Klipsch or Definitive Tech

My opinion is based on science.
That is your opinion, in turn. It is wrong.

Here's the thing: even when I was convinced that Digital audio sounded better than Vinyl in the real world, I continued to believe that digital involved sampling and analog did not; so in principle digital would always be able to be improved as more and more samples are taken, even if the improvement was no longer audible. A large part of this thinking was caused by the misleading jaggy waves used to represent digital audio. And the now understood to be nonsense that the soul of music is lost between the bytes and bits of digital audio.

But I asked questions leading from this some years ago, on the predecessor to this site, the Sonos Forum that is now gone. Looking back, some were stupid questions. But with some patient responses and some not, I figured out the truth that within specified frequency ranges, a finite sample can represent the analog sound wave with 100% accuracy and fidelity. Further sampling is of no value.

To get from A to B in this journey it is necessary to be able to not come with a full cup of learning. If that isn't possible, there is no point starting, the cup has to be empty to accept new understanding.

Yes, it is time to stop wasting time on this.

Apologies to the OP again; do ask if you need any more information/help.

Bottom line: Trust your ears, above all. They will have to live with what you buy.

To close the loop for someone else that may wander into the thread and read the incomplete discussion on digital audio, here is a useful link if interested in pursuing the subject:
http://productionadvice.co.uk/no-stair-steps-in-digital-audio/

Among other things, the article explains why, via quotes from it:
1.It all starts with the myth: “Digital can never sound as good as analogue”

2.This statement simply isn’t true, but it doesn’t stop people repeating it like some kind of mantra. The reasons they give usually hang on the fact that digital audio samples the audio – “freezing” it at regular moments in time – and claiming that it can therefore never sound as smooth and continuous as the original analogue signal.You can see it for yourself, they say. Zoom in far enough on a digital waveform and eventually you can see the blocky, grainy, digital “stair-steps” – so it stands to reason that you can hear them, if your hearing and equipment is good enough, right ? For stair steps, substitute individual bits of jigsaw puzzles if the picture analogy is preferred instead. Italics added for my suffix to the quoted.

3. There are no stair-steps.The same flawed reasoning is used to explain why we need ever-higher bit-depths and sample rates – since digital audio contains these audible “pixels”, the smaller they are, the better it will sound, supposedly.

4. Audio doesn’t stop at 20 kHz, so why do we stop sampling it there ? Higher sample rates will give us a more accurate representation of the original signal, so it must sound better, right ? Wrong.

5.The “stair-steps” you see in your DAW when you zoom up on a digital waveform only exist inside the computer. (The spoon only exists inside the Matrix !) When digital audio is played back in the Real World, the reconstruction filter doesn’t reproduce those stair-steps – and the audio becomes truly analogue again. So if the recording, processing and playback systems are working correctly, you will hear a perfect representation of the original analogue audio – up to the frequency specified by the sample rate, and with a noise-floor determined by the bit-depth.

End of quotes.

In its early days in the nineties, digital audio reproduction was imperfect, but that was down to poor implementation of the tools and because some surrounding and necessary tech was not available/not perfected. Now, it can be as good as the recording engineer desires it to be.

The article concludes with an embedded video by the well regarded Chris Montgomery of xiph.org, that demonstrates the topics discussed in the article.

You seem to be stuck on the wave form and digital’s theoretical ability to mimic analogue recordings. The cold facts behind it is that digital recording is an incomplete picture. There are pieces missing.

Anyone who wants some dry reading.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_analog_and_digital_recording

After that spirited Vinyl vs Digital debate I will just say this.........sadly the average ear does not perceive all that science. Blind testing has proven that many many a time. I know the limits of my own hearing and therefore snake oil is not for me. 😃

sadly the average ear does not perceive all that science
Why is that sad? I actually think it is very liberating and also a credit to modern tech. I fully appreciate the value of vinyl as something that offers visible precision engineering to be appreciated, that can also be actively handled every time it is used, the LP covers with all the notes, and the ritual of playing the album, even though all of this no longer floats my boat. As something that offers better sound than digital, it never did. Perhaps because I don't have too many old CDs that were inadequately mastered in the early days of digital.

So many great choices these days
And to bring the OP back into his thread:-); the quoted is an excellent point. But not a surprise, because the passive speakers that can be driven by a Connect Amp are a sunset product, evolved and improved over many decades now. There is little left to extract from these and the many options available are just different flavours of essentially the same ice cream now, within a subset of styles - like stand mounted speakers. To get audibly different/better sound, many price points have to be jumped, where the additional money isn't for just fancier looking cabinetry and veneers.

Which creates a problem for marketers on how to convince people to trash perfectly good existing kit and buy the latest iteration; which is done by their ad funded tools - the media. Some of what is written about the latest greatest version of passive speakers and how it represents a leap from last year's models is ludicrous.

I would have suggested active speakers starting from play 1 onwards; but the OP has been gifted a Connect Amp, so passive speakers are needed if that is to be used. With the caveat that spending more than the price of a 1 pair on passive speakers for it, is a questionable decision if made just because the Connect Amp is free.

One alternative is to sell the Connect Amp, get a 1 pair for USD 300 or so, and add to the money obtained from selling the Connect Amp by saving for a while if necessary to add a Sonos Sub to the 1 pair for an audiophile class state of the art set up, albeit not so accepted by audiophiles. All it would lack, if that is needed, is a line in jack. That would my way forward.

I just set up my new CONNECT:AMP to a new pair of Klipsch RP-160M speakers, I'm one very happy guy right now!
This set up sounds fantastic.