Opinions and recommendations on active loudspeakers

Some interesting posts here.....the first two active speaker companies the I know of were Genelec (which I represented years and years ago) and ATC (which we now import to the US as lone mountain).  Both companies have a long history of "how its done" and both started primarily in studio market, where passives were very much in control of the market in the late 70s and early 80s.  ATC was an owner operator so they stuck close to home, they got support early on from Pink Floyd and others in the UK.  Genelec raised money and went international very early and had a significant break out hit, the 1031.  For small active 2 way, this thing rocked.  So much better than the passives of the day.  The 1031 was used for more movies in the 80s than any other I think!  Genelec made a great sounding ribbon tweeter speaker early on too, the S30, lovely speaker but it sort of faded way for unknown reasons.  .

I think the number one reason active is considered better than passives by many (speaker) designers is the ability to control phase.  Building a speaker that's linear in phase response is a wondrous thing to behold.  The other side benefits of active are easier to guess: super short cables, the right power to each driver, easy to calibrate a system for flat response with amp/driver level, easier to do a electronic crossover than a passive one and you use higher slopes with active so you can get some additional performance out of that.  

A lot of folks don't know that passive crossovers have a tough time with changing driver values as they heat up, changing crossover behavior.  That's why in pro, you cannot have a speaker "sound different in the morning" than the night before.   

Brad
Lone Mountain Audio  

Ok canibefrank when you pull just those words out I see my mistake and creating confusion.   Thanks for asking for clarity! 

I meant you have the "ability to control phase" at the crossover points of the system.  There are two adjustment points within the ATC active 3 way amp pack to "control" this phase parameter (at the crossover) so the acoustical sum is now in phase.  You cannot do that with a passive crossover.   This is a huge advantage of any true active system.

Active is an electronic crossover feeding multiple amplifiers that represent each driver in the system.  Active like ATC does it is an electronic 2 or 3 way crossover feeding 2 or 3 Class A/B amplifiers that are fully analog- no DSP used at all.   

This does not apply to a "powered" system (a power amp in front of a passive crossover).  Important distinction, I see some confusion in posts on various forums mixing up "active" and "powered".
 
Brad
LoneMountain

Active speakers will break your heart when the plate amp fails. Then you'll prolly have to throw it away unless you know how to repair it.

 Huh? I'm not sure why one would through away amplifiers?  Why not repair them?  We have amp packs that have been running 12 hours a day for 15 years+ and still work fine.  Other than replacing dried out capacitors, they rarely go bad.  Brystons or Pass Labs or other amps that are well built don't fail but rarely.  

Brad
LoneMountain 

jburidan
Are you thinking "plate amps" are Class D amps or some design that is somehow different than a "normal" rack mount amp?  The circuit design and parts inside an ATC amp pack are identical to 3 of our stand alone Class A/B power amps, sharing a much larger power supply with active crossovers and three independent output channels (low/mid/high).   SO the only difference between our active "amp packs" and our stand alone 3 way amps (P4) is the chassis.  This is not a full range Ice Power/Hypex module stuck on the back driving a passive crossover (that's a powered speaker).

Brad
Lone Mountain

I think the major reason for active has not been said yet: linear phase.  You can adjust the phase of each driver electrically, before the amps and within the electronic crossover, where this is impossible with a passive crossover.  All the loss in passive crossover+ cable is another issue (lots and lots of copper) and then the not so small issue of changes to crossover behavior as voice coil temp increases.  

And our pro division would take issue that pros don't care about sound.  We know a mix engineer that spends two days getting the snare drum sound exactly right. Or another engineer who uses different converters on every song to match the artist vision of how that song should "sound".  There are people who don't care but it's rare anymore since the artists are funding most records.  

Brad  

Theophile!  Wow, you should write a paper!  Very well put.  

The only thing that convinces some people that the idea of engineers endlessly fussing over mixes cannot be true is some pop mixes sound absolutely awful.  I have heard mix engineers complain bitterly from time to time about their work turned bad or even given to another engineer to "redo it".  Sometimes the producer or the people in charge change things for reasons of their own.  Most pop tunes are destined for FM airplay so sometimes the mix is set up for FM and only FM (loudness wars).  Many of Katy Perry's top selling songs are examples of that.  But some pop mixes turn out pretty good- there's some that are quite listenable.   Halsey's Badlands was mastered by Pete Lyman who does a lot of Indie work.  Interesting that on her wikipedia page for Badlands Halsey says it lacks a "proper radio hit".

