I Was Considering Active, Then I Watched This ...

Dutch & Dutch seem very appealing--active done right.  For people who don't want to mess around and for people trying to reduce boxes/clutter, clearly the way to go.

I respect Steve, I do not follow him closely, but in previous videos of his that I have seen, he seems to come from a position of experience and research. In this video he seems to come from a position of speculation and assumption. There are plusses and minuses to everything and the only opinion that matters is yours.

With such lousy room and not really any options for acoustic treatments, a few have suggested that active is possibly a cure-all for this?

The only way an active speaker can help with a lousy room is if they give you access to adjust the parameters in the DSP to allow you to tune the speaker to the room. Active speakers with ARC is one way of adjusting the parameters. Out board DSP units like those from MiniDSP, DBX,  XTA and others, allow you to adjust the parameters via built in interface or computer or both.  You can also adjust some of the parameters with out board analog e.q.s

SG states about ¾’s of the way through his rant that "as the speaker ages you get stuck with the out-of-date DSP”

Any technology will become out of date as it ages. DSP in a lot of cases can easily be kept up to date with software updates downloaded from your computer.

djones51 - I was considering these:

A700 Bundle White — Buchardt Audio

twoleftears -  8C speaker | Completely accurate music reproduction. - Dutch & Dutch 

Getting close to double the price of the Buchardts'. Not most pleasing looking speaker. And nothing against bookshelf's as long as there on the bookshelf, not really big on stands. Unless of course, there like theses: 

  Fleetwood Sound Company - Loudspeakers by OMA | Home

OK folks. Listen up. Here’s WHY active crossovers are so very much better than passive.

... Except when they are not.

A single loudspeaker driver is an inductor, and provides a frequency dependent,

the fact that there are multiple impedance peaks in most driver’s impedance curve should give us a clue that they are not electrically a simple inductors but an inductor, plus a resistor plus a resonant circuit.

But do please go on...

give you a frequency dependent impedance curve which looks like a Coney Island roller coaster. And that’s just for a tweeter high-pass circuit.

So, without taking this much further, almost any competent SS amplifier will handle these impedance issues. Please look at the simulated speaker load curve in any Stereophile amp review. Even for tubes, it’s not that bad.

Some speakers, like << PLUG!! >> Fritz << /PLUG! >> are naturally a lot better than others and will behave very very well even for modest tube gear.  Joseph Audio is another brand that seems to take impedance flattening seriously.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing that you cannot make an exceptional active crossover, but these arguments have for the most part been overcome by modern, low output impedance amps.

I’ve heard TERRIBLE fully active systems, and I’ve heard sublime traditional systems.



Best,


Erik

audiorusty - In the past, I purchase a microphone off Amazon and downloaded Room Perfect. I found the whole thing a little overwhelming.
I gave up and returned the mic. I need the DSP for Dummies edition!

Darko seems to like the Buchardts A500 bookshelf's:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tctB_Dfmv4s