So I have been using A HifiBerry Amp+ with Ropieee and an old pair of Celestion F1 bookshelfs I bought as a stop gap pair about 15 years ago but never got rid of them, they where in storage for quite some time. Celestion don’t make hifi speakers any more sadly. So after 2 years of service I decided it was time to upgrade as the amps ok but not amazing and the speakers now are showing their age a bit.
As I recently upgraded or should say consolidated my main system in to using a Naim Uniti Atom as amp/dac and streamer I had a spare irDac ii DAC and Raspberry Pi 3 with HifiBerry Digi+ lying about, I thought I could make good use of these in the 2nd system, move the other pi and speakers to bedroom for a new system 3.
As the irDAC ii has a built in headphone stage and can be used as a preaemp I decided to look for some HiFi active speakers at a modest price so would not need a full amp or separate power amp/speaker combo. ISo after some musings and checking the purse, I went for QAcoustics BT3 speakers. Having a pair of QAcoustics 2050i in my main system plus their surround speakers, I know their products well and they tend to build a product well, with great sound that punch well above their weight. All the reviews were very positive as well.
They arrived today so I assembled it all together and added a Chromecast Audio I also had lying about into the mix to get Spotiify. as unfortunately Ropieee does not support it. After a few hours listening I am impressed with it. The BT3’s have a lot more presence than the old speakers, not too bright well balanced and go surprisingly deep for a small box. I am sure there are better ones out there but for £199 reduced from £399 I am impressed and it sounds better than the old system . I am sure they will get better after breaking them in a bit too. They also look quite swish in bright red. They do have an inbuilt DAC which I have not tried so I could miss out the irDAC if I wanted to but then I wont get the headphone amp and I figure the irDAC will be superior but may give it a whirl to see, Ropieee is as reliable and transparent as ever.