What quality of active crossover will surpass passive?

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Most of them are not professionals.

and many are professional. go have a look at high end forum.
all i should have said was that it seems passive is making a come back.
sorry if i sounded like i meant that its worldwide phenomena to go back to passive. the simplicity of active is very tempting for studio. both can be good but id stay away from any ad/da obviously
 
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but id stay away from any ad/da obviously

As long as they're profesionnal unit system i don't see why.
For analog come back in studio's don't be fooled: it never was abandoned. Once you had invest in a 'big' desk, you must pay the bills every month so they get used everyday to have a money back for the studio owner.
One thing which is rarely explained is how much it cost to maintain a big desk in good shape: recaping should be done every 3/10 years depending of which type you choose and it cost a lot (for a common 60 chanel it can be as high as 6000 euros).Common maintenance is not cheap too ( approximately 1500/2000euros each years depending the brand and model...given you still find the parts!). They eats up a lot a current too and electrical bills can be disuasive given you choose to run them 24/24 (which is killing slowly but surely the whole desk) or you choose to shut them down when not used not to spend too much (which kills psu not so slowly but surely too... choose your plague!).

Using some modules for theyr own character had always been done including tube gear... It's not because some engineer did rediscovered that some analog gear was (and are still) great mean a go back in whole organisation and workflow of an industry.

Digital changed the game in pro audio studios. Definitly. Nobody whish to go back to tape recorder (except for some particular projects) in theyr eveyday work for question of speed of work, flexibity,.... I would not go to the point to tell like Plasnu that analog (gear) eq are not to par to digital eq, or more precisely that they have advantage over from a cost point of view.

For a digital system to sound good you need great AD/DA and Clock generator and to pay for plug ins and daw and Pc or Mac... At the end i'm not so sure this is all cheaper than even high end analog.
It can do many more things than a dedicated unit i admit. But once you take obsolescence of digital into account...
Sorry for the off topic.
 
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Barefoot sound use Hypex DSP & clas D amp modules

Guys,

I believe Barefoot Sound do use DSP crosovers...
Barefoot Sound MicroMain35

I am familiar with the Barefoot range I can assure you they have used standard Hypex DSP and class D amp technology for 5 years....

Barefoot rely heavily on Hypex for 90% of their "cutting edge technology"....
They package up 500 Euro's worth of OEM Hypex boards with 500 to 1,000 Euro's ( depending on model) worth of OEM drivers and sell them for 10,000 to 20,000 Euro's per pair.

One of the main reasons Bruno launched the Kii active studio monitor is he is fully aware of the mark up in Barefoots products.....
Kii now has even higher mark ups!

Digital inputs are becoming more common on studio monitors, but all internal electronics are still of low to average performance compared to external electronics.
I know of no high end DSP, or A to D or D to A inside any studio monitor that can compete with good external electronics....But boy is it expensive.
Cheers
Alex.
 
Sounds to me like you're happier with the passive solution, but I don't follow your rationale here... there are many ways on both paths to get it right or wrong. I just like the fact that I can do things in DSP that no amount of passive components can give me. And I can tell you that too can lead to very convincing and satisfying sound. You'd have to look a lot closer to conclude both setups were indeed performing comparable.

+1.
Legis have you ever heard of jitter? Maybe your minidsp is subject to this and give you the impression you give about dsp. With very serious gear i never encountered what you describe, quite the opposite in fact. But i may be wrong.
 
i wouldnt want to be forced to use a speaker manufacturer dac.

In what should they differ from dedicated units (not every DAC manufacturer build is own DAC/ADC systems as Lavry does...).. Most of them use the same 'generic' chips and add theyr own psu, clock systems,... Once the whole thing is clocked to a good clock generator, differences tends to disapears.
 
In what should they differ from dedicated units (not every DAC manufacturer build is own DAC/ADC systems as Lavry does...).. Most of them use the same 'generic' chips and add theyr own psu, clock systems,... Once the whole thing is clocked to a good clock generator, differences tends to disapears.

Agreed.

One thing I want to say about extra ADA conversion is, the difference 2X ADA vs 1X ADA is very subtle, compare to 1X ADA vs 0X ADA (100% analog path), as long as the clock is clean enough.
 
as long as the clock is clean enough.

