one of the speakers I have listened to with a smile on my face, - and secretly hoping that there were more speaker manufacturers who would have courage to go for such a uncommercial tonal balance!
The soundstage of the Aeon is sizable but not unjustifiably enlarged. I wished that the sound would have greater directivity, and that the focus would have stayed a tad more firmly between the speakers. But although the soundstage might not have been the most three dimensional, the produced low notes conveyed nicely echoes and other spatial clues of the tried recordings, contributing also to good overall dynamics.
Like all studio speakers, APS enables certain adjustments. After testing different positions (eg. bass +6dB .. -12dB) I found that minus 2-4 dB could have been the best bass setting with some recordings, but that the best setting (the one I liked most) in general was 0dB. The same applied to treble settings.
The APS Aeon is not an equally delicate a reproducer with chamber music than eg. the Audio Space LS3/5 clone (Rogers BBC monitor). It's not a Cervin Wega with heavy rock'n roll. It's not as open sounding and revealing as my horns are, and I know standmount Hi-Fi speakers that are smoother sounding than the Aeon. But it's a damn fine speaker to listen to, one of those that makes one hear the tracks up to the very last second, and this mostly because of its so well chosen and realized upper bass/low mids performance.A pair of Aeon cost 1900 euros, which is not nothing, but somehow within the limits of reasonableness given that the sum includes amplifiers, balanced inputs and all the useful adjustments for room adaptation. The APS Aeon is 42cm high, but in my experience can be placed on a standard stand without major sonic loss.