Go Active Crossover or Upgrade existing XOs?



It was recently suggested to me that rather than doing a crossover upgrade 

I look into an active crossover for my Tannoy FSMs. Anyone experienced enough 

to guide me? What advantages does active provide?


gadios

Showing 2 responses by atdavid

This is a bit of an ad-populum argument, but not completely without merit. The boutique companies that build "statement" speaker products are likely often lacking the technical depth/resources to build an effective and superior active cross-over. As well, they still need to sell what the market wants, and that market wants their expensive and highly visible amplifiers hooked up to their expensive and highly visible speakers. The market also wants "analog" inputs, and the best active cross-over will be full digital.

millercarbon2,169 posts12-09-2019 11:51amThat’s the technical version. While technically correct, there must be something else going on, or all the world’s best cost no object million dollar systems would be doing this, and all the statement speakers would be designed for it. Which, wait, what’s this? None are? NONE?!?!?!


"Statement" studio monitors do have active cross-overs, and their users are quite critical.

But, the reason not to (or to) use a passive cross-over is for technical reasons, just the right ones. With purely an active cross-over, you have a direct connection to just the driver, and typically with high damping factor. There is an assumption made by some (many?) that this is ideal. That is not a good assumption always ... for technical reasons. Purely analog active cross-overs are typically limited in complexity (like their speaker correlates). Digital cross-overs are unlimited, though stock cross-overs and firmware only touch on what is possible with advanced signal processing which can do things that no analog cross-over, active or passive could ever do, especially integrated in design with a purpose built amplifier.

So ... you can play and tweak a digital cross-over, but without having adequate equipment to verify your results, you are likely going to just fix one problem and create another, till you fix that problem and then create another. Listening is final tweaks. You need measurements to get close, and for speakers, they really do matter. I would just rebuild the passive cross-over unless you are prepared to invest serious time (and money).

With a digital input, only the side effects you intend, which any speaker is going to greatly swamp.