Emerald Physics CS-2, Opinions Please

These are not active speakers - they are speakers that use an active crossover.

To me, active speakers - putting the crossover and amps INSIDE the speaker to ensure that it gets the worst affects of vibration possible - is and was a compromise based on convenience, not sound quality.

In my experience, *simple* passive crossovers are Ok and can be a great solution. Complex passive xovers, however, steal far too much of the signal to be tolerable.

Paul-I never for a moment thought you were insinuating. I was just offering since you asked.

My parting commennts.

I do agree with all of the CS2 advocates here that the CS2 are not dynamically compressed. It is unfortunate that a lot of speakers these days are dynamically compressed.

My main point in my original post was that there are a whole class of speakers out there (many decades old) that have the same characteristics as the CS2s and it is worth taking a listen. Unfortunately, most of these speakers are not in the mainstream audiophile consciousness at least in this country or thought to be too old to be any good. A little education goes a long way.

Paul-your comments about your friend Duke's design is interesting. In my original post, I mentioned the old Western Electric 'wide range' speakers. I did not mentioned that they weren't actually that great. They had a variety of problems. This led to the famous Shearer horn, a two way speaker with a multicelluar horn on top and a folded bass horn driven by a dynamic cone driver. BTW-a waveguide is just another form of horn.

These are not active speakers - they are speakers that use an active crossover.

Whatever - but you are really splitting hairs.

To me, active speakers - putting the crossover and amps INSIDE the speaker to ensure that it gets the worst affects of vibration possible - is and was a compromise based on convenience, not sound quality.

I understand. There is still a huge anti-active speaker attitude amongst audiophiles. It is their loss.

Paul - Yes, there's a lot of conceptual kinship between what Clayton is doing and what I'm doing. We're both shooting for room-friendly speakers with controlled radiation patterns using prosound drivers, for much the same reasons.

As far as passive crossover complexity, my belief is that it's not the parts count but the load presented to the amplifier that makes the most difference. Usually but not always, complex crossovers present a more difficult load than the drivers alone would. I use high parts-count crossovers but they present a smoother load than either of my drivers would even with no crossover at all.

Tvad, the USA dealer for Emerald Physics is Underwood Hi-Fi.

Duke