I've used a rule of thumb which is that if I can tell more differences between recordings using equipment A than equipment B that is something in equipment A's favour. Actually I believe that is a good rule of thumb still.
For a long time I've tended to assume the same with components i.e. if I can hear more differences between other components using equipment A than with equipment B that is something in equipment A's favour.
However, if we take the example of an active speaker, because this architecture presents a simpler load and less strenuous load (two separate benefits) it tends to level the playing field in terms of amplification. In other words, the benefits of a high-current transistor amp over a regular transistor amp are reduced in this configuration. Put another way, you will hear less difference between them compared to the difference you would hear between them with, say, a 4-way passive loudspeaker.
Does this mean the active speaker configuration is "worse" because you don't hear so much difference between the amps? Is this configuration less "transparent"? It depends what you mean by these terms.
The active thing is just an example. We might talk about loudspeaker cables or tonearms or whatever. An example we might all recognise as "susceptibility" is poor EMI shielding. Clearly this will throw up differences between other components which throw off less or more EMI but this is not desirable. But are other examples actually like this but treated differently?
Is not hearing differences between other components always a bad thing? Is being able to hear every little difference and tweak necessarily good or is that subtly false logic? As I said maybe "your transparency is my susceptibility"?
What I don't want to do is to throw out the baby with the bath-water. How can we tell when hearing differences is good?
Darren
