Active Speakers Don't Sound Better


I just wanted to settle a debate that has often raged in A’gon about active vs. passive speakers with my own first hand experience. I’ve recently had the chance to complete a 3-way active center channel to match my 2-way passive speakers.

I can absolutely say that the active nature of the speaker did not make it sound better. Or worse. It has merged perfectly with my side speakers.

What I can say is that it was much easier to achieve all of the technical design parameters I had in mind and that the speakers have better off-axis dispersion as a result, so it is measurably slightly better than if I had done this as a passive center. Can I hear it? I don’t think so. I think it sounds the same.

From an absolute point of view, I could have probably achieved similar results with a passive speaker, but at the cost of many more crossover stages and components.  It was super easy to implement LR4 filters with the appropriate time delays, while if I had done this passively it would require not just the extra filter parts but all pass filters as well.  A major growth in part counts and crossover complexity I would never have attempted.  So it's not like the active crossover did any single thing I couldn't do passively, but putting it all together was so much easier using DSP that it made it worthwhile.

I can also state that as a builder it was such a positive experience that I may very well be done with making passive speakers from now on.

 

All the best,

 

Erik

erik_squires

@roxy54 of course there are, and my assertion doesnt remove that from the realm of posiibilities or experiences, nor is it incompatible with the reality of high end speakers with built-in amplification.

and still, you dont stick an amp inside a speaker to make it better. you do it so the customer doesnt have to bother with amps.  

"Green cars are better than blue cars."

Of course its all relative. There are pluses and minuses to just about everything. Dedicating on-board amplification to each driver is a potential benefit but the quality of those amplifiers must also be considered as well as the specific design.  ATC speakers have been mentioned, and both Grimm Audio and Kii Audio have  done fairly well using Class D amplifiers in their active designs.

I do want to point out that as the builder of an active, 3-way speaker I can point out a number of ways in which this is a technically superior speaker vs. what I would have made as a passive version. Also that my workflow is so much simpler I’ll probably never design or build a passive speaker again.

As others have pointed out, there are a number of power efficiency problems greatly improved upon by using an active design. Those are some of the ways in which I can point to this speaker having better specs. At the same time, in a home where 10 watts is a lot, I may never hear it.

What it did not do was actually "sound better" within my modest volume requirements in my small living room. It did not say "I’m so much better than every other speaker in this room." What it does say is "I’m so much better for this living room than a lot of other designs" which is what I wanted and why I bothered to take the effort to build it. Among those requirements was introducing no more devices. I wanted to swap my previous passive, 2-way center for a powered 3-way, not add 3 more amplifiers, a 3-way crossover and a center.

Erik and others - maybe you have a comment.

I have not tried top of the line active speakers. Only mid level and below. But my experience is this: take the 'passive' speaker from a pair of active speakers. Instead of the output from the amp in the active speaker, give it the output of a good amp (in my case, the amp in my main rig).

Result - to my ears, it usually sounds much better! So I am sad, reconnecting it to the so-so amp in the other speaker.

Comment?

BTW, I want to point out that the plate amplifier in my center is in a sealed sub-compartment.  The simple box-shape actually has 3 separate chambers:

  1. Woofers
  2. Mid/tweeter chamber
  3. Plate amplifier

All quite sturdy.  The amplifier is not directly subjected to the woofer's output, nor is the midrange or tweeter. 

The tweeter itself shares the space with the midrange but it is a closed-back design.