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@fred60 

per @lonemountain (Brad)

I agree with you I wish more people understood what they were buying.

At ATC, we build both active and passive of nearly every model from 2 way to big high power three ways. Understanding the advantages of an active system is not well understood out there in the market but should be. Reasons to NOT like it are usually baseless, such as "you can’t service the amps if they are installed inside a speaker" (silly as ATC amp packs bolt on and off and are can be sent to us for service without the entire speaker coming along- its usually easier to send us a amp pack then a standard 3-5Ru rack mount amp). Or other reasons like "plate amps don’t last that long" which is also completely untrue, I have so many active ATC speakers on for 15- 20 years for 18 hours a day its crazy. If they all broke I would be buried in service. Reliability doesn’t really enter into it as I think most well built gear lasts a lifetime now. Unless you are talking about cheap active, thrown together low cost contract speakers with amps inside that are built for price. That’s a different story but it has nothing to do with being active.

Again, being in the studio business as well as home audio in active and passive I see both. Studios have issues with passives and outboard amps more often than issues with actives because of the constant connections and unconnecting and the additional part and pieces that need adjusting. Connectors are a huge issue in reliability. Users at home have issues with outboard amps ( of various brands) than active set ups (of various brands) from my direct experience

I think its marketing that has convinced everyone they need to buy amplifiers and if they don’t all hell will break loose. Somehow something is being taken away or somehow something is lost when its really the reverse. Wire and caps and inductors are added between amp and speakers that doesn’t need to be there. I think what’s taken away with passives is imaging and a significant amount of your money.

When I see someone saying they like the ability to change the sound of their system, that’s totally fair and okay. That IS the single best reason to stay passive, not performance or reliability.

Some people want it to sound like it’s supposed to, the way Fleetwood Mac decided or Tom Petty or Lenny Kravitz. ATC enables you to get that, and you cannot get that with passives. You can get close, but not "there". Realism is what drives Billy Woodman- or should I say "low distortion", the doorway to realism.

Brad

@thespeakerdude wrote:

One issue is that all speakers (that I am aware of) designed to be driven with an off the shelf amplifier have a cross over that cannot be bypassed to directly connect to the driver. Hence any external amplifier is handicapped by the crossover.

My context above is active configuration. Active isn’t defined per se from being a bundled speaker package with build-in amps, electronic cross-over/DSP and, potentially, DAC’s, but that the filtration occurs prior to amplification on signal level (typically sans intervening passive cross-over parts between the amps and drivers that would act as a protection means here), which can as well be attained with outboard components as it could an inboard ditto. Outboard is only outboard; it needn’t say anything about the configuration. You could have a bundled speaker package with build-in amps and passive cross-over, and yet that’s what’s called a powered speaker - passively configured at that. My 3 outboard power amps are all connected to their respective driver sections without any intervening cross-over parts between them and the drivers, with each amp being fed with a different line level signal from the digital Xilica XO/DSP telling it which frequency span to deliver to its driver section. That’s fully active configuration for you and any other around here, and it means controlling each driver section much more effectively instead of looking into a passive cross-over first.

In your reply to poster @mijostyn:

"Activeness" can be applied to any system just by the addition of the right processor like the new DEQX units or the Trinnov Amethyst. Then you have the ultimate control over what your system is doing.

"You have full control over your system, but not over the drivers in the speaker."

Yes, you do have full control over the drivers - if the context implies the omission of a passive cross-over with dedicated amp channels looking directly into each driver section. Any "next level direct driver control"-claim (my own wording) essentially put forth by the bundled active speaker manufacturers, if it were to distance themselves from a claimed inferior outboard solution, actively configured as well, would seem dubious to me, whereas they would be right to do so with a passively configured speaker by comparison.  

One point of confusion is that most active speakers sold today use a portion of their box inner volume for housing amplifiers. The percentage of thus used up volume may range from 10% to 50%, depending on size of the speaker, number of transducers, amp technology etc.

Thus, an active speaker of a certain external volume may acoustically behave like a passive speaker of a smaller volume.

This may translate into higher level of distortions at a given output level exhibited by an active speaker, compared to a passive speaker of the same external volume.

This may also translate into the active speaker going less deep in -3db frequency than its external volume would suggest.

Rules of thumb for traditionally proportioned speakers:

Active speakers with a woofer less than 6" tend to be unsatisfactory in many respects, despite the fact that they may sound superficially well.

Active studio monitors with 8" woofers tend to sound comparably to passive speakers with 6 1/2" woofers, on the measures of distortions and bass extension.

Active studio monitors with 10" woofers usually sound wonderful, especially if they are three-way.

Active studio monitors with 12" woofers tend to rival the best audiophile passive speakers out there.

@donavabdear Thank you for showing some credits.  It's not "beneath" me yet you are the one here saying things above others like you know the music world, and you just don't.  For example: "Dolby Atmos was meant for movies not music."  That's wrong.  Atmos was INVENTED for movies, yes, and yet Atmos/Spatial on headphones is far superior to stereo in headphones.  Unintentionally they made something unexpected for music.   Big caveat:  the work must be done at the highest level.  The "highest level" is being discovered, daily, maybe by folks on this forum.  Atmos/Spatial is the evolution of stereo in headphones.  But we are in the beginning stage.  Most of what is released is low level mixing, not mastered.  Early days. I use transformer class A eqs x 50 in a great room with dCS Bartok and 3 top headphones.  Beautiful format, in the early days.

As far as Trinnov, it's 100% tunable, and I am an advanced tuner of the system.  It's doing DSP pre DA conversion, which is very subtle on my L/R mains.  It's doing far more on the rest of the room.  You are still arguing some odd point that this DSP makes this an "active system".  Everything has a DAC, and I am not anti-active. 

Again, all systems are a best case compromise, based in taste.  And any dogma is going to be wrong.   It's all about implementation.

@lonemountain Some people want it to sound like it’s supposed to, the way Fleetwood Mac decided or Tom Petty or Lenny Kravitz. ATC enables you to get that, and you cannot get that with passives. You can get close, but not "there". Realism is what drives Billy Woodman- or should I say "low distortion", the doorway to realism.

Brad

This is 100% false and totally misleading. There is nothing solid and fixed about audio except the file itself, the rest is a moving target. ATC is no better than countless other approaches. It’s a choice, a flavor. Artists mix in a mix room on 2-4 speakers and their car. Then they are done. Mastering folks like myself use all sorts of room designs and speakers/Amp/DAC/cable setups.. ATC is not a reference, there is no reference. It’s all a moving target. On any day in the same room, humidity and temperature and our mood and hunger alters even our own perception of a file. Nothing is fixed, and there is no reference. There is only the file that is a fixed thing, and the INTENT captured in the file matters most. To have that intention translate to all systems is the goal of mastering. There are some lovely ATC mastering rooms, but they are not superior, or giving musically superior results.  Just like active vs. passive, there is no right answer, no dogma here.