I've had, and have, passives (many of them, for decades) and I've had, and have, actives (a couple of them, for a decade). Actives are better.
I Was Considering Active, Then I Watched This ...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1em2renxds Although he's incorrect with the clutch analogy, at least with the Buchardts. According to Mads Buchardt, the components are all modular and can be swapped out, simply with a screwdriver. No need to send the whole speaker back for repair. |
Came across this thread because it came up while searching for who manufactures the amplifiers in KEF active speakers. Does anyone know who manufactures the amps for various active speakers? My $0.02 is that active speakers sound better than passives. The thing I like best is how much more dynamic active speakers are than your typical passive setup. Clean sounding high powered amps are expensive. What one would have to spend on amplification for passives to match the level of dynamics of actives is, IMHO, cost prohibitive for those on a typical budget. Technology has advanced to the point where there is now a large market for buyers who want a simple setup that they can get up and running without having to be an audio expert. Just look at the proliferation of the market for bluetooth speakers. Times have changed and the kids growing up these days just want to buy a box/boxes that work straight away; An all-in-one solution so to speak. As those same buyers age and their buying power increases they will tend to continue to look for the all-in-one solution at whatever price point they can afford. I suspect that will drive the market for even higher end actives for consumers. As noted, in the Professional space it's ALL actives. Live sound is the same. Active crossovers in front of the amps because they want to lose as little power as possible between the amplifier and the transducers and running the juice through a passive crossover is just plain stupid from an efficiency perspective. Ask any reasonable person if they're willing to collect their paycheck through a process whereby an intermediary robs them of 30% of total. No one in their right mind would take that deal. And so it should go with amplification. Who wants to buy an amp and have 30%+ power loss by routing through a passive crossover? The reason I ended up coming across this thread was because I recently re-acquired a pair of Paradigm Active 40v2 speakers and was curious who manufactures KEF's amplifiers for their active line. For Paradigm, Anthem was the supplier for their Reference Active line. Anyone that knows Paradigm's history knows the Active 40v2's were the best speakers Paradigm ever produced prior to the Persona series. It was a crime that Paradigm discontinued the Active line because they were a ridiculous bargain, and they still hold up. The reason more folks don't know about the Active 40v2 is because Paradigm discontinued them far too early, and those who purchased them don't sell them very often. They won't compete with the likes of ATC, K&H, PMC, etc. in the Pro space as they are more 'consumer hi-fi' sounding. And by that I mean they're not as dry and precise as you'll tend to find with studio monitors. However, if Paradigm were to produce a fully active version of their Persona speakers that use the Beryllium tweeters I suspect they would have a massive hit on their hands. Beyond the Active 40v2's I'm hoping my next step up will be ATC SCM50ASLT's and then I can stop buying speakers. Actives are the way to go if you can afford them. |
@lonemountain wrote:
Indeed there is. |
As some may know, I’m an avid DIYer when it comes to speakers. I’ve built both passive and active and worked with pro sound speakers in theaters. I am ambivalent. That is, I have two strong opinions about each being a good choice. Without getting too much into the alleged technical merits of each design, the thing that passive speakers give me is the ability to chose a very colorful amplifier. Consider my favorite amps of all time are CJ Premiere 12s. I don’t consider them neutral, but rather juicy, colorful liars. Heaven. I just built a fully active, DSP driven center channel. What did I get? Excellent off-axis frequency response and massive dynamic range (comparable to ATC’s claimed figures) in a compact package along with objectively neutral frequency response which doesn’t mind being on a shelf while avoiding the need for yet another amplifier in my rack. Much as I love my Luxman integrated, I keep asking myself if I wouldn’t rather make 2 more active speakers and reduce my combined HT/stereo setup to 1 processor instead. If you really want to pick your amp, go with passive. If you want to pick a speaker and not have to worry about your amp, go with active, but in no case should you pick speaker A over speaker B based on which of these types they are. In the consumer world there are a lot of benefits to active speakers we may not care about. Dynamic range and power loss for instance. In the pro world we need every watt, and active crossovers deliver that. In the home world we are fine losing many DB’s of output due to massively overbought amps. 