15 years ago i've once been on a studio for a comparison with Digidesign (protools) 888 converters, a Sony 3348HR (which was at the time one of the finest digital gear you could own) and the whole system clocked by than ARDwaark (now Antelope) clock generator. Difference without clock was obvious between converters. Once clocked... no more differences! All protools owners was very happy and i think they all buyed an unit. Owner of the studio wasn't really happy!

A very stable clock in digital system is a must, and it's not tell enough to users. But i agreed that for home it can seems a very high investissment for just a 'clock'.
 
...With active xo one can get the most balanced frequency response more easily than passively (unless the acoustical design of ther speaker is flawless, which should be the goal in both active and passive approaches), but the sound is usually slightly robotic and due to lost micro details the acoustical instuments do not sound as real as with passive xo. The sound can be as detailed on the primary level of the sound but the inner resolution is not as high definition. Sound field and the space around the instruments is collapsed compared to passive xo's dimensional sound that floats in the air. The sound feels more dead and artificial...

My experience with active has been the exact opposite. Granted I wasn't starting out with world-class speakers, but they weren't junk either (Sony SS-M3). Also of course is the fact that DSP allows one to do much more than just active crossover. This thread got me thinking about this, so I made a list of what I'm doing with my miniDSP boxes:

1. 48 dB Linkwitz-Riley crossover @ 2 KHz
2. 24 dB L-R @ 70 Hz
3. Baffle step compensation
4. Minor driver response correction above Schroeder frequency
5. Room correction below Schroeder
6. Overall subjective "room curve" (3 dB downward-sloping response from 32 Hz-8 KHz)
7. Driver time alignment & level balance

It occurs to me that using the original passive mid-hi crossovers (24 dB L-R), I was fully realizing only item 3 above, scoring a partial hit on a couple of the others. The rest would have been extremely difficult, impractical, inefficient or just plain impossible with passive.

Having implemented the DSP approach, along with many, many hours of learning, careful measurements, and a certain amount of luck, I now have a sound that is more natural and organic than ever. I hear more detail from within & without each instrument, and the stereo stage is huge. I'm hearing music now, instead of speakers. And instead of problems with listening fatigue, I'm having trouble getting up out of the sweet spot and doing stuff that needs to get done around the house! Last but not least, I feel very little of the old familiar urge to tweak the hardware - I can just put on most any music & enjoy it more than ever before.

This all started out as an experiment - I wasn't convinced going in that active + DSP + my limited understanding of it all could really make my setup sound any better that it already did, but I've been very pleasantly surprised.

-- Jim
 
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Sounds to me like you're happier with the passive solution, but I don't follow your rationale here... there are many ways on both paths to get it right or wrong. I just like the fact that I can do things in DSP that no amount of passive components can give me. And I can tell you that too can lead to very convincing and satisfying sound. You'd have to look a lot closer to conclude both setups were indeed performing comparable.
With the widely varying sounds I have heard in my many experiments I can say small details can make or break the results. It's most satisfying to get it right though. For me personally, DSP can certainly get you there.
I did not exactly use a standard off the shelf approach but it isn't magic either.
The true magic is in the recordings. Our job is to unleash it to the best of our abilities. Be it with passives or DSP...
DSP certainly doesn't have to sound unnatural or without the traits you mention, read the review of my system written by a friend of mine, who does not feel the need to know how I do it but is as demanding and critical as I am to what he hears: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full...er-full-range-line-array-169.html#post4589772

I did not bribe him to write this... he was listening to a DSP controlled setup.
One that I could not have created to perform on this level with passive means only.

But no need to burn one way or the other. My setup is completely digital. So the source is too. That actually meant I had to wait years to get to play some material as good as I remembered them sounding on vinyl. Not that vinyl is better or CD is worse. But mastering decisions can change how we perceive certain pieces. How many recordings were mixed and mastered with pure passive setups anyway? Not many of those anymore I'd guess. So why be afraid of using the same type of technology reproducing those recordings?