Brad   

jon_5912:
Whoever told you passive crossover (a static device with lots of lots of loss through wire) offers more precise control than active crossovers (where the crossover is before the amplifiers; an electronic circuit with very precise control) has something to sell in passive crossovers!  

ATC does build passive because some folks just want a passive.  We know this is the reality of the market.   But we spend a lot of time talking about active because its genuinely a step forward (and it costs the customer less for higher performance).  ATC active beats ATC passive on multiple technical fronts.

We have done demos at shows with the same speaker both active and passive right next to each other on the same source, using ATC amps (which have the same circuit design and output devices to the active system) and its a clear advantage to go active.  The image and clarity and resolution of details is dramatically different.  The "tone", meaning the spectral info, the sound character of the piano if you will, is the same.   SO active versions of speakers have better imaging, greater resolution of the finer details of the music than passive versions of the same speaker even with identical power behind them. 

Active speakers properly engineered, designed and built with top parts should sound great at home or the studio.   The is nothing about a studio that is different other than lower noise floor and perhaps more absorption.  The problem is a"better" speaker does not always make every recording sound better.  Reducing distortion reveals more and more about a recording- details or flaws that you've never heard before.  Distortion in playback, regardless of source, has a masking effect that covers up details.  It's the effect of getting glasses after a lifetime of blurred vision: you now really see enormous detail, but what you see is often not so pretty.   You might then ask why would we ever want that, to hear how awful our recordings are.  Well the benefit of hearing clearly is that you can finally hear the details the artist, engineer, mastering worked very hard to capture and reveal.  You cannot appreciate a Renoir if your vision is blurry.  If I play a high rez version of Michael Jackson Thriller, chances are you will hear a LOT of information you never heard before that will make you smile like never before.  Or play a George Massenburg recording and the same thing will happen (here's a list:
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/george-massenburg-mn0000945891/credits 

Play something poorly recorded and you may not be able to turn it off fast enough. Yuck!  An old rock and roll recording is likely quite bad, like Led Zeppelin.  Awesome music, horrible recordings (that did capture a cool moment in time anyway).  You sort of have to learn to separate great music from great sound because they are not related.  It's still fun to hear Elvis Presley with a band panned to one side and him to the other each with their own (very limited bandwidth) ribbon mic from 1958.  But you aren't listening to be amazed by the audio quality.  There's nothing you can do to fix this other than buy speakers with massive EQ built in to them and are high enough distortion you don't hear any flaws in the recording.  You would not buy expensive speakers if that's the only music you listen to.  But if you heard Sarah Jarosz on a fantastic pair of speakers- even if you dislike Americana-the recording is just so darn amazing its magical-a thrill in itself just to hear something that good.  You'll never hear that magic on a low rez, high distortion system. 

That's why active is important.  Its the only way to get a lot of distortion out of the speaker.


Brad
    

gosta: Doobie Bros, a Don Landee and Ted Templeman project, they did a lot of cool stuff in the 70s through 80s.  A power house those two!   I do think takin it to the streets while a great song and album but not my sonic favorite of the era.  Good bass playing, but poor low end on that record!   My 70s sonic best would be Dreamboat Annie (Heart), Fleetwood Mac (white album) 1975, Crime of the Century (Supertramp) 1974, and Aja (Steely Dan) 1977, Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd) 1973 and personal favorite Court and Spark (Joni Mitchell) 1974.  All sonically excellent albums with incredible low end, sound incredible on vinyl.  I used all of them for demo back in a hi end hi fi store in the mid to late 70s.  

@gosta
We'll there you could be right.  I listen to most of my stuff on ATC's, as do several of those artists in my list.  Since ATC's tell it like it is, you are right, some of the later CD re-releases and remixes can be quite awful.  This is quite obvious in the studio.  I know some of the folks involved in those records and they hate some of these rereleases too.  Funny how little control the artist and the original engineers have over that- the record company owns it and does what it wants.    Shadorne brings that up too, the original vinyl of Crime of the Century was awesome and some of the later CD rereleases and re mixes were not.  Much less the case now, the record companies are mostly gone.
From my perspective, that "sound" of that CD is not the speaker.  The ATC SE50 we take to trade shows sounds absolutely glorious at 105dB SPL IF the recording is good.  All about the source.  And from an ATC perspective, all about the truth.  So if the remix is bad, it should sound that way.

Brad