😀 That is, I can point to some technical benefits of active crossovers/speakers which are true, but perhaps irrelevant? As a consumer, do you really care that building a DSP crossover is much easier (not easy!) than passive, since we aren't swapping parts in and out during the prototype phase? Not really. Does the digital time delay and off-axis frequency response matter to you? Most passive speakers do an excellent job with horizontal dispersion. The center I built though needed excellent vertical as well as horizontal dispersion, and that's a feature I could only really consider in active/DSP configuration. Point is, a lot of the technical differences vanish for most of us. |
I read somewhat of a misconception. Having an active speaker which uses DSP doesn’t necessarily mean it allows for room correction. A manufacturer may take advantage of DSP for the crossover, like you would an active speaker, replacing the caps and coils, but not necessarily allow for end user adjustments. Even before DSP however, pro speakers often had bass level adjustments to let you move a speaker from free field to desktop, or near-wall. |
You make perhaps the single most powerful point in the active vs passive argument: does anyone care? For many, flying blind, going by other peoples opinions and the power of brand marketing is too powerful a set of conditions to overcome. If you haven’t stood in a studio and heard what’s on the other side of the glass and then how that sounds in the control room (through a given set of monitors) how would you know? If you don’t understand the science behind active, how would you know? If you are used to an odd sound and that becomes your reference [confirmation bias] how would you know? While active makes all the sense in the world from a science point of view, I guess it’s like people who buy terrible cars: you cannot talk them out of it no matter what you do! A lot of people bought Cadillac Cimarrons, Chevy Vegas and Ford Pintos! And if you ask someone why, they will defend it with gusto! Brad |
I used KEF LS50 W2s with a pair of KC62 subs and now use LS60s with the subs in one setup and balanced Ayer gear with KEF Reference 1s in another. I'm undecided, but I may keep both -- I'll surely keep the LS60s. I use the actives with the excellent KEF Contact app. I put my bet on Kal Rubinson's review of the LS60s in Stereophile, and think it's a win. |
I worked with active speakers i owned for 10 years... I bought them 10 years ago because Steve Guttenberg recommended them... I was very unsatisfied so much i put them for seco0ndary computer use for 10 years , no music... My life changed, i lost my big speakers, i was alone with headphone which i would modify and with the 4 inches woofer speakers... :) Now i see it as my best purchase in audio ever... Why ? Because active means i only need a low cost tube preamplifier but if i want to have audiophile speakers with this under 150 bucks speakers i must modify them...No speakers designers will design porthole with three feet external tubes behind it ...Most porthole reinforce bass but with great defects because the porthole is designed to please a wife not acoustic... I did it , story short i add a complex tuned set of tubes to the rear porthole (straws of different lenght and diameter from few inches to three feet and i modified the tweeter waveguide)... Surprize, surprize: in their acoustic controlled corner these low cost speakers gave me now natural timbre , bass clear and extended at 50 hertz now and a pin point imaging and a soundstage exceeding the speakers plane in all direction by few feet and encompassing my listener position with sounds coming from the side of me not from the speakers... The ratio S.Q. price matter... This set up is unbeatable ... They beat all my headphones easily save the AKG K340 i modified... Deeper bass to 20 hertz and a soundfield out of my head... Not bad for 100 bucks vintage TOP headphone and 100 bucks speakers modified now becoming king in their category .... Audiophile experience is grounded in knowledge not on price tags... And as said here someone who know better than me about speakers :
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Kudos on your active center channel speaker achievement.
