I just wanted to settle a debate that has often raged in A’gon about active vs. passive speakers with my own first hand experience. I’ve recently had the chance to complete a 3-way active center channel to match my 2-way passive speakers.
I can absolutely say that the active nature of the speaker did not make it sound better. Or worse. It has merged perfectly with my side speakers.
What I can say is that it was much easier to achieve all of the technical design parameters I had in mind and that the speakers have better off-axis dispersion as a result, so it is measurably slightly better than if I had done this as a passive center. Can I hear it? I don’t think so. I think it sounds the same.
From an absolute point of view, I could have probably achieved similar results with a passive speaker, but at the cost of many more crossover stages and components. It was super easy to implement LR4 filters with the appropriate time delays, while if I had done this passively it would require not just the extra filter parts but all pass filters as well. A major growth in part counts and crossover complexity I would never have attempted. So it's not like the active crossover did any single thing I couldn't do passively, but putting it all together was so much easier using DSP that it made it worthwhile.
I can also state that as a builder it was such a positive experience that I may very well be done with making passive speakers from now on.
You will not understand this and I draw your attention to you claiming, in a previous discussion with you, that if a bigger inductor of the same value replaces the original in a passive XO then the lower resistance of the new bigger inductor should have a resistor placed in series with it to achieve the same overall DCR. This illustrates an inability to grasp the basics. Nobody does this with the rare exception of designing the XO specifically for a low damping factor tube amp.
What a rant, @lemonhaze- Are you miller carbon? Cause let me tell you, he also couldn’t let go of anything. He’d also interject nonsequiturs and personal attacks out of nowhere, just like here. I used to send him some coconut butter so he could apply it to the parts that hurt on a regular basis. I’d send him to a therapist too but that seemed like a waste of money.
Also, you are simply plain wrong about speaker design, and if you’d actually spend any time sweating the details of a crossover you wouldn’t be making such silly statements. I suggest you actually go design a few passive speakers and then come back, but you won't do that because this is clearly personal and not technical. Boo hoo.
PS - I don’t set myself up as a guru, just a hobbyist.
@erik_squiresof course actives sound better. It goes without saying that the same quality amplification must be used for the comparison so the damping factor is the same.
One of the most pertinent reasons for superior sound is that there is no inductor with it's attendant DCR in series with the woofer. That series resistance ruins the damping factor resulting in inferior transients and lacks dynamics.
You will not understand this and I draw your attention to you claiming, in a previous discussion with you, that if a bigger inductor of the same value replaces the original in a passive XO then the lower resistance of the new bigger inductor should have a resistor placed in series with it to achieve the same overall DCR. This illustrates an inability to grasp the basics. Nobody does this with the rare exception of designing the XO specifically for a low damping factor tube amp.
Now I expect your usual rude response to me stating that you are sorry this all went right over my head.
Look up DF and educate yourself instead of just flapping your gums.
In your last sentence above I need to correct you again! You would be setting the gain according to the different sensitivities of the drivers. It has nothing to do with their efficiency. C'mon man, if you try and parade yourself as a speaker guru perhaps visit Wikipedia from time to time. Try reading Dickerson or D'appolito, you won't find them placing a resistor in series with the woofer LOL
This is why active speakers better have volume control AFTER digital crossover or be fully analogue.
I don't know any other way to do it. An inherent feature in any active crossover is level matching, or the ability to set the gain differently for each driver due to normal differences in efficiencies.
ATC uses analogue crossovers, as do Focal and few others. Other school of thought is use of digital crossover implemented in DSP, which gives more flexibility. But DSP has inherent limitation in precision of DAC they use. Common setup even for speakers with digital input assumes that volume control precedes crossover logic. When volume control is implemented digitally, audio stream looses resolution (1 bit for every 3dB of power below maximum), That can have negative impact on sound. Analogue crossover adds dither due to natural noise of the circuit. This is why active speakers better have volume control AFTER digital crossover or be fully analogue. This difference may explain why some active speakers sound better than others.
@fynneganThat is not true. Ive done it and you cannot get to where the actives are with passive. All that speaker wire and copper (in the LF inductor especially) between amp and drive unit! Or are you a proponent of the idea that speaker wire is sonically invisible? If you can hear different kinds of speaker wire then the speaker wire you don’t see in the passive crossover (it can be hundreds of feet) is okay and doesn’t matter? No amp on earth makes that go away.
