Yes Falvio, I agree. For me passive have certain practical advantages. It took me many years and much listening to admit that they can be just as good (sometimes better) than active crossovers. Yes, I was an active crossover snob! 
After a good 12 step program I am now able to live a passive life. And you know what? I'm happy.
After a good 12 step program I am now able to live a passive life. And you know what? I'm happy.
Let's start from the definition. What is passive, what is active. If I use passive LC filters before active power amps for woofers and for subwoofer, is it active, or passive? If I use passive capacitor after active power amp that drives directly midrange array, and tweeter array through the cap, is it passive or active? If digital Audyssey takes care of the rest, is such system active, or passive?
I would understand if the question was, "Should I add crossover inside of my speakers, or should I add as well amps inside of them"?
Because active speaker means a speaker with an amplifier inside. Passive speaker means a speaker without an amplifier inside. Which are better, which are worse? The question is irrelevant. If they were designed by carpenters with their understanding of physics there is a slight chance that they would sound somehow, but in the most cases no matter are they active or passive, they will sound like a furniture.
Yes Falvio, I agree. For me passive have certain practical advantages. It took me many years and much listening to admit that they can be just as good (sometimes better) than active crossovers. Yes, I was an active crossover snob!
That is very interesting. I guess you have a remarkable amplifier, and a remarkable crossover as well.
Also he has very remarkable speakers. People who heard his system said that it fools imagination as if the performers play and sing in the room, in front of them!
That's a passive line-level crossover. Usually "passive" is shorthand for passive crossovers at the amplifier outputs. Semantics.
Depends if that capacitor is only there as a DC-protection cap or not.
It's a hybrid system.
This is your understanding of the term. I do not agree with your usage of the term.
Not to steer away the thread, but this is exactly what i got with reasonably priced speakers, by simply adding 2 rear channels and feeding the following to the rear speakers:
Rear Left: (L-R) delayed 5 to 15 mSec
Rear Right: (R-L) delayed 5 to 15 mSec
Tricks invented in the 40s by the Phillips engineers...
Careful adjustment of the rear levels expanded the front soundstage dramatically and indeed projected the musicians to the front in a wide arc, in which you could discern perfectly what was going on. Quite remarkable.
At least my term has some useful meaning.
Also, here is the proof: the majority agrees with me! http://lmgtfy.com/?q=active+speaker
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Right, so two different-frequency-range drivers (i.e. midrange and woofer) will have a more closely matched transfer function than two amplifiers?
Can't believe that.
This has been argued ad nauseum.
What you describe is a powered speaker. It can be active or passive.
For me an active system is one where each driver has their own amplifier, XO (if any) in front of the amplifiers.
Passive takes the amplifier output and divides it, then sends to the speaker.
It doesn't matter where the amps are, but where the XO is.
dave
It is pretty easy to hear the difference between amplifiers with a single driver.
If i build a multiway and can't get the drivers to have the same character, then i haven't done a very good job.
dave
In early 80'th I used floating delay line, up to 20 miliseconds, in left only channel, during solo of the drummer. The audience rotated their heads, and once local audio engineers invited me to dinner, tried to feed by vodka in order to get from me the secret how I did so drums were moving vertically. They did not believe that I was telling them the truth.
Ah-ah! So Flavio was wrong when called my subwoofer and woofer systems "passive line level"?
I remember when they 'invented' biamping passives
I never had much luck with seperating each driver in a passive speaker
same goes for 'biwire', for that matter
the only active I ever tried was more or less the same crap
but it was in my youth, and too long ago
I will try again, and hope for better luck these days
I never had much luck with seperating each driver in a passive speaker
same goes for 'biwire', for that matter
the only active I ever tried was more or less the same crap
but it was in my youth, and too long ago
I will try again, and hope for better luck these days
I remember when they 'invented' biamping passives
I never had much luck with seperating each driver in a passive speaker
same goes for 'biwire', for that matter
the only active I ever tried was more or less the same crap
but it was in my youth, and too long ago
I will try again, and hope for better luck these days
IMO this because the two amplifiers were having to deal with the same signal. In other words, with a full bandwidth signal.
And biwiring... what can i say? Just silly.
To be honest, only from an intermodulation-distortion-reduction perspective, the best would be to have filters before AND after each amplifier.
Ah-ah! So Flavio was wrong when called my subwoofer and woofer systems "passive line level"?
Passive Line Level refers to using LC or RC filters in front of the amps in an active system.
BTW, where did you get your Ls... i'd be playing with passive line level LC if i could find a source for Ls.
dave
You can roll your own... Lots of fun await you if you learn how to roll your own (heh heh wink wink)...
Wire, paper tubes and a cheap inductance meter.
BTW having read about the non-linear effects of some capacitor types in audio, sometimes i wonder if the inductor isn't such an "evil" component.
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What I would call "Active", what I did 30 years ago, experimenting with feedback by acceleration. I glued a piezo crysal to the edge of the coil, with JFET source follower, tuned the system perfectly so it was flat from something like 5 Hz, and it was impossible to push the cone by hand when it was on. Later I put a vinyl disk with organ music recorded, and the amp trying to reproduce eccentric disk output with adequate sound pressure level spit out the cone.
It was my first and last experiment with active speaker with feedback by acceleration. What I did then, I added to the amp positive feedback by current through the speaker coil, instead of feedback by acceleration, and called it a day. Was it active or passive? Call it like you want, but I don't play this semantic games.
It was my first and last experiment with active speaker with feedback by acceleration. What I did then, I added to the amp positive feedback by current through the speaker coil, instead of feedback by acceleration, and called it a day. Was it active or passive? Call it like you want, but I don't play this semantic games.
For the size required they almost have to be cored and it is far from trivial... calculate the value needed for 1st order into 100k impedance.
dave
I have nice line level transformers, surface mount, about 12 Henry each coil, unfortunately no shield between them, so they are not so good as line level transformers like I would want, in nerms of capacitance between primary and secondary. Both coils in series give about 48 Henry of inductance.
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