But the OP isn't talking about L4L, he is asking about the difference between a system that costs X and a system that costs 3*X. If the starting point is $10k then you get a greater benefit spending X*1on the room first
To the OP; $10k is about what a middle of the range dedicated HT would cost here, not counting the cost of the basic shell framing.
Of course if you have "Golden ears" things are different perhaps but very few of us have them, I don't for sure and stereo is different from Home Theatre, even Bose can do reasonable HT for some of us [ not me tho]
Hmmm that one is a toughy... There are both pro and cons for both, but reading your earlier posts you are looking for something to keep for a very long time, so resale is not really a consideration.
It really isn't an easy yes or no scenario, because we are all going to put a different weighting on what is important to us. I wound up going open baffle which are far easier to construct than your typical box speaker which adds colour to music.
But we are talking very different budgets, and that has a very different bearing on the outcome. I spent from memory somewhere around $6-7k on the active crossover. If I was to do it again I would probably buy something similar. But there may be cheaper products out there that can do a comparable job. The problem is you are not doing a straight up like for like comparison between active and passive speakers. There is more hardware involved so that is naturally going to push the price up.
Instead of a quality two channel amplifier you now need a quality six channel amplifier. Trying to think of an analogy that can bring it into perspective. You can't compare the price of an active speaker to the price of a passive speaker because they are not the same thing.
Trying to build something better on the same or cheaper budget is a recipe for disaster, because in pure economic terms you are going to have to go to the very cheap end of town to get everything to fit within your budget. Going the very cheapest is going to wind up with an active sound that may not be as good as some more expensive passive speakers. Forget thinking of going passive as a means to a cheap good sounding speaker, think of it as a way of going beyond what a passive speaker can deliver.
I have the benefit of being able to listen to what I am talking about, so I know it is night and day, but without the right budget to do it, I don't know if I would recommend it. Cheap speakers (relative term) lets say a couple of grand are going to have some really cheap crossover parts in them, and that has a huge bearing on the final sound. A lot of that $2k is going in mark up to the manufacturer and the store, so in essence you may only be buying something like $400 worth of parts.
The one mistake if I could call it that, was buying the most expensive drivers. Even then I don't know if I would call it a mistake because you get what you pay for. Guess what I am saying here is price of drivers doesn't automatically assume quality, and there are some really good budget drivers out there that will help keep the budget under control.
I will leave you with one final thought. The beauty of active is you are not locking yourself into a set speaker. Once you have quality amplification and crossover you have the freedom to build / swap drivers as you see fit. You can't do that with active if you buy quality crossover components because the crossover is designed for a specific driver. We just tweak a knob or changing a setting in the software and we have a new crossover.
I wasn't suggesting that room treatment outweighs speaker selection. The point is that the room, treated or not, plus where you sit and where the speakers are placed become major factors in determining what you hear and therefore far outweigh the small, if any, difference you might experience between active versus passive crossovers. And in your case, using the speakers mostly for HT means that your mind is so preoccupied with the video that the small differences in sound will go unnoticed anyhow.
Don't get me wrong I am not talking about the difference it can make to the room and completely transform the speakers into a completely different sound. I am talking like for like in an untreated room. Due to circumstances beyond my control I am currently in a situation where the room I am in is completely wrong i.e. bad shape, reflective surfaces, tile floors etc etc. It would be hard to be worse than it is, but my active system still sounds like a million dollars. Could it sound better in the right room, without a shadow of a doubt. But I know it still sounds infinitely better than those $13k Sonus Faber speakers that are sitting in my sisters house, that is in a room that is fully carpeted and way better set up than here.
OP: I did miss one point you made and that was active for home theatre. That was my intention to go fully active all the way around, but I have since reconsidered going in that direction. I just don't think there is a lot of value is so much infrastructure. I will use the active crossover to help me design the passive speaker crossovers, but I now think passive is the way to go for home theatre. For two channel I am still active all the way.
You crazy. I have no plans of throwing out money like crazy. Why in world would I create a thread where I discussing if I can get equal sound quality out of a much cheaper DIY speaker compared to expensive Production speaker. If I was not planning to save money or cut down on cost. You expect me to spend $10K on room correction because I ready spending $10K on speakers is out of this world expectation. How can you think like that. Doesn't make sense specially when I am trying to save money on speakers itself.
