"Polyamping" A Look to the Future or Fancy Fad?

At present I am having a set of modified NEARs built using an outboard active XO.It was suggested to me months ago and it is the last frontier for getting all you can out of the amps.More efficient to use dedicated amps for the drivers.

It just makes plain sense to me.It also gives you the dexterity to set the seakers to room variations.That in itself makes it a useful.You can trim the ranges in order to get the drivers to blend better with the room dimensions and accoustics.

JMO

as a user of active speakers (ATC 50's), i can tell you first hand that the usage of an active versus a passive crossover does indeed sound better.

Some interesting comments.

Bob, I was not singling out that an ATI amp be used, just that such was sugeested in the design by the designer. I have no knowledge of these amps personally. It was the only design in the DIY realm that I saw which incorporated use of a mutli-channel amp.

Sean and Gregm, your comments with respect to sufficient power are intriguing. How would the 60w not be enough for quality bass response when others claim to get such even with very low wattage amps? I am not saying you're wrong, just asking because I don't know.

Sorry if I overlooked designs of the past that used this design scheme. It was the first I've come across that really went beyond biamping in what seemed to me a radical way. But then, I haven't been auditioning dozens of speaker designs over dozens of years. Because Linkwitz is considered to be rather an innovator, I wondered if his design might be a direction for the future. If such has been done before, though, it wouldn't be the first notion of a technology or approach in audio that was relagated to "dinosaur" status, only to raise its head triumphantly at some point in the future. I'd say analog front ends are an example that many here are familiar with.

The new Pass Labs speakers use this approach. Several "Aleph" style amps internal to each speaker. $40k price tag, but they sounded quite good at CES.

-Ed

Ha, I was going to say that no discussion on this issue would be complete without some input from Sean, but I see that, as usual, he's way ahead of me....