Active Speakers Don't Sound Better

@fynnegan That is not true. Ive done it and you cannot get to where the actives are with passive. All that speaker wire and copper (in the LF inductor especially) between amp and drive unit! Or are you a proponent of the idea that speaker wire is sonically invisible? If you can hear different kinds of speaker wire then the speaker wire you don’t see in the passive crossover (it can be hundreds of feet) is okay and doesn’t matter? No amp on earth makes that go away.

Imaging is significantly better with actives because phase is more linear, with a simple phase control on each amp (one per driver) in the ATC active crossover/amp pack. Ive tested this at a show with room visitors, SCM40 passive with an ATC P2 amp (300W/ch) vs an SCM40A active with the same exact circuit design, parts and power supplies in the internal amp pack. Were they similar? Yes. Did everyone in the room all day hear the difference? Honestly not everyone! Both systems share the same basic sonic footprint for sure. The definition, the transients, the "air" mnd room sound in the recording, the ambience/reverb in the recording, instrument "tails" (the decay) the image, all superior. A mastering engineer would hear all this instantly (and if they couldn’t, it would be extremely difficult to make a living mastering). My neighbor next door might not hear any of it.

Some listeners are unable to hear these small differences- this not a weakness, just affirms your listening acuity can get better with practice. Mastering engineers listen to music all day long every day in the same room on the same system. After a few years they hear amazing stuff that I don’t hear. But please, do not make a claim that passive ATC’s tweaked are better than active ATC’s when things are functioning properly- in 24 years working with ATC I’ve never ever heard this with many attempts!

Now I believe you could make a better active than the SCM40A. ATC believes this also and has a better sounding "discrete" amp pack they use in the in the SE 50 and SE100, both using better/larger drive units and larger amps than in the SCM 40A. So tweaking active is possible. We have several who post here use outboard actives, using their amp of choice.  Not surprisingly they support the active is better idea.  It's really all about phase, which is not controllable on a passive crossover.  The crossover designer has to just pick a value and it won't be precisely right for any driver in the system.  Drivers from all manufacturers vary a little bit and adjustable phase is necessary to align them all together in the initial system calibration.  

Brad

I think the active discussion has gone off the rails into detials that are NOT the main reasons for active. Here is my summary of reasons.

1) phase linearity (via line level adjustments in the crossover). Many designers think this is the key reason to do it, as adjusting phase of drivers is practically impossible with passive crossovers and very easy with active ones.

2) Calibration of each band via the ability to adjust individual driver levels to compensate for manufacturing differences in the drivers, which can vary 1/4 to 1/2dB at best and 2 or 3 dB at worst). This is not a subtle differnce because a 1/2dB down or up across the entire bandwidth of the driver is very audible. In tests here we’ve had sucess hearing a 1/4dB level change when applied across the entire midrange or tweeter. 1/2dB in EQ across a small part of the band or a group of frequencies is very difficult to hear for many.

3) No speaker level filltering, only line level filtering in analog or digital. FIltering as it applies to passive crossovers is far less precise and controllable and is not changeable with driver changes. Precise level calibration and filtering means you can make two identical speakers actually sound identical instead of slightly different. (this is the dirty secret of hi fi)

4) Freedom from driver temperature fluctuations, which can signficantly impact driver dynamic range and level. Called power compression and thermal compression as the system can be precisely calibrated to apply limiters to keep this from happening. The sonic penalty of a well designed limiter is far less than an overheated driver.

5) No massive losses of power or dampening factor though long runs of cable from amp to driver, compounded by the large amount of copper wire in low frequency inductors in passive crossovers. Active cable runs are very short.

6) Ability to provide sufficient dynamic power to a given set of drivers by "matching" the right size amp to the driver, rather than under or over power the entire system.

7) Lower cost/higher value for a given level of amp performance by avoiding expensive outboard amp chassis (excepting outboard active with multiple amplifiers). Cosmetics a large part of the manufacuring cost of all amplifiers.

Brad

@mbmi

Stuck in what way? The only thing that internal true active changes (like ATC, Genelec, etc)is a choice in power amps and a ton of speaker level wire (to the speaker and tons of hidden wire inside the passive crossover). Due to the increase in "color" created by all that wire between amp and driver, the amp is a smaller contributor that it should be in front of all that wire. Once all that wire is removed everything else is revealed in a new way. Suddenly preamps, turntables, stands, line level cables, CD players, etc are far more audible and changes in those components yields an even larger result that before. I have the definitive experience where transitioning from passive to active INCREASES the hobby in revealing more differences in everything else, not less!

Brad

Im not with you on this one erik....

The phase issue alone is sufficient to make active vs passive and no brainer.  If you are using the speakers at higher level, say mixing/mastering, then the heat issue in the driver changing the load the crossover "sees" is an issue that can be very obvious.  Speaker systems (with a passive crossover) can sound different when they get hot.