Hi wesayso,

I could never never get similar results with Nanodigi as I got/get with passive xo right from the start (which got subsequently re-iterated many of times to be even better). I have made both passive speakers and active speakers before but never actually converted any of them from fully active to fully passive or vice versa so I did not have such experience from those projects. I did not really know how an active and passive xo with seemingly similar transfer functions sound different.

I prototyped the simple passive xo with Nanodigi over three weeks IIRC to see if there is hope with simple passive xo. During this time I made little changes to the passive xo sim, kind of tweaks that are possible as passive, and changed the Nanodigi accordingly trying to simulate also the differences the impedance curve makes to the passive xo vs. active xo. "Yes, this can work, let's try passive. If passive is nearly this good then I can say goodbye to the multi-amp and cable jungle." Then I soldered the protype passive xo, replaced Nanodigi and single amped the whole thing. Five seconds of listening and Boom! Yes there was some alterations in tonal balance, meaning the transfer curves of the comp driver were not identical (but all bass channels were acoustically xo'ed even in activxo/Nanodigi = no difference in passive), but the differences were of different kind that can be achieved with slightly different balancing. Yes, this might seem like a over-enthusiastic black-and-white dichotomy, but the difference was nothing short of eye opener for me personally with my setup.

My own beliefs and views have changed much along the journey through Audioville, and I don't expect my current beliefs to be the last ones I'm gonna acquire or support during the trip 😉. I always learn something new and will change my viewpoints accordingly once I feel there is personally enough evidence to convince myself to turn the coat. Five years ago my setup (and also my theoretical "dream setup") was 3-5 ways dsp-active, so it has been a long trip, almost exactly to the "other side of the town". Listening high end systems, trying new things with own setup, gaining those first hand experiences, those are the things that have the most impact on the way I think.

Regarding the krivium's jitter question, I don't think Nanodigi could add too much jitter as it has ASRC, but I could be wrong.
 
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15 years ago i've once been on a studio for a comparison with Digidesign (protools) 888 converters, a Sony 3348HR (which was at the time one of the finest digital gear you could own) and the whole system clocked by than ARDwaark (now Antelope) clock generator. Difference without clock was obvious between converters. Once clocked... no more differences! All protools owners was very happy and i think they all buyed an unit. Owner of the studio wasn't really happy!

A very stable clock in digital system is a must, and it's not tell enough to users. But i agreed that for home it can seems a very high investissment for just a 'clock'.

Hahaha, I remember that time. AAdsync was the godsend.
 
Guys,

I believe Barefoot Sound do use DSP crosovers...
Barefoot Sound MicroMain35

I am familiar with the Barefoot range I can assure you they have used standard Hypex DSP and class D amp technology for 5 years....

Barefoot rely heavily on Hypex for 90% of their "cutting edge technology"....
They package up 500 Euro's worth of OEM Hypex boards with 500 to 1,000 Euro's ( depending on model) worth of OEM drivers and sell them for 10,000 to 20,000 Euro's per pair.

One of the main reasons Bruno launched the Kii active studio monitor is he is fully aware of the mark up in Barefoots products.....
Kii now has even higher mark ups!

Digital inputs are becoming more common on studio monitors, but all internal electronics are still of low to average performance compared to external electronics.
I know of no high end DSP, or A to D or D to A inside any studio monitor that can compete with good external electronics....But boy is it expensive.
Cheers
Alex.

Alex, I bough my MM27 Gen1 right after they were released. They were sold for $6000 for a pair with top end ICEModules. I was quite surprised that I found I couldn't even DIY them for the price I paid. Extremely low markups. Thomas was actually a DIY speaker guru before he started Barefoot, and I still respect him. MM27 is a really good monitor, I love them.
 
15 years ago i've once been on a studio for a comparison with Digidesign (protools) 888 converters, a Sony 3348HR (which was at the time one of the finest digital gear you could own) and the whole system clocked by than ARDwaark (now Antelope) clock generator. Difference without clock was obvious between converters. Once clocked... no more differences! All protools owners was very happy and i think they all buyed an unit. Owner of the studio wasn't really happy!

A very stable clock in digital system is a must, and it's not tell enough to users. But i agreed that for home it can seems a very high investissment for just a 'clock'.

