1&2 - as I said earlier in the thread, I'd expect an option to have a neat little box that goes between the pre-amp and power amps. Spending this much money on speakers implies the buyer has the cash to splash elsewhere too.
3 - are you telling me that a bunch of large value inductors and capacitors are cheaper than a few op-amps? With the extensive crossover seen on these KEFs, I'd expect active (analogue or digital) to be far cheaper.
"There's no harm in transferring to passive circuitry..."
This might be worth a read:
Active Vs. Passive Crossovers
Chris
It seems feasible to me that active crossovers would be a lot more popular if some of the major high-end companies offered them. Krell tried it once.
Why didn't it catch on? Probably several reasons.
1.) The average audiophile doesn't want / know enough about crossovers and slopes to be in charge of deciding the values and settings.
2.) High-end speakers don't typically come without a crossover. There might be a few, but of all the top name brands that I can think of right now off the top of my head, I can't think of one that comes naked.
3.) Price. For the DIY guys building half a dozen gainclones isn't a significant financial investment, but for a typical audiophile with a penchant for high-end amplification, I.E Krell, Levinson, Classe, Rowland, etc etc, it might be a hard sell if it means going from $15,000 for 2 amp channels to $60,000 for 8.
4.) Danger. Oh, I've mixed up out2 and out4 and accidentally connected my tweeter to the subwoofer output.
5 .) Actual snobbery. The resistance from the aforementioned audiophile when asked to insert a $200 circuit board between a $8,000 preamplifier and $15,000 amplifier. The two photos are the example. Personally, I'm going to stay neutral on these issues simply because I don't want to play typejudo anymore, but there you have it.
Maybe if there was a way to license the digital section of the MiniDSP (I don't know, is there?) so that high end companies could use it.
Edit: Hey, I had two 4's! *sips coffee*
Attachments
Last edited:
there are ... like this for example > Meridian has been doing active for many years.
Meridian Technologies - Meridian
Most modern pro studio monitors are and have been.
I believe they are rejected by "audiophiles" for several reasons
They like to have control, tweak the system at box level including majick cables, power conditioners, etc. They already have made significant investments in gear, amps, preamps, and most importantly , They believe they are only one component away from audio nirvana. To go active would mean tossing in the towel so to speak on their achievements and beliefs (their life's work).
Last edited:
For audiophiles likely to do that, they could just name the outputs "Tweeter" and "Subwoofer", since they will probably only have one set of speakers anyway...
Snobbery to you, common sense to me
MIniDSP is potentially usable only with proper dedicated dacs and analogue parts. The cost won't skyrocket anyway.
The meridian stuff is cool. If they offered a pre-amp+d/a converter+active crossover combination I'd have one on my wish list. I guess the 861 processor sorta does that, but that seems to ease more into a theater controller role.
In any event, my real appreciation for the Meridian stuff is their use of "blades" for extensibility, that's just awesome.
Snobbery to you, common sense to me
I'm picking my words carefully here. Trying to make points without labeling myself just to avoid rousting a few individuals who seem to have made it a matter of personal pride to discredit the virtues of good parts and circuit topologies.
Trying to keep the can of worms as tightly closed as I can.
I really doubt that this is it, after-all one could make the active component out of whatever active devices they like, valves, nuvistas, discrete opamps etc
Then that's simple give the option to use the provided amps or not. Or just go with not. Lots of high end loudspeaker manufactures often come with 'sister' brands, like Classé/Rotel paired with B&W. B&W could quite easily say we recommend X amplifier for the tweeter and mids in our 800 series.
Maybe, but now they can use say 4-6 channels of lower powered/cheaper amplification on the midrange/tweeter etc.
It depends on the loudspeaker. I can't imagine that an active xover using opa134s and standard surface mount caps/resistors would cost more then the 70+ parts xover as used by KEF. I'd expect the raw copper required simply to wind all of the inductors to cost more.
No there is no harm in translating it to passive, that's if it can actually be translated.
And going active would make a lot of sense for the final loudspeakers too. B&W or KEF could come up with a DSP unit that would be common to all of their 'reference' series of loudspeakers. The only difference between them would be the number of DAC channels involved and the code loaded to the DSP for the required filters. This would also give the opportunity for the loudspeaker company to provide different xover profiles in the DSP for different rooms. If the DSP came with USB functionality the companies could also release crossover 'updates' via the internet that the user could then upload to their DSP unit via the USB cable. They could then try the old vs the new and decide which one they like the best.
.
Why does having bespoke drive units make any difference towards what sort of crossover you'd want? Going active also doesn't have to increase the number of boxes in your room, one box for the preamp/active xover and then one box for a multichannel amp. Possibly two boxes for the amp if you'd rather have a higher powered amp on the bass.
Sure you could say that there aren't many options of multi channel amplifiers for the concerned audiophile - maybe not now, because there aren't loads of active loudspeakers out there, but if there were you can bet that there would be plenty of amplifier options.
I think that there's a gap here in what you think I am suggesting. The audio company, such as Classé and B&W work together to produce the active crossover and required amplification. All the non-tech audiophile has to do is plug and play. I'm not suggesting that the user themselves tries to convert their 801D from passive to active.