Yes I get your point. But not going Active vs Passive for just the better Sound quality but mainly to Save Money. So I am fine as long as Active speaker can perform at level of Paradigm Premier series Towers and cost me much less. Now the Audio Quality is equally important. Not saying that I am ready to pick some low budget offerings. Because at low budget offerings Center Chanel is too compromised compared to Tower Speakers. It is not worth looking below the Premier series for Audio Quality.
Lets be clear with one thing on my posts. I use active for stereo. 4-Way active with 3 separate stereo amplifiers [ well 2 stereo amps plus 2 good monoblocks for the tops] and the electronics are good but not outstanding.
BUT
I sort of knew what I wanted and what I was doing and I used very good quality drivers that would have worked well together as a passive set-up and they were passive to start with, Bi-Amped with subwoofers, Tri-amped was a small but definite increase in Sound Quality. Home Theatre; which was your initial question is different, the modern HT amplifier has built in SQ software etc that takes a lot of the hardwork out of setting up and I stand by my statement that so long as the speakers are all the same tonality and are around 6inch in woofer size going to Tri-Amped isn't going to make a lot of difference, simply because the centre speaker is the more important but it has to be the same as the L&R.
If I was going totally electronic with my HT I'd simply buy a full set of Bi-Amped small studio monitors, 5 or 6 sets of them, it might be both cheaper and better sounding, unless you are building that separate/stand-alone Home Theatre in which case you could spend lots and lots with up to 11 channels plus multiple subs
If you insist on going this way that's OK of course, in which case start looking for second hand multichannel HT power amplifiers from such makers as Rotel.
There are plenty out there at a reasonable cost, I've got a couple in the shed for playing around with and 4* 50 watts per speaker is a lot of power Tri or Quad amped
BUT
I sort of knew what I wanted and what I was doing and I used very good quality drivers that would have worked well together as a passive set-up and they were passive to start with, Bi-Amped with subwoofers, Tri-amped was a small but definite increase in Sound Quality. Home Theatre; which was your initial question is different, the modern HT amplifier has built in SQ software etc that takes a lot of the hardwork out of setting up and I stand by my statement that so long as the speakers are all the same tonality and are around 6inch in woofer size going to Tri-Amped isn't going to make a lot of difference, simply because the centre speaker is the more important but it has to be the same as the L&R.
If I was going totally electronic with my HT I'd simply buy a full set of Bi-Amped small studio monitors, 5 or 6 sets of them, it might be both cheaper and better sounding, unless you are building that separate/stand-alone Home Theatre in which case you could spend lots and lots with up to 11 channels plus multiple subs
If you insist on going this way that's OK of course, in which case start looking for second hand multichannel HT power amplifiers from such makers as Rotel.
There are plenty out there at a reasonable cost, I've got a couple in the shed for playing around with and 4* 50 watts per speaker is a lot of power Tri or Quad amped
VINEET REDDY what might help is knowing what sort of budget you have to play with and what sort of equipment you already have. How many speakers are you looking to buy for the budget you have. Are you looking to do it all at once or can you add as budget allows?
All of those things are going to have a huge bearing on whether active is viable or not. Are you looking to use the main speakers for both music and HT use or do you plan on separate speakers for both?
All of those things are going to have a huge bearing on whether active is viable or not. Are you looking to use the main speakers for both music and HT use or do you plan on separate speakers for both?
Something like 90% of the dialog comes out of the centre speaker. That is why I steered away from active for a HT setup. I have already purchase ribbon speakers for all of the surround sound speakers. what little is going to come out of them (never going to use them for music) I just couldn't justify going active all the way around. I wanted to try and keep them sonically the same as the mains if I could, but it just isn't worth the hassle for what little difference there will be on the surround speakers.
Sorry but that statement makes no sense, the room is almost everything with Home Theatre.
It makes a huge difference with music too. In a good quiet room you can listen to it at a lowish volume and have plenty of headroom for peaks and crescendos.
BTW I agree that it's a lot of money but you have stated several times that you intend to spend that much on a pair of speakers.
In DIY I wouldn't consider the pursuit of excellence and that sort of money wasted, just the curtains for our listening room cost us $2k- and I have more to spend yet, excellence costs money or time or in my case a combination of both.
I guess my stereo has cost about $12k- if my time is costed in, no way would I bother spending that much on home theatre.
