I think you are wrong. In a few years we will all have implants embedded into out brains. All information of all types will be directly transmitted to us. We will be feed intravenously and will never leave our homes let along "living chambers". Will will exist is a 3-d world delivered to us wirelessly. It will all be part of socialized medicine and the Green revolution. We will all become extensions of the Cloud. We will all find our place in the Matrix. Neo, are you there?
That would be a lonely business, John. Might as well put on some good headphones given that Cochlear implants are kinda basic (ca. 20 nerve connections) at the moment.I think you are wrong. In a few years we will all have implants embedded into out brains. All information of all types will be directly transmitted to us. We will be feed intravenously and will never leave our homes let along "living chambers". Will will exist is a 3-d world delivered to us wirelessly. It will all be part of socialized medicine and the Green revolution. We will all become extensions of the Cloud. We will all find our place in the Matrix. Neo, are you there?
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
No. We like speakers because we can share the music, even if only with the neighbours. Parties are better though.
I think you've answered your own question there.
You're comparing a second order butterworth closed box response with a 4th order (overdamped?) reflex type response. I think I could hear the difference. It's not a valid comparison.
Hi Steve,
I am still waiting for an explanation where you get the closed box response from.
Are you saying that an overdamped (that's what Tannoy call it) second order xover at 1.2k changes the response of a ported box at 50Hz to that of a closed box while a 4th order L-R at 1.2k doesn't?
I am very much confused…
you dont need the implant for the scenario you describe
from what I hear that scenario is already a reality today
Well then, I ask what the passive crossover designer is doing that a computer cannot do, given the appropriate measurements? What's all the fuss about?
If the passive crossover design can be churned out with the crank of a handle, well so can a digital crossover design. And the digital crossover can be demonstrated to be more optimal than any passive design ever could be, based on calculations and measurements alone - which is apparently what you're all using to create your scientific passive crossovers.
Where's the magic? If there's no magic it seems that the only thing in favour of the passive crossover is sentiment, or superstition, or purely non-DIY considerations like hardware cost or size.
Glad we've settled it, finally.
I agree that active is theoretically superior just because there are less components in the signal path, however the arguments in favor of active such as damping factor, efficiency and temperature stability is rubbish. People keep parroting these things. Look at the math, do some measurements. The minor differences with passive are not going to matter.
Last edited:
Nothing, but programming one to do it correctly is another thing entirely.
The active dsp version will always do exactly what you want it to do also, as in component tolerances don't matter one bit, it's maths that defines the filter not a passive component with ±5%.
Nowadays the design of loudspeakers is essentially science, not an art form and not magic. Now before measurements and CAD became the norm, there was a degree of art and magic to it because you were flying blind most of the time and when you ended up with a design that actually worked properly it was magical.
There are lots of people that will still try and argue that there's some voodoo involved, but the most respected designers I know build all their designs based off of logic and sound scientific reasoning.
I think it's clear from this thread that there's a lot of subjective comments thrown around in favour or against one type or another and this doesn't help the issue. It also doesn't help the issue that active loudspeakers are by no means the norm in audiophile circles. What also doesn't help is that it is a lot easier to put together a good quality system around 2 channels, but then once asked to do it for 6, normally something gives and the quality level drops. One also then compares a stock Behringer inserted in the wrong way to a well designed and put together passive system and that ends in disappointment.
It is extremely easy to understand why people can have bad experiences with active xovers and for who the best sound they have ever heard, has been from a passive system.
Getting an active system right is quite difficult in terms of making sure the quality of the hardware for the 6-8 channels is of equal quality to that of what would have been a 2 channel system and then to make sure that the active design itself is implemented correctly.
The kind of digital system that incorporates all of the system elements in the correct way to maximise performance is not anything close to the norm. Most simple systems made out of the miniDSP or the Behringer unit are inadequate when it comes to the best of what you could actually achieve, they are a compromise, but what you gain is tremendous flexibility for little outlay. Adding Jan Didden's mod to the Behringer unit though helps to improve a lot upon its major short coming.
If you want to look at it objectively without any audiophoolery threatening to cloud the issue, then yes active is superior to passive and there is simply no way to argue otherwise because its quite basic to understand why. I don't think anyone has really been arguing against this though, the trouble is that it's a bad question. It's far too simple a question as it doesn't include any of the outside factors that are crucial in assuring that either of the two approaches have been implemented properly and hence arguing ensues.
Is active better then passive? Yes.