You can do that actively as well, any amp you want. I mean, if you’re going to go active and do the filter settings yourself anyway, I’d say the more compelling route - unless your main objective is to minimize the component count, and insofar you intend to go more all-out with an active approach - is to go outboard active and that way get to choose any of the components as you see fit; power amps, DSP, DAC - that is, any separate outboard component here. No different compared to a passive setup except more amps to the separate driver sections, and a DSP (instead of a passive ditto) to handle filter settings. It’s still, per definition, active configuration, certainly if the filtration is done prior to amplification on signal level.
Your premise rests on the notion of limiting active configuration to a bundled solution with plate amps vs. the free choice of any amp passively. As such your "strong opinions" only cover so much of the actual potential of active to make it a worthwhile, more nuanced take comparing it to passive iterations. And that’s just with a center speaker. Imagine taking the next step to the main speakers. From a certain perspective there’s some merit to your boldfaced part, in that actively the choice amp is less of a deal since the exclusion of a passive filter between amp and speaker frees up the workload of the amp considerably, and thereby maximizes its potential. This shaves off power requirement and harnesses better overall sound quality. In relation to pre-assembled active speakers the compelling reasons for a manufacturer to go bundled shouldn’t, and couldn’t necessarily apply similarly to the DIY segment. Coming down to it I’ll maintain DIY’ers and manufacturers are limiting themselves with a bundled approach only.
Depends on your benchmark. You want more headroom freeing up the amps (with less distortion to boot) and controlling the drivers more effectively, active makes a significant difference - not only in a pro environment, and not only providing more decibels; sonically, at all levels, the takeaway is there to savor as well.
Apart from the advantages I’ve mentioned earlier, DSP filter parameters with active config. matter a lot to me, also integrating subs. Actually integrating subs without the intricacy of parameters offered by a separate, quality DSP is severely hampered, from my point of view.
This is an important point that I’ve raised quite a few times myself. |
@phusis Thanks, but in the interest of staying with the OP's topic, I'm NOT discussing the use of external crossovers and amps. Not only was that not mentioned in his post, but the use of active crossovers and external amps in the home is probably the very rarest of beasts. I'll happily engage in that topic elsewhere. |
Staying in the topic of practical differences between active and passive speakers for the home, I want to talk a little more about my most recent experience. I have conventional 2-way L and R speakers. I’ve added a 3-way active speaker in the center. The mid-woofers are practically the same but the center uses a different and very highly regarded mid and tweeter. More suitable for the location. The use of a 3-way amplifier with 50 + 125 + 125 watt sections means I have a theoretical dynamic range of around 1,000 watts. That’s a lot more than my modest Luxman integrated (100W/ch) especially given the losses in the passive crossover due to tweeter/woofer level matching. Honestly, 20W peaks are VERY LOUD in my home. So you’d think the center channel blows away the L and R? It does not. It does not sound more dynamic, or louder. It integrates perfectly. What I do get is a fuller bass thanks to having larger woofers than my previous center, and excellent off-axis coverage thanks to the 3-way design, high order crossover and digital time alignment. What’s my point? That in homes the dynamic range and power calculus often won’t matter to you. Buy what you like and is more convenient. |
There are many sceanrios where a listener could not tell there were changes to a system. Of course that does not mean there isnt a difference or it isnt a desireable difference. Much like swapping out phono cartridges, if you walked out of the room while it was switched, you may not realize what's different when you returned. Would any of us say phono cartridges all sound the same based on that? Many products in consumer are like that, requiring a very careful comparison and a educated listener. @erik_squires , you are a very educated listener!. Working in this industry full time, where differences are a constant challenge in diagnosing problems in service (client heard something you cannot replicate) or assessing value of something new, you can be fooled but usually scinece wins. Which is why we have a $10,000 Audio Precision sytem with calibrated mic to measure things. The science behind active vs passive is conclusive and not debatable, unless you elevate your own perception as the superior test. Demos are contextual audible comparisons with a tremendous number of variables. For some, once their own perception is