Active Speakers Don't Sound Better

@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.

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.

@stilljd 

Nice…

@o_holter wrote:

my experiments have been very simple. No special filtering or DSP. Mainly with desktop or small monitors. I just unplug the speaker without the amp from the speaker with the amp. This is a speaker-level connection. Then I plug the speaker without amp to my main amp. Often, it sounds better. I make no claim that this happens with more costly speakers. But it makes me think that ’affordable’ active speakers will often sound better with a better amp. The amp really matters. Of course this is the case with passive speakers too. And I think that the quality of the amp is more important than if it is placed in a speaker cabinet or outside it.

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.

My experiments can be ’shot down’ since in a sense they are grossly unfair. The amps I’ve used for comparing are much more costly than the speakers. You cant get the sound from the Atma-sphere MA-1 or the Krell FPB600 from inside a compact active speaker. Not that I know of. So my only point, in describing the experiments, is to draw attention to the quality of the amp in the active speakers - I think this is often overlooked.

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.

An argument for active speakers is that the amp and speakers can be more closely matched and tuned to each other. Yet I have not been gripped by this, with the low cost active speakers I have tried. Instead, the big amps just made the speaker sound better. Interestingly, this main effect was the same even with two quite different amps (tube, solid state). My guess is that ’matching’ in affordable active speakers is only approximate, "good enough", so and so many watts drive them to required volume. The amp and the matching are hopefully much better with mid to top level active speakers - I have not tried.

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

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                                      

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.

What a rant, @lemonhaze - Are you miller carbon? Cause let me tell you, he also couldn’t let go of anything. He’d also interject nonsequiturs and personal attacks out of nowhere, just like here. I used to send him some coconut butter so he could apply it to the parts that hurt on a regular basis. I’d send him to a therapist too but that seemed like a waste of money.

Also, you are simply plain wrong about speaker design, and if you’d actually spend any time sweating the details of a crossover you wouldn’t be making such silly statements. I suggest you actually go design a few passive speakers and then come back, but you won't do that because this is clearly personal and not technical.  Boo hoo. 

PS - I don’t set myself up as a guru, just a hobbyist.

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

Brad --

Ad 1. Definitely agree, although there are different ways to approach phase implementation. Usually we have a limited number of phase bands to go by that’re set and fixed around each driver section, meaning only one chosen value per band. Linear phase filters (FIR-filtration in the DSP domain) on the other hand have over 60,000 phase points over the frequency region and offer some unique possibilities here, although it’s also more processing heavy which in turn can have its drawbacks with an audible ghosting effect.

In any case phase correction has degrees of importance, not least with larger, horn-loaded speakers, and it’s one of the reasons why active config. pairs so well with this speaker segment. Another reason is being given the opportunity to use very steep filter slopes to more effectively and sensibly use horns within their bandwidth range, and thereby avoid off-band irregularities. This is also why many haven’t heard what horn-based speakers can really do when properly implemented actively. Passive filters simply fall short here.

Ad 2. I can also set gain in 0.25dB increments with my Xilica DSP, of course with each driver section, which is indeed audible and to the point even that we’d prefer having 0.1dB gain steps.

Ad 3. Precision with active filtering is a big plus, yes, and also comes in handy with notch placements, not to mention their q-value and gain factor. Another advantage with horn-based speakers.

Ad 4. The limiting factor here is that imposed by the drivers and the passive crossovers themselves; the latter when thermally challenged will lead to fluctuations in filter values, and this further exacerbates this issue of (the nature of) the lower precision found in passive filters. Active filters on line level will remain rock solid and totally impervious no matter the load. Where drivers are concerned the use of limiters aren’t needed when power handling is prodigious, aided not least by higher efficiency.

Ad 5. I’d question the significance of speaker cable runs no more than ~10 feet per channel with proper gauge, certainly as the only medium between the amps and drivers. Crossover coils, another matter, not least in conjunction with steep phase angles created by passive crossovers and its components on the whole. The purer impedance load with active is a vital factor in its advantage.

Ad 6. You can hardly over power the system. If a high power solution sounds great, it sounds great. I’ve used 30W class A power and 600W class A/B ditto with 111dB horns, and the latter, high power solution didn’t fall short - on the contrary. The "right size" amp, from my chair, is really about having (more than) enough power, and where plentiful - depending on the design - isn’t a disadvantage. With that out of the way it’s really about finding the right sounding amp, and using the same topology/design top to bottom is paramount to my ears - even into the subs region. Outboard active gives you more opportunities here.

Another, very important aspect with active configuration is having amp-driver independent bands, as well as using the different amps in limited frequency ranges. In a 3-way system like my own the top band, 600W amp is only fed with a ~620Hz on up signal (with 6th order filters); it cruises along with its direct-connected 111dB horn/compression driver section, and the distortion is at an absolute minimum - even at blasting levels. On the end of the scale a similar sub amp, also 600W, can blast along as much as it wants to (which likely never amounts to more than 10-20 watts, at most), and it won’t have any effect whatsoever on the 2 other amps with their driver sections used above. In a passive setup the typically single amp covers the entire frequency and driver range; what it does down low affects everything above.

Ad 7. Agree on the cosmetics part, but practically speaking many if not most active speakers suffer from overall amp quality compared to outboard solutions. Not everyone is at ATC level here. Yes, used actively the amps can more effectively reach their fuller performance envelope, but that doesn’t negate the impact of absolute amp quality.

DSP can help with poor design choices and it is easy simple affordable flexible. But it does have a sound quality. I would also say your sample size of 1 active build isn't enough to form a truly useful opinion. On active verses passive. I have built 100s of passives and dozens of actives and I don't think one is better than another they are tools to meet a design goal.

Eric, I agree with room treatments making much of the difference in what we hear, that said  the higher performance we reach for from speakers the more revealing of source.

@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

Shouldn't some of you just get a room?  Reminds me of pointless religious diatribe. While you guys were engaging in pseudo-intellectual combat, I was enjoying my system which at this point just sings and celebrating enormous talent.

More time enjoying the warm sun, less time in scary dark spaces.  You can choose this.  You will never reach your destination fi you stop and throw rocks at every dog that barks.  Winston S. Churchill

celtic66 wrote:

Shouldn't some of you just get a room?  Reminds me of pointless religious diatribe. While you guys were engaging in pseudo-intellectual combat, I was enjoying my system which at this point just sings and celebrating enormous talent.

Why don't you chime in on the subject, or be more specific about what it is you're trying to address? 

I'd say there are many threads to which your criticism could be leveled, perhaps more rightfully so, and do you engage in a similar fashion with them too? Why this thread? 

You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw rocks at every dog that barks.  Winston S. Churchill

Rinse and repeat.  Cheers

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.

celtic66 wrote:

Rinse and repeat.  Cheers

It's a discussion, man, with disagreements. Enjoy your system, like we do ours. 

lonemountain wrote:

Speaker systems (with a passive crossover) can sound different when they get hot.

And that includes the passive crossover parts as well; when they get hot, filter values can fluctuate.