Imaging is significantly better with actives because phase is more linear, with a simple phase control on each amp (one per driver) in the ATC active crossover/amp pack. Ive tested this at a show with room visitors, SCM40 passive with an ATC P2 amp (300W/ch) vs an SCM40A active with the same exact circuit design, parts and power supplies in the internal amp pack. Were they similar? Yes. Did everyone in the room all day hear the difference? Honestly not everyone! Both systems share the same basic sonic footprint for sure. The definition, the transients, the "air" mnd room sound in the recording, the ambience/reverb in the recording, instrument "tails" (the decay) the image, all superior. A mastering engineer would hear all this instantly (and if they couldn’t, it would be extremely difficult to make a living mastering). My neighbor next door might not hear any of it.
Some listeners are unable to hear these small differences- this not a weakness, just affirms your listening acuity can get better with practice. Mastering engineers listen to music all day long every day in the same room on the same system. After a few years they hear amazing stuff that I don’t hear. But please, do not make a claim that passive ATC’s tweaked are better than active ATC’s when things are functioning properly- in 24 years working with ATC I’ve never ever heard this with many attempts!
Now I believe you could make a better active than the SCM40A. ATC believes this also and has a better sounding "discrete" amp pack they use in the in the SE 50 and SE100, both using better/larger drive units and larger amps than in the SCM 40A. So tweaking active is possible. We have several who post here use outboard actives, using their amp of choice. Not surprisingly they support the active is better idea. It's really all about phase, which is not controllable on a passive crossover. The crossover designer has to just pick a value and it won't be precisely right for any driver in the system. Drivers from all manufacturers vary a little bit and adjustable phase is necessary to align them all together in the initial system calibration.
I do not own (nor intend to at this point) any active speakers other than a small pair in my office. I have heard the Dutch and Dutch 8C ($15,000 per pair), and KEF LS60 (price now lowered to $5,000 from $7,000). The KEFs were very nice, but not sure they were to my tastes.
The Dutch and Dutch 8Cs were a different animal, and I very much liked their SQ the first time I heard them at a show; and I believe the DSP was configured well. I have an acquaintance who owns a pair (as well as a pair of new Volti Luceras), and in that properly set up environment I thought they were brilliant.
That said, when he switched to the Volti Luceras (Pass Labs and Aric Audio gear) my jaw dropped to the floor. They are the first horn loaded/hybrid speaker that I've heard where I thought "I must have these speakers".
So yes I think that active speakers can sound brilliant, I think that many people would be attracted to an "all in one" system (the Dutch and Dutch 8Cs also stream) to simplify your system, and I also think that with very very good electronics high end speakers will sound even better
my experiments have been very simple. No special filtering or DSP. Mainly with desktop or small monitors. I just unplug the speaker without the amp from the speaker with the amp. This is a speaker-level connection. Then I plug the speaker without amp to my main amp. Often, it sounds better. I make no claim that this happens with more costly speakers. But it makes me think that ’affordable’ active speakers will often sound better with a better amp. The amp really matters. Of course this is the case with passive speakers too. And I think that the quality of the amp is more important than if it is placed in a speaker cabinet or outside it.
Thanks for clarifying. You bring up a great point, and I fully agree; the quality of the amp is more important than whether it, or rather they are placed internally or externally to a speaker. In either case active config. will better harness the potential of a given amp and make for a more efficient use of its power and overall quality, instead of seeing those wattages more or less drained and wasted in passive crossovers, which further leads to a compromised amp to driver interfacing and all that entails.
My experiments can be ’shot down’ since in a sense they are grossly unfair. The amps I’ve used for comparing are much more costly than the speakers. You cant get the sound from the Atma-sphere MA-1 or the Krell FPB600 from inside a compact active speaker. Not that I know of. So my only point, in describing the experiments, is to draw attention to the quality of the amp in the active speakers - I think this is often overlooked.
The important takeaway is the core issue you’re trying to address with your example here. Yes, those amps are very different animals compared to whatever amps are placed inside a cheap active speaker, but you could take much cheaper external amps and still get a basic idea of the importance of their quality here, and the difference they would make.
An argument for active speakers is that the amp and speakers can be more closely matched and tuned to each other. Yet I have not been gripped by this, with the low cost active speakers I have tried. Instead, the big amps just made the speaker sound better. Interestingly, this main effect was the same even with two quite different amps (tube, solid state). My guess is that ’matching’ in affordable active speakers is only approximate, "good enough", so and so many watts drive them to required volume. The amp and the matching are hopefully much better with mid to top level active speakers - I have not tried.
Matching amps to drivers actively has been hotly debated around here (not least involving business developers of active speakers), with my main point being that the most important aspects with active config. are a) getting rid of the passive crossover between the amp and drivers, b) having frequency band independently functioning amp-to-driver sections, c) freely seeking out the external quality amps and additional gear one prefers, and d) having basically a carte blanche repertoire of speakers, irrespective of size or principle to go by - if one so chooses.
