Crossover ? Passive Vs. Active

With an active xover, one can pick and choose xover points, levels, and even the Q on some models. I think the amp choice is less of an issue when you have such flexibility in the xover. Bob's comment is right on.

Losing an inductor [in a conventional woofer xover] with yards and yards of nondescipt wire is a huge advantage in an active system. But 4, 6 or more amps just isn't in the cards for most of us. Perhaps active monitors are a way to go, but I always wondered about the quality of those amps, and how they are subjected to the vibrations of the spkr cabinet. And most are geared to the pro market, for "accuracy" and not necessarily hi-fi.

I'm running my two-way Apogee Duetta Signatures with a Marchand XM9 active crossover. One thing you always have to be concerned with when going to an active crossover is that you can smoke a tweeter or midrange driver fast. Remember, once you go active, you have by-passed any and all filter capacitors connecting to the tweeter and(or) midrange drivers - any frequency can pass to these drivers now. For this reason, it is imperative that your amps powering your mid-ranges and(or) tweeters must not pass any DC, and must not have any power-on "tumps" as well. You would be surprised how may good amps pass a little too much DC to be used for bi-amping.

Anyway with that being said, since I have gone active, I'll never go back to passive - at least with this set of speakers.

the amplifiers will be much smaller in power rating and will be economical.

Not really. If you have say a 100 watt amp for a three way speaker, you are still going to need an amp very close to that level for the woofer, and you will need 2 more amps to boot. Yes, the midrange and especially the tweeter will not need as much power but the quality still has to be there. Even if you could get by with 3 amps that had 1/3 the power it would still cost more than a single higher powered amp. Going up the power chain of a power amp line doesn't double the cost when you double the power . It is a fraction of that.

I agree that a well executed system with an active crossover has many advantages for the reasons listed, but saving money is not one of them. Quality amps of any power level are not "economical."

Bob, I agree with what you say. Yes, many things audiophile will seem irrational to the masses, and many actually are, but since this is a web site devoted to all things audiophile I don't think it irrational to bring up those ideas. I suppose it is silly to debate a term like economical in the first place since that means very different things to different people.

Most people would say spending $2k for any piece of stereo equipment would be insane yet you describe the ATI as being economical. To me economical in high end means what I can afford that gives me what I perceive to be the best sound for the money. I have not heard an ATI amp, but having tried various other solid state amps in that and even higher price ranges in my system I doubt it would perform as I wish, which not only makes it uneconomical for me.