I agree with all of this.
Maybe passive sound better because it has been around longer. People have been doing it longer so it has been mastered. DSP is relatively new. I wouldn't call anyone a master of it at this point. You are also reliant on the technology. Will a $50 DSP sound as good as a $5000 DSP? Will a $10 inductor be as far off of the sound of a $300 inductor? I cannot answer these questions but they are worth asking.
When it boils down to it my experience is what it is: the passives sounded better to the three of us. And this thread, despite its derailment, is about my experience at the show.
This thread is about my experience at the show. The people arguing for DSP were not at the show, they were not with me, and so their opinion on my experience is completely irrelevant to the topic of this thread.
I mean, it's a public thread. If you don't want people to add their own opinions and engage in discourse - a public forum might not be the place to give a lecture?
I agree, "bad speakers" can become popular again... as in politics. I have never understood this back to vinyl again, is it all psychology? I'm getting 70 soon and my hearing is getting worse, as a consequence (it seems) I like speakers that sound somewhat cranky. Indeed, "everything else" matters.
Yup, it is a public thread. One that has a topic. That's why threads have titles. Tell you what, I'll make another thread labeled "Active VS Passive - The Great Debate" and then all the active guys will have a place to voice their opinion.
What I don't think any of you realize is that right up until that show I was going to build an active 4 way. I have absolutely nothing against active and I still do not. After my experience, I won't be doing that. Not with that initial buy in and learning cost associated.
Just because someone prefers something else doesn't mean you ahev to pop in to defend it. I like women who have a little thickness to them, because I said that should every guy in the world who likes skinny girls pop in and explain to me "but skinnier girls are so much better bc so so... You just haven't met the right skinny girl.... the skinny girls I met are better...".
It is irrelevant.
Quickly setting up an “exotic” system, too often with equipment that has been already vetted, into an crappy room, one is much more likely that it ends up with something not working well. A wonder anything sounds decent. You walk into an unfamiliar room, with an only partially set-up system, you are more thyan likely to be disappointed,
Given the much larger degrees of freedom with a multiAmped DSP gives the guys with paaive speaker more time to get better set-up.
You really learn little about the sonics at these shows.
Of all the shows/expos i have attended the only parts i remeber are talking to the giants of the industry. We have a few of them here.
Everythiung nis a trade-off.
dave
Given the much larger degrees of freedom with a multiAmped DSP gives the guys with paaive speaker more time to get better set-up.
You really learn little about the sonics at these shows.
Of all the shows/expos i have attended the only parts i remeber are talking to the giants of the industry. We have a few of them here.
Everythiung nis a trade-off.
dave
Terrible analogy/strawman. Your taste in women is your taste. It's more like saying: "women with a little thickness are objectively better". The use of the word objective, and the finality of saying "was not really subjective".
I'm not trying to criticise you here, but even if it's unintentional, you are coming across like you think you know everything and your say and opinion is final and factual. That's probably why people have remonstrated. Hope that helps, I'll stay out of the rest of the thread, all the best.
I'm not trying to criticise you here, but even if it's unintentional, you are coming across like you think you know everything and your say and opinion is final and factual. That's probably why people have remonstrated. Hope that helps, I'll stay out of the rest of the thread, all the best.
Just making a comment based on experience, I know quite a bit, but i learn new stuff everyday from others here with different experiences. The more you learn the more you tend to know you don’t know much. My 50+ years of experience may have me filtering that info differently, and I may well be better able to tease the engineering from the marketing in their presentation.
Nothing substitutes for in your room…
People here have a huge range of taste and experience/listenng training, and enjoy a wide range of very differing stuff, all equally valid if it connects the listener to the music. I ceratinly have my preferences, but they are mine. One persons nirvana can be someone else’s horror story.
dave
PS:Not sure where the mysogony is coming from. Women as a group are under appreciated and often do not get recognized for their full potential. And beauty comes from the inside. Why cripple half the talent.
Nothing substitutes for in your room…
People here have a huge range of taste and experience/listenng training, and enjoy a wide range of very differing stuff, all equally valid if it connects the listener to the music. I ceratinly have my preferences, but they are mine. One persons nirvana can be someone else’s horror story.
dave
PS:Not sure where the mysogony is coming from. Women as a group are under appreciated and often do not get recognized for their full potential. And beauty comes from the inside. Why cripple half the talent.
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Fascinating about that stack of baffle-less upward firing drivers is it places the listener in every driver's front/back cancellation null. It might present even less direct sound than the Bose 901.
My opinion is this:
IMO so called "audiophile" playback chains are not 100% neutral and neither are people's listening environments. Therefore the rich audiophile tweakers out there are always looking for that component that will "make it all sound right" (or at least improve the situation). Overall "right" might be neutral, but because there are many other aspects of the playback chain and listening environment in play and for each audiophile these are different, speakers with non-neutral tonal balance WILL find an audience because they will fit the puzzle perfectly for some listeners. The manufacturer must also have some "special sauce" in terms of tech jargon or whatever that sounds good plus a good looking product, and then the product will sell. For this reason, audiophile gear is more like "art" than "science".
Case in point: tube gear combined with full range speakers. Both are not "neutral" or "flat" but tend to compliment each other and some people are addicted to euphonic harmonic distortion, so the product is popular even though when judged alone it is not "audiophile" in its performance. What matters is the entire playback chain and how the listener perceived that in their own listening space. Just like art, audio is subjective.
