I went through a few months of soul searching on going active after a midrange driver’s ferrofluid on an old beloved 25yo speaker turned to gooey molasses and started to seize. After running out of driver replacements (had a stock-pile being these were very delicate things) but these drivers were no longer replaceable or repairable, so time to reevaluate everything. I was fully committed (with cost efficient solutions) to the extra amplifiers, cables, and an electronic crossover - Danville Signal dspNexus (and requisite software to make it work), along w/ Orchard Audio BOSC/Starkrimson mono’s and Newform Research’s flagship Last Dance speaker.. which is just the perfect candidate for this given it can be spec’d with an external crossover and has a fundamentally great driver design, but needs electronic time alignment as the line source sits proud of the phalanx of Purifi mid-woofers by a good couple inches.. ie not physically time-aligned, quite the opposite.
Anyways.. only $13k for everything. You could spend far more by staying passive and not have the near the same power or potential.
No doubt, on paper.. active is more efficient, and theoretically you can be more surgical in creating an editable phase linear crossover. Non-destructive R&D. The softwares and devices to create these software networks has become good enough that with a long weekend, most audiophiles with some computer savvy can figure out how to go about it.. but the reality is, it may not sound good to your ears for weeks, months... or longer, if you want better than that. There is so much more to making a good sounding speaker (system actually) than just getting the math right. Our ears (& brain.. ear-interface) are far more sensitive to input than can be evaluated by looking at a plot on a computer screen.. as right as it may appear according to whatever audio-cookbook you may be reading . Our brains are so good at perceiving harmonic falsehoods (odd order distortions and clocking errors) that things which engineers decide are truths get thwarted by reviewers and potential buyers all the time. I’ve heard enough active systems over the years at shows, which sound dynamic.. wide bandwidth.. low distortion, etc, but they are almost always just missing a certain magic you don’t get from a well component-matched system.
I’m an all digital guy.. my entire library is 1’s and 0’s.. don’t own a turntable, but honestly I’ve yet to hear a DAC that sounds as good as a high end vinyl playback system when it comes to becoming emotional involved with the music. Its close in some cases.. but not yet.
It also occurred to me.. what if I had this digital Swiss Army knife? Theoretically I could create any house sound signature with these digital tools and prodigiously powerful array of GaNFET amplification ..driving epically-wide-bandwidth transducers. There wouldn’t be much a point to change any hardware for a long while.. my job description as a system builder/home audio alchemist would now be re-rewritten as ’crossover programmer.’ To some this might seem fun, and no doubt my ears would always be challenged to decipher the nodal changes made to a crossover diagram, however I already stare at a computer screen long enough for my day job, and also I’d be restraining myself from the joy of selecting, unboxing.. just the tactile satisfaction of configuring real objects into a real working collection of symphonic devices to produce a result.. an expectation, whether failed or achieved.. would be lost. The gamble is lost.. and there is no winning. Yes, I suppose you can win at the math.. at object-oriented-programming on a computer screen, but is this the same hobby?
