Active Speakers Better? No, per Michael Borresen

The additional wire and type of wire should NOT be passed over, there are many measurements to indicate the issues there.  Dampening factor losses, power losses, capacitance added with length, etc are the simple issues.   There are more complex ones as well.  There is a long list of differences detailed by so many in cables, how can these differences suddenly not matter when discussing active vs passive?  

In addition to the issues of wire and which ones sounds "right" or wrong, there are even more issues/problems:

1) phase: you cannot adjust driver phase in passive.  A phase linear speaker system is very important to best possible sound.

2) Changes with heat and temperature of drivers: as drivers heat up, they change properties and interact with a passive crossover in a way that can change the crossover point, the sensitivity, etc.  The long and short of this is that the speaker sounds different "hot" (on for 5 hours straight) vs. "cold".  Not true in the same way with an active system.  Most passives are NOT phase linear because you cannot have precision in adjusting this phase via passive components.  With active, its easy.

3)The driver never "sees" the amp: there is a significant amount of stuff audio is traveling through (wires, inductors, coils, connectors, etc) permanently between all the speaker drivers and the amp.  How can this be said to actually improve transparency?  The obvious answer is it doesn't improve anything.  It also makes it difficult if you replace drivers that have ever so slight difference in sensitivity: this is not adjustable unless you reengineer the entire crossover.   

4) Adding a bunch additional circuitry seems to be a negative in almost all situations, many electronics companies talk about reducing the circuitry to improve performance.  Why here, in this amp to speaker location, is it pitched as BETTER to add bunch of extra parts ?      

5) If you are a speaker designer, that doesn't mean you are also an amp designer and vice versa.  So most speaker companies must go elsewhere for amp designs, making the entire project more complex and involving more engineers.  Few have both disciplines in the same house.  (Genelec and ATC were the pioneering companies in active and their founders could do both).

Comment?

Brad

Phusis is right, you can build your own active.  This would make sense if you want to DIY.   If you have the ability to adjust crossover point, slope, output level and driver phase, you have it all.  JBLs M2 was an attempt to build a system that could be "tuned" on site for best performance.  Its a good idea, except fiddling by different users renders many of these expensive systems far from target without some regular checking.  There are many examples of good M2 demos and spectacular M2 "that's awful" misses.   Its also a very difficult system to calibrate and set up, and is beyond the ability of many dealers to put together on site.  When Peter (from JBL) sets it up or someone like Nate Kunkel, and the system is left alone, it can be spectacular.

Brad   

Invalid

Most recording engineers don't listen to music "at home" period- not when they are listening for work 15 hours a day.  Plus during the pandemic many built studios in their houses so they could keep working despite commercial rooms being shuttered.

Brad   

Erik

I agree with you I wish more people understood what they were buying.  

At ATC, we build both active and passive of nearly every model from 2 way to big high power three ways.  Understanding the advantages of an active system is not well understood out there in the market but should be. Reasons to NOT like it are usually baseless, such as "you can't service the amps if they are installed inside a speaker" (silly as ATC amp packs bolt on and off and are can be sent to us for service without the entire speaker coming along- its usually easier to send us a amp pack then a standard 3-5Ru rack mount amp).  Or other reasons like "plate amps don't last that long" which is also completely untrue, I have so many active ATC speakers on for 15- 20 years for 18 hours a day its crazy.  If they all broke I would be buried in service.  Reliability doesn't really enter into it as I think most well built gear lasts a lifetime now.  Unless you are talking about cheap active, thrown together low cost contract speakers with amps inside that are built for price.  That's a different story but it has nothing to do with being active.  

Again, being in the studio business as well as home audio in active and passive I see both.  Studios have issues with passives and outboard amps more often than issues with actives because of the constant connections and unconnecting and the additional part and pieces that need adjusting.  Connectors are a huge issue in reliability.  Users at home have issues with outboard amps ( of various brands) than active set ups (of various brands) from my direct experience 

I think its marketing that has convinced everyone they need to buy amplifiers and if they don't all hell will break loose.   Somehow something is being taken away or somehow something is lost when its really the reverse. Wire and caps and inductors are added between amp and speakers that doesn't need to be there.  I think what's taken away with passives is imaging and a significant amount of your money.   

When I see someone saying they like the ability to change the sound of their system, that's totally fair and okay.   That IS the single best reason to stay passive, not performance or reliability.

Some people want it to sound like it's supposed to, the way Fleetwood Mac decided or Tom Petty or Lenny Kravitz.   ATC enables you to get that, and you cannot get that with passives.  You can get close, but not "there".  Realism is what drives Billy Woodman- or should I say "low distortion", the doorway to realism. 

Brad   

I think ATC has the right idea in reducing complexity while they increase performance.  At least it works for someone who wants high end performance but doesn't have the time or desire to DIY.  That being said, I would not expect that type of buyer to be plentiful on Audiogon forums.

Brad 

kota1, I missed your comment about my post asking if I was a designer or engineer?  Forgive my oversight.  I am neither, I am the ATC importer to the USA for the last 20+ years.  Before that I worked at JBL as in charge of theater and installed sound.  In both roles, there was/is a lot of interaction with the engineering department about "why" they do things a certain way.

Brad   

Hey Kota1 

Nice post on your system.  Yes Galaxy has been one of the top players in "good sounding" studios in the EU for a long time.  Check out the latest from MIraval, the revival of an old room.  Also British Grove in the UK is spectacular. 

Reference level, I'm not sure what that boils down to for you in SPL, but I know Dolby likes systems to have reference ATMOS rooms somewhere around 118dB capability.  Not easy without distortion but we have several rooms that function at that level: Blackbird in Nashville and Ben Walfisch's Mix Lab room in Santa Monica.  I cannot listen to anything that loud, it hurts! 

We have quite a number of guys using our stuff in film composing/scoring world, such as Alan Meyerson at Remote Control for Hans Zimmer, or Shawn Murphy.  They are both A level players in that community. 

All the gear used by these guys is all active, typically ATC SCM100A for scoring or SCM150A or SC 300 A for Atmos mixing.

I wouldn't mind at all posting what I have at home, but i have not tried to figure out how to do that on Audiogon.  To be fair, my system changes all the time as I bring samples home from my office or take samples back to sell off.  I have a ATMOS rig at home and at work, both similar, based around ATC HTS 40s, and HTS 11 for sides (7.2.4) and HTS 7 for overheads.  I use two ATC C1s for subs at work and 2 Subwoofer Pros 12s at home. 

Brad         

I have a question to "active in the hobby" audiophiles.  Here's the background:

If you use a super low distortion [active] speaker system, it reveals more about everything upstream. I find that when I use an ATC active, what drives it ( preamp, CD player, streamer, turntable, etc) has a much greater impact on the resulting sound than the same exact speaker as a passive.  Image is greatly affected by active vs passive.  I can hear more "character" differences between these upstream devices, even cables become more obvious.  For me, this increases the desire to play around with different things in the rig and see what the differences are.

So my question: How is active taking choice away or reducing the [audiophile] hobby?  There is far more to a system than amplifiers.  To my ear, it increases choice, as these choices are suddenly far more obvious.. Example: the difference between cartridges is FAR greater than the difference between two good to excellent amps. Note I did not say you cannot hear a difference in amps, I said that other transducers in the system are more evident than amplifiers alone in a passive system.

Brad