Exactly, if any company were to do this I'd hope they'd do it digital.
They shouldn't have to nor should they need to. They don't know what's going on with the passive version any more then they would an active version. All of the design work would still be handled by the loudspeaker company. The end user might then have three options for different amounts of baffle step though to tune the speaker to their room, but that'd be simple such as choose between 1, 2 or 3.
Then they buy 8 channels at 3750 per stereo pair. Or is someone going to imply that something like a Classé CA2100 or a Musical Fidelity M6 PRX isn't high end enough?
Then as they say, you measure twice, cut once etc. If you do do such a thing it is your own fault for being stupid. I could also say whoops I plugged my CD player into my record player preamp and things exploded there too. Or maybe I filled my car up with diesel by mistake and it runs off unleaded.
There is nothing special about the miniDSP it uses the SigmaDSP range of chips from Analogue Devices. AD provide a huge amount of information on how to go about implementing the chip. I've done it myself, and I started at zero knowledge about how you'd go about it. If I can do it then it should be peanuts for the design team at somewhere like Classé/B&W.
most of y'all are missing the point.
who buys 16k loudspeakers?
there's your answer why there is less than 1% of the market penetration into active systems.
people who have arrived, people who want Rolex symbolism, they want the best. You walk into a high-end sales salon and start lighting up these captains of industry and they don't want to hear about active this, crossover that.
they want their premier flagship big babies and they got the coin to take home today.
There's hardly any actives market for people who hear "Mark Levinson, Krell" on amps, and perhaps perused through the marketing by proxy magazine reviews that 20 years ago they couldn't afford, these people aren't going to want "built-in" amps, that's sacrilegious!
They want to spend 20K on their front end, 10K on the amps, and 16K on the speakers.
Because they can.
who buys 16k loudspeakers?
there's your answer why there is less than 1% of the market penetration into active systems.
people who have arrived, people who want Rolex symbolism, they want the best. You walk into a high-end sales salon and start lighting up these captains of industry and they don't want to hear about active this, crossover that.
they want their premier flagship big babies and they got the coin to take home today.
There's hardly any actives market for people who hear "Mark Levinson, Krell" on amps, and perhaps perused through the marketing by proxy magazine reviews that 20 years ago they couldn't afford, these people aren't going to want "built-in" amps, that's sacrilegious!
They want to spend 20K on their front end, 10K on the amps, and 16K on the speakers.
Because they can.
Well, the published results of active versus passive were inconclusive enough to justify all that active hopla. When you mention DSP and multichannel I imediately recall dreadful HT sound , and it will sound that way most of the time. There are hardly any DIY people competent enough and with test lab advanced enough to build such complicated passive crossover hence futzing with DSP is the only option. I'd rather see bespoke drivers which don't require such complicated correction networks. Finaly, I hate modern Hi-End glitzy sound ,resolution, extension and complete lack of tone and DSP,gain clones and digital amps are step backwards rather than progress. They will allow using cheaper and cheaper drivers and components ,its the very reason they are and will be used. (Now, I go back to listening my Radioshack Minimus 7 speakers lovely little creatures;0)
I'll probably do the same with my new zx spectrum clone. With air core inductors and poly caps! *runs away*
Maybe it just doesn't sound any better there are inherent issues with going active , in both the design phase and application. Impedance mis-matching is a concern, load /gain/noise, the better the speaker the more pronouce these things become..
Active xover has there applications, domestic application is not necessarily the best way to go when thinking active x-overs...
Active xover has there applications, domestic application is not necessarily the best way to go when thinking active x-overs...
That's always been death in the high end market, where people like to swap components more often than changing their underwear.
If I had the money for that kind of gear, I'd be doing it myself.
Hell, my ultimate dream is a sound / theater room that I design and build myself as an addition on the house.
I should probably be buying lottery tickets.
I wasn't suggesting that it would come with zero flexibility. If Classé worked with B&W to produce the DSP/active xover unit, the end user would then be free to experiment with whatever loudspeaker cables/interconnects/power amplifiers that they could think of. If anything going active would give them more things that they could fiddle with or tweak.
If I had that kind of money, I'd do just like all the rest of them and have the stuff delivered, put up, connected and tested in my home, and if I don't like the way it sounds, I just tell them and they take it all down, remove it, and wait for my next command.
because that's how the rich live, they don't have to DIY to get what they want, and what they want is not more complexity, they want less stuff to learn how to use.
That's why the highest end stuff comes real simple, you don't have to learn anything to use it. The reason there's a spank-tac-ular crossover in the Kef, is because it's guaranteed to work with anything. From what I've read they are mostly focused on conjugate load networks to reduce any errors from weird amps driving the speakers, so no matter what kind of snake oiled junk is pushing them, the odds are it'll sound fine.
If memory serves, Infinity did just that with some of their popular high end speakers. Ditto Otvos. Unfortunately, it give the chance for bad results (gain matching is an issue) as well as audiophile angst at a box he can actually see but can't be swapped.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.