Have you followed the various Antelope clock threads on gearslutz?

Somewhere in there is a link to someone who did some testing and it appears that ProTools convertors are some of the very few that improve with external clocking while most others usually get worse or at best equal their performance when clocked by themselves?

There were some technical reasons mentioned but I don't remember enough details.
 
Have you followed the various Antelope clock threads on gearslutz?

Somewhere in there is a link to someone who did some testing and it appears that ProTools convertors are some of the very few that improve with external clocking while most others usually get worse or at best equal their performance when clocked by themselves?

There were some technical reasons mentioned but I don't remember enough details.

It was a long time ago. 888 was the HORRIBLE sounding converter sold for $4000. LOL.
 
Legis,

I have no doubt there was an audible difference between both setups. My interest would have been in finding out why. At least that's how I approach whatever I try and do. And I have experimented a lot.
Being as happy with your setup as you are is a good thing, and no words will take that away from you.
Learning where to look and what to look at is my personal journey. So far it works out very well and way above what I expected going in. But in the end it's the satisfaction we get from what we build that makes it worth it and no need to judge others for doing things a bit different, right?
I definitely would never want to suggest you're wrong and I'm right, that sort of thing. We do what we do, mostly driven by passion for music. All of us creating our own little truths in a way. Like I said earlier on this thread, I even have some passive components in my setup, I can measure the difference (however tiny it is) but I cannot explain it yet why I like having it there. A piece of my puzzle that's still a bit of a mystery for me. But one I can accept when listening and getting lost in the music... when you hear no speakers anymore... just a performance, like actually being there. No one can take that away from me. That must be pretty much the same for you too when listening takes over 😀.

I'm just saying you can probably get satisfying sound either way, it's up to the end user to choose the path.
 
Regarding the krivium's jitter question, I don't think Nanodigi could add too much jitter as it has ASRC, but I could be wrong.

Jitter can be everywhere, cables, chips, digital line receiver,... everywhere really. You could only know if minidsp had a wordclock input which if i remember correctly isn't the case. From my experience you can't absolutely rely on selfclocked signal (aes (without wc), spdif, adat,...).
You really need an external spearate clock signal to really hear the improvements if any. But i can be wrong and had badluck.
I won't tell you you're wrong about what you heard, but if you can have access to a better speced dsp processor it can be worth a try between passive/dsp.

AAdsync was the godsend.

Most users of the time seemed to agreed! 😛

Antelope audio clocks are wonderfull! I would say normal because they are the same 15years latter, same obsession a bout quality. But they are not cheap! Maybe in next years some could be on second hand market... in fact i doubt owners want to separate anytime soon from results i've heard.
 
Have you followed the various Antelope clock threads on gearslutz?

Somewhere in there is a link to someone who did some testing and it appears that ProTools convertors are some of the very few that improve with external clocking while most others usually get worse or at best equal their performance when clocked by themselves?

There were some technical reasons mentioned but I don't remember enough details.

No i haven't. Maybe they are right but from what i've heard it's not true. It wasn't digidesign converters (we used in our own test) , if i remember correctly it was some Blue Lavry (sure about them), Prismsound ADA (sure too), some Apogee and my own Lake, maybe there was some Cranesong converters too.

We tried others clocks like BigBen, and another one i can't remember as well as the ones included in the gear present.

For my taste the Antelope was the best on my Lake and i prefered results on Prism (which i usually don't like: find them to clinical) and Lavry ( but i liked them selfclocked too). Can't remember for the rest. It was'nt very technical test just plug and hear. But it showed me limits of dolby clock system. But fair enough its the oldest piece of gear we tested and offered 192/24 mode even at the time. Still like it, and i still have to hear something that beat it for what it does! Maybe Acourate don't know never heard one. 🙂

while most others usually get worse or at best equal their performance when clocked by themselves

That can be true for one unit only, but as soon as you have a whole digital system including multiple different units you must use a reference clock generator for the whole thing or you end up with drop outs, corrupted data,instable system... Off topic for what we are talking here, but for a studio you can't live without one (whatever it's brand).
 
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