satisfied, even if inaccurate to science, they are happy and the search is over. Sort of a parrallel to the way we prefer one color over another in a car-they really do look different in more ways than color alone. And once we decide which color we like, we rarely look back. Ive said it before, I think active expands the ability to hear changes in the system of various cmponents, not reduces them. All the elements before the active speakers are easier to hear, cables, preamps, turntables, sources, etc. thqtq's certainly my expereince. Sometimes it seems like the shared thought is "I'll buy active when you can pry my amp from my cold dead fingers". It like the amp makers marketing has convinced everyone that its worth buying an expensive amp. From a science point of view, passive being "better" than active is like telling someone from Arizona that snow tires are "better" on an all wheel drive sports car when you've only test driven them in the snow. Snow tires may indeed work better in that one condition, but certainly not all. Because you've never driven that car with snow tires in the summer on a dry road doesnt make it true. Brad |
@erik_squires wrote:
And what exactly is the interest of the OP in this regard going by his threat opener? He only says the following:
No specific implementation of active configuration is mentioned, so that holds every route open here, as long as it’s active. Moreover, the threat is over 3 years old (with an activity pause almost as long) - the OP might have gotten along since then, and so what we’re venturing into at this point, for as long as we’re continuing with active as a general topic that isn’t at odds with the OP, I’d say it’s all safe to go. But really, you’re no admin of this threat (or even if you are, I’m within the confines of the OP) nor the OP poster, so loosen up on specifying what we can or cannot discuss. It seems to me it’s about what YOU would like the specific context (of active configuration) of this threat to be about, rather than the OP. My take: chart off in any direction of active as you see fit and let others do the same, and if the OP has a problem with that, he can chime in. With regard to the link of his: Steve’s rant on active goes on to state - 2:15 into the video - that the Parasound A21 power amp (as an example) doesn’t fit into most any speaker, and you’d believe he really wanted it to if it weren’t so darn impractical. That way of thinking of his tells me Steve is not even considering that the A21 doesn’t have to fit into a speaker (for it to still be active), so my deduction is that ’active’ to him is defined as a bundled approach, and he’s stuck with that. Really, he doesn’t get it. Take the ATC SCM300 Pro ASL. It’s an actively configured speaker through and through, yet the amps and electronic crossover are outboard, most likely due to the power requirements of the amps and the physical size this would necessitate. The JBL M2’s - another example. Sanders Sound as well. Even if there are only a few such examples of active, it doesn’t make it conspicuous or other - it’s just outboard. Where it gets more hairy is setting the DSP filter parameters by oneself, and I’m assuming this goes for your DIY center channel as well? You think the OP initially considered a DIY approach of active like that? Maybe he didn’t even consider outboard active, and that’s where I feel correcting Steve in his video rant is appropriate. It only broadens the opportunities while potentially raising the bar even further.
At this point it seems the overall purpose is merely to have audiophiles accept active configuration as a viable approach next to passive, and get rid of some of the misconceptions here. Once there active can really begin its ascent into wider use (and configurations) in the domestic milieus. |
I can say this, we get more calls about active now (regarding info on ATC as we are the importer) than ever before. I think this bias against active is beginning to change. Not that passive will go away, but some are beginning to want to scale down (a turntable/streamer, preamp and active speakers is nice simple system that has high WAF). or hear a pair of actives and like them better. Brad |
HI @glai The SE uses all discrete amplifers, the best [sounding] amplifiers ATC makes. More esolution, finer detials are more clear, etc. Yes ATC has made external amp actives for a long time. IN the pro side they make the SCM200 and 300- both use an external 3 channel power amp for each speaker. There are tower versions of these for home using a different tweeter (ATC vs the AUdax super high power one for pro) but it still uses the P4 external amp/crossover package liek the pro version. Tjhese sound great but use fans to keep cool so not the best for living rooms, bu better suited to a machine room where they can be remoted. RIght now they make a 150LE that uses a 3 channel, passive cooled P6, with intergrated crossover, so this is an "external active" solution that functions the same as our internal active set ups.
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