Go Active Crossover or Upgrade existing XOs?

I think mijostyn1 and barts28 made salient points.  Audio Research sold both active and passive crossovers early on when they had a co-marketing agreement with Magnepan.  (Some may be interested in learning that Diller was with Johnson at AR way before he went over to Winey's company.)

The passives were available in a few varieties and the actives, which sell for TONS of money today, were also either 2 or 3 and came in several varieties.  Back then, Magnepan wanted you to tri-amp the speakers and Audio Research wanted to sell you many amps, so we sold and set up these systems for customers.

As I remember, and it was 40+ years ago, so take this with a grain, the actives were easier to set to the room than the passives, but both worked rather well when set up properly--most good equipment does.

As to which is better, I would (if I were doing this today) probably go active and put as many amps as possible (barts28) in the system.  If you have Maggies, they eat power, so more is always merrier if you like to crank up Mahler or Zeppelin or whatever.

Cheers,

Richard

@audioman58 from your post would you recommend the Jantzen audio inductors or if not which? I was under the impression their foil inductors were very good but again you've been an expert in this area I rather have your opinion

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).

Personally their wax paper foil inductors are the best,
but for bass I prefer a open foil coil depending on application
locally cannot get them I order from Hifi connection in theUK
fedex 3 day is only $30, and they carry the Path audio resistors 
,parts connecxion in Canada has a25% sale  so if they have the values you need in stock go there ,and overnight saver,ups is only $15 under 3-4 lbs for specifics email be I will try to assist you.

The Bryston room at RMAF was bi-amped active external crossover as
well. System sounded great.


I had forgotten about the Levinson HQD system: Hartley, Quad, Dahlquist.  Amazing system, you have to have the dedicated space for it though, it was rather large to say the least.