[ctviggen]

“J Gordon Holt wrote he thought the active ATC 20's (?) were one of the finest loudspeakers he had ever heard.  …...  I seem to remember he said that they were THE finest.”

I auditioned the Paradigm Active 20 ($1600/pair) versus Studio 20 ($800/pair) about 12 years ago.  Same drivers/cabinet (2-way standmounts).  No contest.   Actives were much more dynamic, ruler flat frequency response, mind blowingly deep/full bass.  (Just read reviews of active monitors used in studios.)  It was an epiphany.

Too bad audiophile “straights” haven’t caught on.   

For me, going active is so much more expensive than what I have now, that's why I don't do it.  For instance, my Salk HT3s don't have connections for active for all three drivers.  Then, I have to add an additional two amplifier channels per speaker, and that really means 6 channels overall for two speakers.  Then you need all that cabling for six amplifiers, and you still need some type of active control for all six drivers.  It's a little out of control, especially since I don't have the time right now to critically listen to my speakers, let alone perform that kind of complete reworking of the system.

[macrojack]

I went passive because I felt some combination of lazy, incompetent and ill-equipped was keeping me from getting the most out of my active system. Too many variables in the settings and too many components on the shelf caused me to turn it all over to a professional designer with a great pedigree. As I stated above, I may have given up some macro-dynamic drama and I know I gave up a few db of sensitivity, but all in all, I feel I came out ahead.

Bill used the same horn and driver and the same woofer in a comparable box as mine, and set it all up in the great outdoors for anechoic purposes. He then set up his instruments and began testing. After some 50 hours of testing and retesting, he had perfected the design and sent it off to Yorkville sound to be built. This entire process took about 10 weeks but the results are excellent.
Do you really think you can do the same?

For hobbyists who like to get their hands in things, I think active is by far the better choice, unless, of course, you have really excellent speakers with a designer who provided you with optimized passive network from the factory. In that case I think you would be wise to leave well enough alone.

The people I've asked who really know their stuff, say passive is much harder to get right. This makes sense if you compare changing a coil with changing a setting.

[Davey]

Gents,

I don't think "going active" is really applicable on a system like the Salk which was never setup for that contingency and who's crossover is highly specialized for the particular passive drivers.  This goes for a majority of commercial, conventional speakers.
Also, to "go active" is not straightforward because many questions need to be asked regarding the objective.  Should the electrical transfer functions of the existing crossover be duplicated, or should the system be re-engineered for (possible) improvements an active configuration could yield?
If matching curves were the objective it's certainly possible to achieve.  A person would take electrical measurements at the driver terminals with a measurement program like ARTA, or similar, and those would become "target" curves for an active solution.  LspCAD (and a couple of the other speaker design programs) allow to "optimize to a target" and can generate setup files for a few DSP-boxes or an analog active circuit.
I've done this on a few systems.  Good fun.

However, I think systems that are being designed from the ground up, or existing systems which have much more basic crossover designs....like say Magnepan's....are much better candidates for active crossover configurations.

Cheers,

Dave.

[Quiet Earth]

Improved passive crossover:
http://db.audioasylum.com/mhtml/m.html?forum=mug&n=171078

dm,
Nice work!  However, I also think if you would have chosen a higher quality inductor that your passive results would have been even better.

I don't have any lab worthy data to share but I understand how hard it is to justify spending more money on the inductor. No one wants to risk a major portion of their budget on one single part, and this sort of thinking requires a big leap of faith since the math works out almost the same for the cheaper, near-equivilent inductor. I really believe that the quality of the inductor is just as important as the woofer itself in a passive design, maybe even more. This is an expensive proposition to tinker with as a do-it-yourselfer.

I don't see how someone is going to prove active over passive on an apples to apples basis since there are too many variables created upstream with the active approach. It's a good question though.

[Rocket_Ronny]

If I were building a speaker and had to do a crossover it would be active as it's much easier to learn than passive. Plus you can get time alignment and direct drive of the drivers. I would use digital crossovers.

Having said that, I had a nice talk with Jim Smith who wrote the book "Get Better Sound". People pay him to come over and get better sound from their rigs. He has set up many systems and quite a few active ones that customers had happening. He concludes that most of the active systems were not very good due to the complexity. It takes determined effort to make it happen. He felt most of the active guys would have been better off with a professionally designed passive speaker.

So choose your poison.

Rocket_Ronny

[Rick Craig]

I use the DEQX / Digmoda and have done many passive crossovers as well. DSP really is an advantage in handling more complex designs and gives you flexibility for future speaker changes. With a simple 2-way a good passive design might make more sense economically - DSP will always have an audible advantage but not as much in this case.

You can try to emulate the same transfer function as a passive filter; however, as posted earlier this is very difficult to do in some situations. With no insertion loss and better control over cone motion active will always be more true to the input signal. Soundstage magazine uses the NRC in Canada for speaker testing and you can see the limitations of passive components in some of their tests for linearity at higher output levels.

DSP and passive are the same in that bad execution can make either one not sound good. Voicing plays a large role. For instance, you can have two designs that fit within say +/- 2db on-axis over the frequency range of 200hz-20K but they sound quite different. This could be due to the off-axis response from different crossover slopes / points ,etc.

I like the DEQX because you can easily compare up to four different crossovers and change the equalization on the fly (good for experimenting with voicing). I have been around friends using the Behringer but am not that familiar with other units like the Mini-DSP. I would be happy to come visit you in Charlotte and bring along the DEQX if you want to check it out sometime.