So what IS your total budget and what exactly do you hope to achieve? and as SS asks above are these also to be used for music? I did that and went back to totally separate systems as it worked better for me and was much cheaper in the end
This is the point I am trying to make, it seems I am not doing a good job of it
Sorry that was my fault I missed him saying for HT. Well worth investing in active for two channel music, but HT is going to be marginal if you don't have really deep pockets, and since the OP wants to SAVE money over passive, then active is never going to be the solution. The cost of the additional equipment can't ever be cheaper than equipment you don't need to buy.
I’m afraid that I don’t share your confidence that the Paradigm speakers will sound any better than speakers you can build yourself for about 1/10 of the price. In fact, I doubt that they will sound as good.
I didn’t originally plan on build my own speakers. But after going shopping several years ago and auditioning various commercial products I couldn’t find anything that I would want to have under $5,000 per pair. They all sounded terrible to me. Full of various kinds of distortions and not very musical at all.
So, instead I build a pair of Piccolos from a kit designed by Jeff Bagby. The cost in the US for all of the parts, including having Meniscus Audio assemble and test the crossovers, was only $450. I will gladly put these up against any factory built comparable sized speakers costing 10 times as much and am confident these will sound better.
When I listen to piano concertos, for example, it sounds to me like the piano is right there in the room with me. Not coming from some artificial place or through some speakers. But right there, in the room. Live. It’s really that good.
There can be value in DIY, but it is not guaranteed, nor are the results. It takes a lot of time and effort to better what some of the quality manufacturers put out (note I didn't say over priced garbage), but that doesn't mean it can't be done, but it won't be done by just throwing any old parts at them.
There is quite a bit of a misnomer about DIY being cheaper that simply isn't true. Can you build a cheaper speaker? Yes most definitely. Will it be cheaper AND better than what the manufacturer can produce? Well that is the million dollar question. Half the reason a lot of us go DIY is not to build something cheaper, but to build something better on a "reasonable budget". Now a reasonable budget may actually be more money than you could have bought something for, but what we are aiming for is not cheaper, but better.
If I lived in the States and was looking for something decent at a reasonable price, I think I would probably look at a kit from GR Research https://gr-research.com/
You guys are missing the point here. Passive Pre-built vs Active DIY. So Active is much cheaper than Passive here. I am not comparing Passive DIY to Active DIY, in which case you are right Passive DIY gonna be cheaper.
Sir you missed the point that I actually agree with you that we can get better DIY result over what Paradigm has to offer that to at a much lower price point. That was the whole point of me creating this thread.
See the reason I am going for Active DIY over Passive DIY is that I am trying to take the development and trail and error of creating a Passive Crossover.
They DIY kits which are tried and tested that you guys advised are good. But sadly am unable to find those components locally and if I try to import them then it gonna cost more than what I would pay for Paradigm as Shipping and Import Customs Duty is crazy high. So have to work with the Drivers and components I can get from Local dealers. Like SB-Acoustics, Dayton Audio, Moral etc. Seas is not available and some other brands too. So hence am unable to replicate any of the 3-way designs you guys shared with me. Like all of them have drivers from Mixed brands. Some are available and some are not.
That is the reason I going for Active DIY over Passive. Unless you guys can get me tried and tested offering which consists like lets say all 3 drivers from SB Acoustics or Dayton Audio. Something like that Passive is not gonna work. So please if you find a suitable recommendation I am fine taking Passive route.
If you can make something much better for equal or more. Question arises can't you make something equally good at a lower price point. Your example of DIY $13K speaker which sounded much much better than $13K prebuild and as good as $40K one then I would like to ask you that wouldn't you have build a better sounding or lets say equally good sounding speaker as $13K prebuild at a price point of $6-7K. I think you could have.
Even then it is really hard to come in cheaper. The problem is you are not just talking speakers, but all the associated hardware. So really you are comparing speakers / amplifier and a couple of cables, with speakers / more amplifiers, more cables and an active crossover. So even the cost of buying all these parts retail can come in at a greater cost than just buying the passive retail equivalent.
If the passive speakers you were looking at were crazy bad value (severely marked up garbage) you might with careful planning be able to equal the price going DIY active, but in all likelihood it is going to cost a bit more.
If you try and go super cheap on an active crossover you are only going to wind up with something that performs as well as an ordinary passive crossover, and the crossover is where most of the speaker limitation comes from. That is why people spend a lot more more money to upgrade to a better quality passive crossover to improve existing speakers.