Nope, don't know you, but recognise some of the attitude.
Anyway, it is not a philosophical question at all. The fact is, failures are far higher with speaker cabinet mounted amplifiers.
People should do things the right way, not as they please. Of course the choice is theirs, but they shouldn't be encouraged to believe doing things the wrong way is okay. There really is a right and wrong way to do just about everything. Read my tag line.
Anyway, it is not a philosophical question at all. The fact is, failures are far higher with speaker cabinet mounted amplifiers.
People should do things the right way, not as they please. Of course the choice is theirs, but they shouldn't be encouraged to believe doing things the wrong way is okay. There really is a right and wrong way to do just about everything. Read my tag line.
This is not what you said in your original comment Chris. So thank you for clarifying.
If you object to poorly designed active speakers where the amplifier cooling is compromised then fair enough. But that is a criticism of poor design/execution - not the actual concept.
If you object to short connections between separate amp and speaker, as opposed to short connections between separate preamplifier/source and amplifier, then I don't see the argument. Balanced design costs little more than single-ended in engineering terms and resolves many issues before they start. If you are paying significantly more, then you are spending your money wrong. See AES72 as an example. You can buy a Porsche and like it, that doesn't make all cars expensive.
Comparing a cheap active speaker with a POS for an amp to a high quality passive system is like apples and oranges or maybe a better comparison would be an airplane and a city bus. Both work well for their purpose, but where the bus might stall and need to be towed, the airplane will not fail and fall out of the sky because it's designed differently and maintenance is much stricter.
I personally don't like active speakers mainly because active speakers with tube amplifiers would be bordering on stupid IMHO 🙂
I personally don't like active speakers mainly because active speakers with tube amplifiers would be bordering on stupid IMHO 🙂
Hi VivaVee,
I think you have to be reasonable in all things. One issue an amplifier has to deal with in or on a speaker enclosure is excessive vibration. That will cause trouble over time. If you add poor heat ventillation (common), you're just raising the operating temperature and as you know, failure rate doubles every 10 °C rise in temperature. This is a proved fact. So those things are covered and I don't think anyone familiar with servicing would ever disagree. You can only improve things so much through good execution, but that will certainly help matters.
Look at the common situation. Would you rather run the speaker leads 20 ~ 40', or the signal connections? Personally I will run the speaker leads the distance and eliminate the balanced adapter circuits and cable concerns. The additional bulk speaker cable run isn't going to affect much, not like balanced adapters or long signal cable runs will. You still have connection resistance and a reasonable sized wire will not add greatly to the resistance. Figure it out on paper.
Preference changes everything. I can argue the technical side, but the other is simply what someone wants. Okay, not the end of the world, but running signals further than needed is not a great solution. Can you do it? Sure. Will it sound okay? Probably. But the reality is that an extra straight run of decent speaker cable is less harmful than running the signal that same distance. That's all I am saying. I guess there are people who want to look at the amps, but that is one component that you really don't even need to interact with unless you are watching for clipping lights (like I do some times). But they are behnd me.
-Chris
I think you have to be reasonable in all things. One issue an amplifier has to deal with in or on a speaker enclosure is excessive vibration. That will cause trouble over time. If you add poor heat ventillation (common), you're just raising the operating temperature and as you know, failure rate doubles every 10 °C rise in temperature. This is a proved fact. So those things are covered and I don't think anyone familiar with servicing would ever disagree. You can only improve things so much through good execution, but that will certainly help matters.
Look at the common situation. Would you rather run the speaker leads 20 ~ 40', or the signal connections? Personally I will run the speaker leads the distance and eliminate the balanced adapter circuits and cable concerns. The additional bulk speaker cable run isn't going to affect much, not like balanced adapters or long signal cable runs will. You still have connection resistance and a reasonable sized wire will not add greatly to the resistance. Figure it out on paper.
Preference changes everything. I can argue the technical side, but the other is simply what someone wants. Okay, not the end of the world, but running signals further than needed is not a great solution. Can you do it? Sure. Will it sound okay? Probably. But the reality is that an extra straight run of decent speaker cable is less harmful than running the signal that same distance. That's all I am saying. I guess there are people who want to look at the amps, but that is one component that you really don't even need to interact with unless you are watching for clipping lights (like I do some times). But they are behnd me.
-Chris
Alright. Is there a downside to placing an amplifier near a speaker though?
