DSP vs. active analog crossover vs. passive analog crossover. What is your take?


What is you take on the sound quality?  Any personal experience and knowledge on the subject will be greatly appreciated. 

128x128tannoy56

I doubt very much a designer or anyone else could tell whether an analog crossover has been replaced with digital if the digital is programmed to mimic the original analog.

we will never agree on that. which is ok.😁

if i play my best 1/2" 15ips tapes (or my top vinyl pressings) all analog verses through a digital step it will jump out. OTOH the more processed recordings will be less revealing.

will every room, system, signal path be equally revealing of a digital dsp step? of course not.

IMO it's not a question of better but which approach appeals to their potential customers. I doubt very much a designer or anyone else could tell whether an analog crossover has been replaced with digital if the digital is programmed to mimic the original analog. Of course there will be no peaking. 

 

This is much harder than it sounds because the high resistance and impedance of an analog crossover is not easily simulated in DSP because of the complex electromechanical interactions including with air.

 

DSP is far better for the crossover, equalization, time alignment, etc. but ideally like Kii does you want an amplifier designed for the application as well. 

There us often confusion between the terms active or passive,

Bi or Tri-Amping cam still use passive electronic crossovers.

 

I had a bi-amped setup with a passive crossover between bass anp/speaker, and then 2 level controls. Really clean and will-balanced.

Granted, the mid-hi speakers had a basic passive crossover between mids and tweets.

 

This was Miller and Kriesel (M&K) before they became mass-marker/Best-Buy low-fi.

Thank you for the informative and extremely civilized discussion on the subject. No, I’m not personally interested in the PLLC. I also was wondering if the speaker impedance (let say over 100db sensitivities) , 4 way full range from 30 Hz up to 25 Kz and with crossover points of 7KH, 500H and 90h, would make any difference in your choice of crossovers?