i wouldn´t like to have it close to my head, someone banging them hard
bah..DUM....TSSSSS 😀
Well it is fairly central to my argument! But I'm sure passive speakers can sound OK with the right music.
And I can see how active crossovers could get a bad name: buy a Behringer thingy, dial in a couple of filters and call it an active crossover. Maybe that's what most people have heard, and once they're over the initial delight at how dynamic it sounds, they begin to get sore ears. Whereas passive speakers are designed by people with a bit of experience and knowledge, who aim to 'voice' the speaker using the limited tools they have available - it's a black art.
But the kind of active crossover I'm talking about is the sort that is simply 'correct' and doesn't involve black arts. I suspect most people have never heard such a thing. It corrects for the drivers' measured idiosyncrasies, and the 'voicing' comes from applying the right baffle step correction for the location - which I suspect most Behringer users don't (can't properly?) do. Without it, the results are ear-grating after a while. With it, the results are automatically mellifluous. Pull apart a Meridian DSP speaker, and I don't think you'll find any mysterious blocks of code labelled 'Magic Dust'.
On a personal note, I find audiophiles' priorities very strange. We've all heard any number of record decks, DACs, amplifiers, passive speakers, and they're all variations on a very well-worn theme. When a new piece of the aforementioned equipment comes along, do any of us get excited and expect to hear something really special? If not, why do people even bother to churn this stuff out, and who buys it? The exotic materials meme seems to be what keeps it alive.
But where some of you lot think "I wonder just what an audio signal would sound like if it was passed through copper with a purity of 99.9999999%", or maybe you think "I wonder what an amplifier would sound like if it was made of platinum and weighed a tonne?", I am thinking "I wonder what a signal would sound like if the characteristics of the speaker were reversed using DSP, and each voice coil had its own amp connected directly".
But where some of you lot think "I wonder just what an audio signal would sound like if it was passed through copper with a purity of 99.9999999%", or maybe you think "I wonder what an amplifier would sound like if it was made of platinum and weighed a tonne?", I am thinking "I wonder what a signal would sound like if the characteristics of the speaker were reversed using DSP, and each voice coil had its own amp connected directly".
Listening to allocate problems needs lots of experience. I have some people to help with critical listening, and each have their strengths and weaknesses. Normally I listen with them and let them describe what they hear, then based on their description and my listening, I need to be able to understand what they say. After this, is the process of trying to allocate the cause of what I understand to be wrong about the sound. This is generally a tedious task. Sometimes someone will specifically select certain music passages to more clearly demonstrate a their point. Almost everything will alter sound, and the reason may not be what is normally advertised.
Basically, with the current state of technology, you really cannot say which is right, you can only say which seems to have focused on reducing more wrongs.
Basically, with the current state of technology, you really cannot say which is right, you can only say which seems to have focused on reducing more wrongs.
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Agreed, and maybe the live sound would have been fatiguing to listen to, anyway. The system that 'smooths' it might be thought (wrongly) to be better, by the listeners.
But one thing you can be sure of: the passive speaker will have changed the sound in much stronger, more measurable ways than the DSP-active version. With the DSP version you have a stake in the ground: you can show unambiguously that its frequency and phase responses are 'perfect' by some criteria, which you cannot do with the passive version.
(I won't be posting for the next couple of days, so I'm harping on about this now to make up for it!)
The less problems in a system, the less probability of coming across a fatiguing situation. Can't say for sure whether active is always better than passive. With aassive system, basically you can compensate the highly reactivel loading closer to a constant resistive loading, this is beneficial sometimes if the amplifier does not provide proper damping over the audio spectrum. I guess I will have a chance to compare sometime in the future. After so many years, I am more humble about what to expect. Seems like you never know for sure what you are going to get.
CopperTop,
I don't agree with some of your opinions, they're a little shortsighted.
The distortion of a driver is much higher with low frequencies (<100Hz).
I don't like closed boxes for bass, sounds closed in.
When I developed the passive filter for my speaker I used an active simulation based on lspcad, firewire focusrite soundcard, and a 7.1 channel receiver.
Now with my passive filter it sounds way more transparent and natural, also because my active jelly has been replaced with an ES9018 DAC + F5.
My passive setup is just better than my active.
To make a better comparison I should have a ES9018 qualitylike DSP, two F5 amps for mid and highs and another amp for bass.
Troels tried passive and electronic for his latest project and preferred the passive.
It just depends how it is done, active or passive. Both can sound terrible and both can sound exceptional.
Regards,
Danny
I don't agree with some of your opinions, they're a little shortsighted.
Agree, definitely 3 ways, the mid drivers shouldn't be playing low bass too.
The distortion of a driver is much higher with low frequencies (<100Hz).
Disagree, better a good ported design that goes to 30Hz than a closed box that rolls off much sooner.
I don't like closed boxes for bass, sounds closed in.
Disagree, active can also be a lump of jelly, it all depends how it's done, active or passive.
When I developed the passive filter for my speaker I used an active simulation based on lspcad, firewire focusrite soundcard, and a 7.1 channel receiver.
Now with my passive filter it sounds way more transparent and natural, also because my active jelly has been replaced with an ES9018 DAC + F5.
My passive setup is just better than my active.
To make a better comparison I should have a ES9018 qualitylike DSP, two F5 amps for mid and highs and another amp for bass.
Troels tried passive and electronic for his latest project and preferred the passive.
It just depends how it is done, active or passive. Both can sound terrible and both can sound exceptional.
Regards,
Danny
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Name, names , what is a good active xover, adding more signal processing is not enticing to me unless absolutely necessary , everything changes the sound , including passive bi-amping due to parallel inputs ...
