@steve59 To be fair, much of that is the room. A well treated dealer room is not going to sound like your average living room.
Active Speakers Don't Sound Better
I just wanted to settle a debate that has often raged in A’gon about active vs. passive speakers with my own first hand experience. I’ve recently had the chance to complete a 3-way active center channel to match my 2-way passive speakers.
I can absolutely say that the active nature of the speaker did not make it sound better. Or worse. It has merged perfectly with my side speakers.
What I can say is that it was much easier to achieve all of the technical design parameters I had in mind and that the speakers have better off-axis dispersion as a result, so it is measurably slightly better than if I had done this as a passive center. Can I hear it? I don’t think so. I think it sounds the same.
From an absolute point of view, I could have probably achieved similar results with a passive speaker, but at the cost of many more crossover stages and components. It was super easy to implement LR4 filters with the appropriate time delays, while if I had done this passively it would require not just the extra filter parts but all pass filters as well. A major growth in part counts and crossover complexity I would never have attempted. So it's not like the active crossover did any single thing I couldn't do passively, but putting it all together was so much easier using DSP that it made it worthwhile.
I can also state that as a builder it was such a positive experience that I may very well be done with making passive speakers from now on.
All the best,
Erik
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Not totally addressing the active vs. passive speaker debate, but the most dramatic improvement I have heard with my 22 year old MG 1.6's was when I added an analog active crossover gutting the passive crossovers in the speakers. Everything got better. Yes I had to buy another matching 2 channel amp, interconnects, and rewire the speakers but it was relatively easy to do with the 2 way 1.6's. When I had to buy new amplifiers I stayed with the active crossover configuration even though it was an extra $3,500 for the second amp. I thought it was worth it. While Magnapan is quite famous for their modest (read cheap) passive crossover components I was not expecting that big an improvement. Quite happy I tried it. Jim S. |
@o_holter wrote:
Thanks for clarifying. You bring up a great point, and I fully agree; the quality of the amp is more important than whether it, or rather they are placed internally or externally to a speaker. In either case active config. will better harness the potential of a given amp and make for a more efficient use of its power and overall quality, instead of seeing those wattages more or less drained and wasted in passive crossovers, which further leads to a compromised amp to driver interfacing and all that entails.
The important takeaway is the core issue you’re trying to address with your example here. Yes, those amps are very different animals compared to whatever amps are placed inside a cheap active speaker, but you could take much cheaper external amps and still get a basic idea of the importance of their quality here, and the difference they would make.
Matching amps to drivers actively has been hotly debated around here (not least involving business developers of active speakers), with my main point being that the most important aspects with active config. are a) getting rid of the passive crossover between the amp and drivers, b) having frequency band independently functioning amp-to-driver sections, c) freely seeking out the external quality amps and additional gear one prefers, and d) having basically a carte blanche repertoire of speakers, irrespective of size or principle to go by - if one so chooses. Impedance matching, current or voltage drive, tailoring damping factor, power matching, etc. can have their degrees of influence, but the problem is working with compromised amp sections (as well as DSP/DAC’s) within a tight budget that have to be mounted inside speakers, and so what’s attempted to be gained initially is hampered by overall component quality and design/construction eventually. Not to mention that active speakers are oftentimes physically hampered size-wise to cater to interior decoration demands and the misplaced, general notion that active speakers have to be plug-and-play, convenient solutions that fit nicely on the shelves and pleases the spouse - when active as a system could be much more than that and is really only limited by the one implementing it. Listening to a pair of outboard actively configured ATC SCM300ASL Pro’s - which represent a more old school, analogue-only, meat and potatoes, no frills, excellent component quality and class A/B topology approach - is being confronted with a pair of world class speakers that to my ears puts to shame many high-end, passively configured speakers of higher cost, and that’s not even including the astronomically priced amps that are typically needed with such heavy-load speakers to bring them to life. |
I do not own (nor intend to at this point) any active speakers other than a small pair in my office. I have heard the Dutch and Dutch 8C ($15,000 per pair), and KEF LS60 (price now lowered to $5,000 from $7,000). The KEFs were very nice, but not sure they were to my tastes. The Dutch and Dutch 8Cs were a different animal, and I very much liked their SQ the first time I heard them at a show; and I believe the DSP was configured well. I have an acquaintance who owns a pair (as well as a pair of new Volti Luceras), and in that properly set up environment I thought they were brilliant. That said, when he switched to the Volti Luceras (Pass Labs and Aric Audio gear) my jaw dropped to the floor. They are the first horn loaded/hybrid speaker that I've heard where I thought "I must have these speakers". So yes I think that active speakers can sound brilliant, I think that many people would be attracted to an "all in one" system (the Dutch and Dutch 8Cs also stream) to simplify your system, and I also think that with very very good electronics high end speakers will sound even better |
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