Then someone says - no because if you go active you've got ground loops and noise and XYZ getting in the way. All of the above will no doubt be true if the system is implemented incorrectly and then one someone says it can never be better because you've put an opamp in the way... well then now we're onto the good old subjective vs objective discussions and we all know how those end up.
If you ignore what needs to be ignored to save us all from going crazy, then yes active is better. Is it always going to sound better? This much is less clear because even the objective side of things can recognise when a passive crossover is perfectly adequate to the cause and that going active isn't going to bring about any real worthwhile gains. Is going active in this case ever going to sound worse, no, it shouldn't, unless you've done something wrong.
no, there are more, but much smaller
actually its funny that its called active
basicly its still just passive components
but positioned in the electronic environment
The founder of ATC Billy Woodman claims an insertion loss for passive xovers of up to 9dB depending on complexity and I measured 3dB on my Tannoy woofer which used a simple 2nd order lo pass consisting of a series inductor and a parallel cap with inline with a 2R2 resistor.
9 db ? Are you sure? The crossover is absorbing 79% of the input power?
I read somewhere that reactive crossover elements should be 1/10 or less the driver's dcr inline with the driver to be a good design. That's about -1 db insertion loss.
I completly agree, but I will point out one thing that I have found. For a woofer it is difficult to have a peak in an passive crossover. That's because to get a peak you have to attenuate everywhere else. Because active has gain, a peak is no more difficult than a dip. Since a compression driver is virtually always attenuated to match the woofer, peaks are not a real problem, but for the woofer they are. So active does have that one significant advantage to it.
To the guy who wants to ignore cost because its DIY, I don;t think that is reasonable. Cost is always a factor, just not so much with DIY. And there are a lot of discussions here that are not exclusively DIY. WHen I first stated looking at active DSP crossovers they were in the thousands per unit. That is not a cost that anyone can ignore. Today it is quite different and I use both active and passive.
All very reasonable, I'm sure, but there is a meme going about that while active are OK for beginners and philistines, an active is no match for a well-designed passive crossover. The argument may be along the lines that passive crossover design is "hard" and the designer has to serve such a long apprenticeship that he inevitably does it better than the idiot with the computer. But... we also hear the claim that passive crossover design is all about science and measurements and objectivity. Well a computer can calculate in a second what even a member of The Crossover Designer's Guild would take a lifetime to do. There is no magic we're told, so the calculations and formulae are already defined. So let's stick them in a computer and come up with the truly optimum passive crossover and marvel at its beauty. But passive electronics is all about conflicting requirements and compromises (an 8th order passive is practically impossible, we're told, for example), so the digital active has simply got to be better in strictly objective terms.
Personally I'm not interested in the slightest in any non-DIY considerations like hardware cost and size, so I don't think they have any place in this discussion; I want to build the best possible system and I haven't yet heard a real, non-magical, argument in favour of passive crossovers.
(Listening to my homebrew digital active system at the moment, and it's fantastic, and I haven't even done any correction based on measurements yet - very little needs doing. I might not have fared so well if I had put the drivers and box together myself, however...).
Personally I'm not interested in the slightest in any non-DIY considerations like hardware cost and size, so I don't think they have any place in this discussion; I want to build the best possible system and I haven't yet heard a real, non-magical, argument in favour of passive crossovers.
(Listening to my homebrew digital active system at the moment, and it's fantastic, and I haven't even done any correction based on measurements yet - very little needs doing. I might not have fared so well if I had put the drivers and box together myself, however...).
I think it depends on the level of the audiophileness
At low level, it is hard to find anyone that will not prefer or be impressed by active. That's why threads such as this will always appear.
At very high level, active analog is not there yet. So how about active digital? Remember, many high level audiophiles at this moment do not even consider digital for music source. This is because digital technology has not been perfect or cheap. Same as digital crossover technology.
That might be me. Again, very reasonable, except the passive crossover designers want us to believe that it's so incredibly difficult, what with their having to juggle hundreds of variables written down on vellum (or whatever sounds best...), that the process of condensing all this down into three components takes hundreds of hours. If you value your time, then the cost of a PC, sound card and a couple of secondhand amps is nothing. I may be after the best, but I still hate spending money; my system has cost about £150 all in, but I don't think that it would sound any better if I spent many times that amount on the hardware.
No, it is not about that. Observe this: there is nothing you can do with passive crossover against cheap drivers (It is better to run them full range without crossover at all).
With passive and complex crossover, a good quality amp must be assumed, don't you think so?
It is there. Between the lines. Can a computer read between the lines?
Cool. The audio hobby is crazy. Just mention your speakers, amplifiers, source code etc, and we will see. Can you? Computers are not smarter than human.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.