I know I'm a bit late to this thread, and admit I haven't read all 368 preceding posts, but wanted to chime in with my somewhat-related $.02. I spend my workday in a commercial office building as an IT guy to earn a living - and pay for my audio habits - and am growing increasingly stressed out by the "white noise" the facilities people play through the ceiling speakers to cut down on how far across the extremely open floor plan conversations carry. Whenever the power goes out or they turn the system off for a while for some reason, it is eerily quiet and it freaks everybody else out, but I feel the stress immediately melt away. I have noise-cancelling headphones (beats by Dr. Dre Studio ~$300) and they help a lot, but I can only wear them for a few hours a day due to a different type of listening fatigue... my ears start to hurt from the tiny amount of pressure the headphones place on the edges of my ears. The sound of music played through these headphones is really great, but I guess my ears are too big for them. I recently tried on a pare of Shure 1840 headphones (~$700)and they were so light and comfortable I can imagine that they would be comfortable the whole day long but they're an open-back non-noise-cancelling design... and I can't really justify the expense anyway... but man were they comfortable!
Anybody else experienced these sorts of listening fatigue and found good ways around them?
Anybody else experienced these sorts of listening fatigue and found good ways around them?
White noise through ceiling speakers concentrates most of the spectrum in the most sensitive region of your hearing.
That would bug me, I don't even like the sounds of fans.
Short of hearing protection, or installing on/off switches on the speakers in your usual work areas, not much you can do about it.
If you switched the noise generator to "pink" rather than "white", at least the sound would be less annoying 😉.
Sure, passive design and voicing are well known and advanced, maybe not so much active. Maybe a lot of folks haven't heard good active crossovers, but I think I have. I heard and worked with a lot of active crossovers: Tube, discrete Jfet, opamp, digital, digital with passive outputs, convolution, etc. Some are good, some are not, some are well used, some are not.
The very best active crossovers I've heard do all the things that active crossover fans love. They tame the drivers, they do great soundstage, they reveal great depth of detail, they do sound wonderful. For awhile. But then, to me, they start to sound fake and hyped up. The best ones don't give me classic listening fatigue, but they don't sound as natural as a good passive. Better than passive in many ways, but kinda artificial. It's not black or white with me, not one is bad the other good, but a sliding scale. I'll take a good active over a bad passive crossover any day. But a truly well implemented passive crossover just sounds "right" to me. Maybe because it's what I'm most used to. I do use both.
Just my experience with crossovers.
Cheap ear plugs. Don't put them in too tight. You can converse fine with them. There are different sorts - experiment. Once you've found the kind that suit you go tto an industrial supply or safety place and by them by the box full. Throw away after one use
I've not heard many active speakers, but I know you're not the only one who has said this (or similar things) and it's the reason why i'm sticking with passive.
The differences are relatively small compared to the importance of doing this right with either system, which will produce good results either way.
You can mix them up. If you wanted to compensate the impedance passively without passive filtration, for example.
Exactly. Which is why I use the "worst of the worst" recordings to pinpoint where problems are. If someone claimed a new car had superbly sorted out suspension, would you test this by driving on a billiard table smooth highway, or by finding the roughest, dickiest, potholed back road ... hmmm?
Listening to how a system behaves here makes it relatively easy to discern issues ...
I use compression drivers (soon down to 150 Hz), with tube amps, and a mini dsp. I used to use just protection caps or the behringer CX3400. I think some of the magic is gone using minidsp and ofc the Behringer CX3400, in comparison to just using protection caps, even though the XO was completely off and I pushed the speakers far to low or high. When playing music at low volumes it did not matter too much for the speaker.
I may revert to analog filters later, but minidsp is so convenient right now, when my taste change as fast as I change drivers.
I may revert to analog filters later, but minidsp is so convenient right now, when my taste change as fast as I change drivers.
I like to use a variety of music. It is quite interesting what you can discover. I was amazed to hear a difference of a solo double bass playing Bach music for cellos when I only measured change above 5KHz. Totally no relationship between the response and the listening perception.
I also enjoy some Michael Jackson's singing. It is quite amazing how he controls his voice and rhythm.
Typical sound masking systems are a very downhill tilt and set for 44 to 48 dB( A). Not white, not pink, deep red.
I would still prefer quiet.
(There's always the issue of the tests - for both of us - being sighted of course...)
But... I highlighted the sentence above because it did remind me that one of the things I'm finding with my new system is that while it is detailed, smooth, dynamic etc. etc. it reminds me of some characteristics of audio systems I heard when I was a youngster in the 70s and, for the first time in ages, I'm hearing music with the same excitement and colour that I did then. I have done five things with my speakers that are 'new' to me (at least since the last 30-odd years):
1. They're big. Very big, with 12" woofers.
2. The boxes are sealed.
3. They're three way.
4. They're active, with an amp per driver.
5. The crossovers are DSP, time aligned etc.
So in many ways they are a step back in time as well as forwards. The bass goes very deep but has the gentle roll-off and transient response of the sealed box.
In the old days, if I was designing a system with one small amp, trying to make small speakers sensitive but with good bass response for the buying public, I might have been very excited by the idea that by making the right hole in the box I could solve all my problems in one go - and not worry unduly about the transient response and (unnaturally?) sharp roll-off, because 99% of my customers would never hear any problems in the shop, and the specs would look great anyway. But isn't it really just a 'rumble generator' stuck onto the bottom end of a small box's bass response?
I notice that people will still pay huge sums for classic 1970s speakers. Is there a reason for this, other than their rarity?