Active Speakers Don't Sound Better

Once you upgrade and tweak the passive ATC crossover the active version doesn't sound better anymore.

@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

ATC uses analogue crossovers, as do Focal and few others. Other school of thought is use of digital crossover implemented in DSP, which gives more flexibility. But DSP has inherent limitation in precision of DAC they use. Common setup even for speakers with digital input assumes that volume control precedes crossover logic. When volume control is implemented digitally, audio stream looses resolution (1 bit for every 3dB of power below maximum), That can have negative impact on sound. Analogue crossover adds dither due to natural noise of the circuit. This is why active speakers better have volume control AFTER digital crossover or be fully analogue. This difference may explain why some active speakers sound better than others.

This is why active speakers better have volume control AFTER digital crossover or be fully analogue.

I don't know any other way to do it.  An inherent feature in any active crossover is level matching, or the ability to set the gain differently for each driver due to normal differences in efficiencies. 

@erik_squires of course actives sound better. It goes without saying that the same quality amplification must be used for the comparison so the damping factor is the same. 

One of the most pertinent reasons for superior sound is that there is no inductor with it's attendant DCR in series with the woofer. That series resistance ruins the damping factor resulting in inferior transients and lacks dynamics.

You will not understand this and I draw your attention to you claiming, in a previous discussion with you, that if a bigger inductor of the same value replaces the original in a passive XO then the lower resistance of the new bigger inductor should have a resistor placed in series with it to achieve the same overall DCR. This illustrates an inability to grasp the basics. Nobody does this with the rare exception of designing the XO specifically for a low damping factor tube amp.

Now I expect your usual rude response to me stating that you are sorry this all went right over my head.

Look up DF and educate yourself instead of just flapping your gums.

In your last sentence above I need to correct you again! You would be setting the gain according to the different sensitivities of the drivers. It has nothing to do with their efficiency. C'mon man, if you try and parade yourself as a speaker guru perhaps visit Wikipedia from time to time. Try reading Dickerson or D'appolito, you won't find them placing a resistor in series with the woofer LOL