Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

 

@kingharold great story, I’m sure there was a lot of frustration, so glad you hung in there over all that time.

@lonemountain great post and you are right it is important to keep the signal the same level as best you can, doing crossover work at speaker level is silly everyone knows it, reason # 847 why speakers and amps need to be made for each other. Funny how right you are no one mentioned the many reasons why working on the signal after the amplifier is definitely suboptimal.

@kingharold +10, my hats off to you, you curated the entire chain, even the programming support from DEQX until you got what you wanted.

@lonemountain +10, great post and having owned both reference level passive and active speakers you can definitely hear the difference it makes without a crossover at speaker level, I especially notice it on very dynamic content listening at loud levels. No strain, no compression as you start to crank it, my active speakers kick in and just run full throttle without a complaint. I imagine that's another reason they like them in the studio.

@brianlucey , first of all let's get this straight,  music and sound reproduction are two entirely separate subjects. I can love music on a table radio. Accurate reproduction is accurate or it is not. A 20 foot wide piano is not accurate. A guitar right in front of you and the voice of the guitarist 30 yards away is not accurate. There are innumerable surrealisms created by bad mastering and engineering which is what makes the really talented engineers shine. What is the difference between a bad recording and a great one? Are you trying to tell me there are no bad recordings? 

Do me a favor. Please do not feel sorry for me. I do not deserve it. Save it for someone who really needs it. 

@sokogear , Stressless chairs can now be ordered with battery power supplies. They do not need to be plugged in which is really nice if you have three of them. You charge them up every 3-4 months. For serious listening I would say about 50/50 digital/analog. In the shop it is 100% digital for obvious reasons.

 

@mijostyn wrote:

@phusis , trust me on this one. Adding a processor like the Trinnov or DEQX is in no way shape or form a "plug and play" solution. They try to market them as being simple to set up, but if you are perfectionistic they are not. You have to experiment and learn to get the most out of them. It must have taken me 2-3 years to get my TacT tuned the way I wanted the system to sound. Most of this was learning manage the power of such a sonic tool and get the most out of it. It is far more complex and involving than any "active" speaker I am familiar with.

Absolutely agree, it’s a process for sure and not for the faint of heart. Very much worth it, though.

You are right about amps. Any amp can drive any driver, the question is how well. That choice can be made by any knowledgeable person. I do not like my choices being made by other people.

People here seem to make a fuss about amp-driver matching with active configuration in particular, but while it lends a lot more opportunities here it’s also the far lesser issue per se vs. matching an amp with a passively configured speaker. A paradoxical way to assess amp-driver/speaker matching here, if you ask me.

@thespeakerdude wrote:

@phusis , I am not sure we are understanding each other.

I could put the active portion of the speaker in the speaker or in an outboard box. That much is obvious.

Check.

What I can’t do is replace my electronics with anyone else’s electronics. As noted, the connection to the driver may require 4 wires (or more), and only I, the MFR knows the intricate details of what is needed to optimize how that speaker element is driven and I won’t be sharing that. That is I/P.

Should make sense, though not really interested in the "secret sauce." I’ve had my own share of intricacies to dig up - while fairly straight forward coming down to it - getting my own active setup sounding the way it does now, and it’s been a lengthy process I’ve enjoyed, and still does. Every worthwhile permutation in hardware config. potentially requires subtly resetting filter values and speaker placement - no big mysteries there.

The other case I noted is multiple similar elements being driven to accomplish a specific function. That is far more than just adding some external amps to replace internal ones. It is like saying just give me the car, and I will put my own engine in at that point.

You’re making it sound as if using external amps in an active configuration, certainly in my case, is a careless and crude affair, but that’s really only assuming the worst of it while promoting your own business of an inboard solution as that which harbors the best of active. For you information I didn’t replace anything, I merely worked from an outset and over time, a few years by now, have gotten to a place where the amps used, their place in the driver configuration (with quite a few permutations with a range of amps), speaker placement, digital filter settings and overall synergy in my acoustic surroundings forms into a sonic outcome that easily compares to any preassembled and bundled active speaker I’ve heard, and should I say handily beats them in vital areas with the accommodation to physics afforded with an outboard solution - something that inboards can only dream of as per their typical incarnations. And no, it’s not about loud per se..

@kota1 wrote:

per Andrew Jones:

Each amplifier is matched to the driver, and only has to operate over a limited frequency range. It’s operating into a simpler impedance, so it’s not going to have high-current demands. Also, the temporal characteristics of music change with frequency. High frequencies require very little average power, but have a lot of peaks. Bass requires much higher average power, but has far fewer peaks. You can match the amplifier to those characteristics as well.

Nothing here at odds with my own approach to matching amps with driver sections - makes sense. Thanks for posting this.

I like giving this control to the speaker designer to match the amp to the driver because it sucks when you misfire.

How, or to which degree would it "misfire" with an outboard active config. and finding the proper amps for the driver sections here - have you tried it? I mean, it’s not going to blow up. It’s about perspective; matching amps with drivers actively makes for less of a variation between the amps vs. passively, while harnessing the bigger potential of amps used actively. On the other hand an active config. is more revealing with regard to source changes, and cables as well.

I have a beautiful Parasound Zamp but it never got my JBL 230’s to really open it up. Swapped it out for a Carver with more power and tracking down conversion and BOOM wall to wall sound stage.

JBL Studio 230’s, so passive speakers? As I said, with passive speakers the variations between amps and how they’re (usually not) impervious to load differs a lot, while reflecting perceived sonic presentation accordingly.

This is not fun for me to burn cash chasing down a match when I can get it pretty much perfect in a bi-amp (or even tri amp) off the shelf, first try, with a good active speaker. YMMV.

An outboard active solution by contrast isn’t plug-and-play, that’s for sure, but for those willing to invest the time and effort you’ll most likely find yourself very much rewarded, and with a carte blanche slate to work from. IMHO.

@lonemountain wrote:

Many of the amps talked about favorably here use mostly chinese boards built by machines. How that is so much more comforting than a 100% hand made pure analog amp? ATC amp packs are built better than most of the audio gear out there.  There is no magic dust or other hidden process.

Well said.