Active speaker project advice?

[montesquieu61]

Looking at taking a pair of 15in Tannoy Monitor Golds active. Got a major boost last year from fitting new xovers (built from scratch with decent components). But suspect there's more to come.

Just wondering views on using different amps for the two drivers eg KT88 PP for the bass unit sub 1khz (this is doing great duty for the whole speaker at the moment), and 8w 300B SET (or even 3w 2A3) for the 2in drive unit and the attached supertweeters (Tannoys ST25s which have their own built-in xover)?

I've been getting conflicting advice, some saying ideally the amps should be the same (in which case the project would be a no-go as I can't afford two sets of these rather expensive monblocks, even if I could source a matching pair (they were pre-owned), while others suggesting the route I've mentioned above, using the xover to match levels. The intention is to provide a bit of SET glow to the higher harmonics while the PP amps manage the bass & mids. Is there an 'official' view on this?

Also any views on the quality of the Xover after the preamp, there are some cheap ones (eg Behringer CX2310), but wondering about the effect of what must be pretty cheap passive components.

I'm a bit of a novice with a soldering iron it has to be said so most of what I want to do has to be reasonably off the shelf.

[Charles Darwin]

You'd have to either use a digital xover or you may have to build one since the Golds tweeter needs some eq which is provided by the stock passive xover.
Alternatively you could use a parametric eq like I do withy my Tannoys.

If you are handy with a soldering iron you can find some relevant info here:
tannoy

Join the Tannoy Yahoo group if you haven't already. One of the members had a number of boards for the active xover made up. There might still be some around or failing that there shold be at least some helpful advice.

If there is an 'official' view it is probably that the Tannoy woofers benefit greatly from beefy transistor amps while the tweeter is very efficient and quite happy with low-powered valve amps.

Whichever way you choose I highly recommend going active!

[montesquieu61]

Great link thanks! Unfortunately I'm not capable of an electronic build, the best I can hope for is to assemble an off the shelf solution. I have been a member of the Tannoy group in the past (when I was getting into Tannoy to start with) had forgotten about it and will re-join.

[blakkshepeaudio]

Perhaps look at a MiniDSP based solution?
No hardware work, easy to mess around with and by all accounts sounds pretty good.

Mine arrives soon (tomorrow ?)

Just a thought.

[montesquieu61]

Any suggestions on low-cost DSP solution (or is that an oxymoron? )

I presume this digitised the preamp output (or replaces the preamp?) and enables reshaping of the curve from there?

[picowallspeaker]

Tubes are easier ,although high tensions are necessary . You can build a simple active crossover in one day ,which is a buffer for the RC net that compose the high-pass and the low-pass circuit .
On the question of using two different amplifiers , I'd say ?why not? Tweeter require much less power than a woofer ,and if it's an high efficiency one ( compression driver ) it will require 2-3 W for full output . Of course you need to take off the original attenuation net that was adopted to make outputs equal.

[Charles Darwin]

Originally Posted by montesquieu61

Any suggestions on low-cost DSP solution (or is that an oxymoron? )

I presume this digitised the preamp output (or replaces the preamp?) and enables reshaping of the curve from there?

Affordable DSP would be either the miniDSP blackshepe mentioned or the Behringer DCX and Hypex appears to have something in the pipeline. Everything else I know of adds an extra digit before the decimal point
Either of these may be able to operate as pre amps themselves for your digital sources (if using).

[Speedskater]

Gee, I never thought of a "tube" active crossover as an easy project!
Even decades ago in the pre IC era, a transistor circuit was a quicker way.

[picowallspeaker]

Join the points with the lines ,cross your fingers and you're done
(double and triple check before )

[blakkshepeaudio]

MiniDSP arrived today.

If you know exactly what you want, by all means go down the active crossover route using valves, opamps or discrete SS as preferred.

I have to say though that the MiniDSP is ridiculously easy to use, set up and test. I had mine in my system and setup for flat (+/- 0.5 dB) from 120Hz - 16kHz about an hour after I opened the box. (Hey, I was bored, OK?)

If you want to find out what the best crossover points and slopes are, you could view the MiniDSP as a piece of test equipment. Once you get the result you want, build it in hardware. At least you won't die wondering if it would have sounded better crossed over at X instead of Y.

It is a small investment in the long run and, who knows, you might like it enough to leave it in-system.