In my case it was just a matter of having rearranged things and having only 5 foot speaker cables back when I used active crossovers.
Chris,
I respectfully disagree.
I would rather run a balanced and differential signal through a shielded twisted pair to a differential receiver over your specified ~15m distance than an unbalanced single-ended signal from a power amplifier through a, likely, parallel pair to a speaker. That speaker cable is a 1/4 wave antenna for AM medium wave radio stations (500-1700 kHz here).
It all depends on what you are trying to do and where.
cheers,
Alan
I respectfully disagree.
I would rather run a balanced and differential signal through a shielded twisted pair to a differential receiver over your specified ~15m distance than an unbalanced single-ended signal from a power amplifier through a, likely, parallel pair to a speaker. That speaker cable is a 1/4 wave antenna for AM medium wave radio stations (500-1700 kHz here).
It all depends on what you are trying to do and where.
cheers,
Alan
The attitude of having a different opinion on matters of personal taste?
Once again I feel misunderstood. I did not debate whether failure rates are higher or lower. They most probably are higher, like you said. All I said is that to me, the trade-off - in my case it's having servo control over the woofer and a subtractive crossover - are worth the increased failure rate. It's my stereo, not a life support system. If my stereo does not work for a few days, or even never again, the world around me will hardly notice. No one will shed a tear and it's perfectly fine that way.
I follow other people's definition of what is right and wrong often enough. I just expect a monthly salary and 30 days of paid leave per year in return.
In my hobby I'll do whatever I please and get to define what is the right way or the wrong way all by myself, for myself. I might even do something that is wrong, just to look at what happens and to experience why it is wrong.
And when it comes to your tag line, I'm just more open minded than that. I'm not designing a telco network with five nines of uptime, I'm trying to have some fun and maybe learn something in the process. Heck, I might come to the same conclusions as you have, over time. Who knows.
My point exactly.
It might still be fun building one, just for the challenge and the learning experience 😎
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go find two identical Rube-Goldberg machines to arrange in a push-pull configuration so I can watch the sparks fly.
I had amplifier near the speakers one time, when I owned the Acoustats and had the direct drive amplifiers for them. I also had a couple of paint thinner can sized power supply bypass caps outboard of the amplifier chassis, which were also close to the amplifiers...lived to tell the tale.
Or maybe a "hit" if you combined a pair of Lii Audio 18's, each in a U frame with individual SE (of course...) tube amps, borrowing a guitar amp aesthetic, like from some of the nicer looking Mesa amplifier cabs / grilles. That'd be something no one else has. Done right, the sound...well, to Lii and big FR OB speaker driven by SE tube fans. I'd bet you could get some customers to buy a third for the center!
Or maybe a "hit" if you combined a pair of Lii Audio 18's, each in a U frame with individual SE (of course...) tube amps, borrowing a guitar amp aesthetic, like from some of the nicer looking Mesa amplifier cabs / grilles. That'd be something no one else has. Done right, the sound...well, to Lii and big FR OB speaker driven by SE tube fans. I'd bet you could get some customers to buy a third for the center!
I use XLR or TRS cables everywhere.
They cost me about £10-15 for ones with Neutriks on either end. I could not make them myself for less and it is almost impossible to buy an RCA lead for that money.
Let's say you have a DAC by each speaker (and with decent ones available very cheaply, that's not so daft), and you have DAC, volume control and amplification all in one component, no interconnects plus sockets, less capacitors in the signal path, (because you don't need one on the out put of a DAC, and the input of an amp, just one),plus the output of one device doesn't have to drive the capacitance of interconnects, or the lowest impedance of anything it might be connected to; plus you only need a digital source in view, not a big stack of odd boxes. Having said that, I do think the recent Yamahas are nice things to look at.
I was picturing more like a bookshelf monitor like a KRK or Presonus 🙂
Put tubes in this. You're not allowed to vent the chassis either otherwise they would look ugly and leak.
I wouldn't want speakers that resembled guitar cabs personally - too large. That's the problem. You can make tube driven active speakers in the size you typically find active speakers, right? Tube VAS and MOSFET output? Probably much easier.
Haha!
Water is a better conductor of heat - just put speaker in a bucket.
Water is a better conductor of heat - just put speaker in a bucket.
For too long now one of my nearly complete projects is fibre from servers to dacs, co-located in tri amped speakers.... It'll be great when finished!!
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