Heard those a while back, very easy on the ears with nice detail. What frequency are you crossing them to the mid?
Those Master Artist speakers you liked are interesting also. Seems to be a house brand for that AV Artistry store. RAAL 70-10D ribbon crossed to an Accuton C168-6-990 7”, presumably not lower than the recommended 2.8k. I wonder if there are on/off axis measurements for those somewhere.
It's just people having fun and some are profiting from it. It shouldn't be a bother to anyone else.
It's not like they are doing something morally wrong.
I went active for a long time for all of these reasons when my available budget was different. I boarded the miniDSP train ~2016.
In the recent few years I became way more interested in the simulation and measurement aspects of building speakers and went back to passive.
I still initially run new builds active for a little while when I finish the cabinet to see how the project is heading. I universally think they sound better once I get the passive filters dialed in. Admittedly the passive implementation is my focus and the process is exactly as described, more expensive and time consuming.
Overall in my experience, using the equipment I have, active tends to make all the different builds and drivers sound more similar. Imo, passive reveals the drivers more.
I do run a miniDSP SHD as my digital head for the system and take advantage of it's tricks when I'm not tuning a build.
Absolutely! As CharlieLaub wrote: Just like art, audio is subjective. But still, I will buy me a new amplifier with room correction (DSP or whatever) because I believe in progress too... 😉
Exactly, because, with the DSP is relatively easy to reach the optimum in every aspect. It is just confirmation that drivers, if used in proper freq range with properly tamed all flaws, will sound quite similar. With passive is much harder to address all small things, so drivers keep some "personality".
On other side is easy, with DSP as well, to give them some coloration or, even, resonances to have distinctive "personality". I am sure that some of producers using that possibility.
I crossed them at 2800 4th order. It does sharply turn to high distortion under 2300 Hz.
Porche is the one who makes those Master Artist speakers. I'm sure youd be find messaging him to find out about the RAALLs. He did tell me they require really good electronics to work propely
I've got a WORD doc on my hard drive called "The textbook perfect speaker" and it's an unfinished philosophical piece that asks, "OK, so once we found a way to make frequency response ruler flat, what problems remained unsolved?"
The answer is, most of the problems still remained unsolved.
You can make your response literally ruler flat at one single point on axis but as soon as you possess those kinds of capabilities, your speaker is still imperfect. Suddenly your attention turns to dynamics, all kinds of different types of distortion, time, phase, driver personality, and radiation pattern.
As a beginner I had a very naive idea of what constituted a great speaker. It was all about the straight line. Achieving straight lines does not get you to nirvana.
Once that's under your belt, the problem becomes much more multi-dimensional.
The art of design is juggling dozens of compromises and affordances. I think it's best to get as far as you possibly can with "bow and arrow" before you resort to "nuclear weapons."
I also find that no matter how you EQ a driver, it retains its "signature sound."
No amount of EQ or DSP will make a paper cone tweeter NOT sound like a paper cone tweeter.
The more tools you give an artist or designer, the faster those tools reveal his limitations.
At AXPONA I was impressed with the sound of the Dutch and Dutch 8C but I also admired the way they harness the DSP to achieve much more difficult goals like a well controlled radiation pattern that greatly reduces reflections off the back wall for example.
In other words, once you have nuclear weapons at your disposal, it's time to raise your ambitions to something greater than achieving a straight line at one single point in space.
And this is a parable for a lot of other things in life. Speaker drivers are like people. Very imperfect with lots of personality and even technology doesn't neutralize it.
Good post!
I'd like to make some active speakers, just because I have so many unused amplifiers laying around. I like the idea of getting better amp performance by limiting bandwidth. Some of the amplifiers I have available are built into modest AVRs, and could probably use a little help. Active also could allow for some odd uses. Like making a 2.5-way with 8 Ohm woofers, but keeping the impedance at 8 ohms to each woofer amp, and reducing the level of one woofer relative to the other. I don't need to make a system that way, but I get creative sometimes. Most AVR amps don't like low impedance speakers. I want my cake, and eat it too. Would be cool to add an active x-over inside the AVR. My AVR has bi-amp mode, but why, oh why did they make both outputs identical? I know, only us speaker guys would use it differently.
For a traditional 3-way, I can't think of much that active could do, that passive could not also do. Not anything I feel I personally would need to do anyway. It would be easier to do actively for sure, and with quality gear I think sound the same with either. Maybe active would sound even better. I'm not arguing against active at all. It's just that I can't justify spending the extra money. If I really wanted better sound than I have now, the first thing I should do is improve the room acoustics.
In your speaker, are you anticipating the need for something unusual.? Something like 8th order slopes, or mixed order x-overs, or something really wild? Or do you think they will be basically 2nd, or 4th order at well chosen x-over points? Maybe a long with some shelving filters, and EQ?
I am sure (hope) that nobody, who spent couple of months on this forum and have in posses decent DSP, use it for smoothing freq resp only.
I found different. If you dial both drivers within constrains of worse one a very few people will hear the difference. If just smooth freq response of big soft dome and small beryllium they will sound different, of course
That would only make sense in some kind of desk top mixing situation where you never move. And what frequencies are in the 10 degree window? Good directivity doesn't mean a narrow window. It can be narrow to some extent but we're more looking at the consistent narrowing of the window.