Pryso, in many bigger setups you have a source, a preamp, some sort of interconnect for all this, the amps and the speakers.
We all need the source, the interconnections, the amps and the speakers. Some people feel the preamp is not needed (separate thread for that) but one thing is dead certain: the more building blocks in the chain, the more noise, distortion and lack of bandwidth. An electronic crossover adds quite a bit of complexity. You can always hear the reduction in transparency and other colorations they bring. In addition, drivers in a speaker often require more than just the crossover- they might need some tailoring to deal with resonance, and some may benefit by having some sort of series resistance, particularly if you are driving a high efficiency speaker with a transistor amp.
These things are usually sorted out in a passive crossover, and not so often in electronic ones unless they are set up for the specific speaker, as in the case of the Dali. But as Dali owners can tell you, its crossover is a barrier to performance that must be overcome to realize all the performance the speaker is actually capable of.
If you try to biamplify without the electronic crossover, your amplifiers will not be running efficiently at all because they will have to reproduce signals that are being absorbed by a passive crossover- kindof a messy approach.
IOW it is to your advantage to keep the system simple if you can!
We all need the source, the interconnections, the amps and the speakers. Some people feel the preamp is not needed (separate thread for that) but one thing is dead certain: the more building blocks in the chain, the more noise, distortion and lack of bandwidth. An electronic crossover adds quite a bit of complexity. You can always hear the reduction in transparency and other colorations they bring. In addition, drivers in a speaker often require more than just the crossover- they might need some tailoring to deal with resonance, and some may benefit by having some sort of series resistance, particularly if you are driving a high efficiency speaker with a transistor amp.
These things are usually sorted out in a passive crossover, and not so often in electronic ones unless they are set up for the specific speaker, as in the case of the Dali. But as Dali owners can tell you, its crossover is a barrier to performance that must be overcome to realize all the performance the speaker is actually capable of.
If you try to biamplify without the electronic crossover, your amplifiers will not be running efficiently at all because they will have to reproduce signals that are being absorbed by a passive crossover- kindof a messy approach.
IOW it is to your advantage to keep the system simple if you can!