[jimdgoulding]

Passives have the advantage of adding your own amplification.  I'd like to try some 91db efficient Devore Nines with a 50 wpc tube IA, for example.  Amps do sound different.  Once I had three at my disposal and swapped them in and out driving some stats.  Of the three, I really likes the Rowland.  The Classe had more definition but the Rowland had more beauty, totally subjective, of course.  I think the majority of people prefer this to actives despite their alledged strengths.  I listen with actives, btw, and am not really thinking about changing that.  They play larger and go deeper than passive speakers of comparable size, ime.  Or delicate, when I prefer, with no loss of fine detail.

[Trismos]

I have been toying with going active also as I have a pair of GR TL N3s with outboard crossovers and have a couple of NAD power amps sitting in the closet I could use for the woofers and I would drive the Neo-3 tweeters with my Virtue amp. I've got the DCX2496 and the MiniDSPs bookmarked in my wishlist folder but I'm still somewhat dubious about the DAC portion of these units - or perhaps there's something I don't understand.

My main source is a a dedicated music computer and I've recently upgraded to a Centrance DACmini. So I'm assuming that I take the analogue out of the DACmini and run that into the active crossover that converts the signal to the digital domain again. All this seems a little unwieldy if not outright sloppy.

Now I've heard good things about not having passive crossovers between the amp and speaker and I wish to run the N3s individual speakers where they work most efficiently, perhaps rolling the woofers off a bit higher and running subs. And because I already have most of the gear, it won't be an overly expensive experiment. I like that you can try different crossover types, that you can time align your speakers and set up your speakers so that your listening position is optimized in a less than optimal room.

Thoughts?

Dave

[JDUBS]

Passives have the advantage of adding your own amplification.  I'd like to try some 91db efficient Devore Nines with a 50 wpc tube IA, for example.  Amps do sound different.  Once I had three at my disposal and swapped them in and out driving some stats.  Of the three, I really likes the Rowland.  The Classe had more definition but the Rowland had more beauty, totally subjective, of course.  I think the majority of people prefer this to actives despite their alledged strengths.  I listen with actives, btw, and am not really thinking about changing that.  They play larger and go deeper than passive speakers of comparable size, ime.  Or delicate, when I prefer, with no loss of fine detail.

Why can't you use your own amplification with active?  I use three different amps with my active setup...all exactly suited to the task at hand.

-Jim

[JLM]

In a ground up active design the cost is minimally more than passive, without having to buy power amp(s).  Decent active studio (professional) monitors, say JBL 2325 cost $400/pair on up.  Really good two-way designs, say Neuman KH120 run $1500/pair and are flat to 52 Hz.  The $900/pair Event 20/20BAS reach 35 Hz.  These are all two-way standmounts.  For small rooms or desktop use a sub would probably not be warranted.

From the audiophile perspective I see two issues with actives: trying to "convert" passives to actives is "technically awkward" (expensive/inefficient/just plain backwards approach); and unless you go with single driver designs (that are active by definition) its hard to use tube amps (and all but impossible to find ready made).

[rajacat]

Why can't you use your own amplification with active?  I use three different amps with my active setup...all exactly suited to the task at hand.

-Jim

+1

Exactly! My next speakers are going to be active using my current modified Heathkit tube monoblocks, my modded Trends 10.1s' and subwoofer amps. I'll build them using these group buy SOTA waveguides, yet to be determined compression drivers, high end AE TD15m woofers and two or three subs . It'll all be tied together with miniDSP digital crossovers9http://www.minidsp.com/. You don't have to buy "pro" studio monitors to use active crossovers effectively in fact I think that these will be better than off the shelf active monitors because I can tailor them to my preferences . 

[DustyC]

I have maggie 3.6's. used a single amp for a year or so with the passive XO. Saved up to try an active crossover and 2nd amp.
Using the active XO gives more clarity in the bass (amp is directly coupled to the bass panel) and allows tailoring of the sound with different types of amps (Tube and SS, or SS and lower powered class 'a' amps, etc).
Even though there is a new model (3.7) it doesn't allow easy bi-amping, so I'm keeping my older model.

[jimdgoulding]

Why can't you use your own amplification with active?  I use three different amps with my active setup...all exactly suited to the task at hand.

-Jim

Tell how it's done.  Do you have an outboard crossover?  Lots of cable?  I'm not sure most people want to go that route is all I'm sayin.  And that it isn't necessary for them that don't.

[JDUBS]

Tell how it's done.  Do you have an outboard crossover?  Lots of cable?  I'm not sure most people want to go that route is all I'm sayin.  And that it isn't necessary for them that don't.

Computer handles the crossover and room correction, routed via a single firewire cable to an outboard pro-audio interface / dac (mbox pro 3).  The mbox outputs 6 channels to 3 stereo amps.  Lot of cables?  Yeah, I guess.  Worth it?  Absolutely.

-Jim

[Pez]

People aren't willing to do 99% of what most audiophiles do. That is fact. So are there audiophiles out there who don't want to do active? Hell yes there are, but just like every audiophile knows room treatment is imperative to great sound and many still don't or cannot do room treatment, every audiophile should acknowledge that active is imperative to superb sound as well, even if they cannot or choose not to do it.

[Rclark]

I read that for active you can't really mix and match amps.

[jimdgoulding]

Pez-  Imperative?  Seriously?

[JDUBS]

I read that for active you can't really mix and match amps.

Uhhh...what?  Of course you can.

Jim

[Pez]

I read that for active you can't really mix and match amps.

Then explain my setup?

[Pez]

Pez-  Imperative?  Seriously?

Yes imperative as in you will never get as good of sound out of an untreated room period. It's either at the level of a treated room or it's not. Anything less is a compromise of quality.