Impedance matching, current or voltage drive, tailoring damping factor, power matching, etc. can have their degrees of influence, but the problem is working with compromised amp sections (as well as DSP/DAC’s) within a tight budget that have to be mounted inside speakers, and so what’s attempted to be gained initially is hampered by overall component quality and design/construction eventually. Not to mention that active speakers are oftentimes physically hampered size-wise to cater to interior decoration demands and the misplaced, general notion that active speakers have to be plug-and-play, convenient solutions that fit nicely on the shelves and pleases the spouse - when active as a system could be much more than that and is really only limited by the one implementing it.
Listening to a pair of outboard actively configured ATC SCM300ASL Pro’s - which represent a more old school, analogue-only, meat and potatoes, no frills, excellent component quality and class A/B topology approach - is being confronted with a pair of world class speakers that to my ears puts to shame many high-end, passively configured speakers of higher cost, and that’s not even including the astronomically priced amps that are typically needed with such heavy-load speakers to bring them to life.
Not totally addressing the active vs. passive speaker debate, but the most dramatic improvement I have heard with my 22 year old MG 1.6's was when I added an analog active crossover gutting the passive crossovers in the speakers. Everything got better. Yes I had to buy another matching 2 channel amp, interconnects, and rewire the speakers but it was relatively easy to do with the 2 way 1.6's. When I had to buy new amplifiers I stayed with the active crossover configuration even though it was an extra $3,500 for the second amp. I thought it was worth it.
While Magnapan is quite famous for their modest (read cheap) passive crossover components I was not expecting that big an improvement. Quite happy I tried it.
I didn't read previous posts so apologize if I'm repeating someone. The appeal of active speakers for me was the frustration of buying passive speakers and bringing them home to find they sounded completely different! Dealers will say the speakers need time to break in to get past the return date and after that begin the component merry go round! active is supposed to remove the variable of component matching.
I think @prof best summarized what I was trying to say at the beginning:
Whatever the technical advantages in active designs,
I’ve yet to hear a paradigm changing moment, listening to an active design.
At the end of the day the active or passive speaker is an amalgam of all the choices made between the listener and the preamp but for the home there's no big paradigm shift in perceived sound quality due to the use of active or passive alone.
Given that, I'll take simplicity and value as significant value indicators.
A very fair and detailed review of the ATC SCM 50 active / passive.
My take is if you have a big budget for a poweramp, then sure, the passive ATC version may suit you better and indeed sound better. But the VFM with ATC actives is undeniable, the performance vs money spent is crazy good.
Cheap Active speakers are OK for the Garage system.....but Audiophiles like to experiment with amps, pre- amps cables , inter-connects and have fun doing so. It's our "Hobby"....Active speakers...You're stuck!
Audioengine A5+ is one of the better non expensive active speakers that I own. They now sound quite well integrated (drivers / amp), but needed much time to break in, at first I did not like them. They are also well designed, benefitting from a bigger size box. They sound much better on stands. Still, my Aurum Cantus 2 passive speakers, slightly larger, sound better, more refined, with a very good ribbon tweeter. I was lucky to find them used for a price ca = the A5+. Both go beyond the typical bookshelf (or desktop) role, and are able to fill a room reasonably well (on stands).
And Shrek looked at Donkey and said "do you think he's compensating?"
Now, I'll return to listening to my awesome system not bothered for a nanosecond about opinions of others and enjoy the artistry of world class musicians and vocalists. That's my world. Ciao Bella
I own a pair of Audio Pro A4-14 (with mods and updates) and I am very familiar with Meridian and B&O powered speakers. At the time of release for each and every model that I was exposed to, I thought there was something to it, granted the Meridian and B&O speakers were always connected as part of the companies' systems. I heard a pair of ATC powered speakers, and I was surprised at the dynamics and SPL they were providing. I still prefer non powered speakers with awesome ss amplification.
@phusis - my experiments have been very simple. No special filtering or DSP. Mainly with desktop or small monitors. I just unplug the speaker without the amp from the speaker with the amp. This is a speaker-level connection. Then I plug the speaker without amp to my main amp. Often, it sounds better. I make no claim that this happens with more costly speakers. But it makes me think that ’affordable’ active speakers will often sound better with a better amp. The amp really matters. Of course this is the case with passive speakers too. And I think that the quality of the amp is more important than if it is placed in a speaker cabinet or outside it.
My experiments can be ’shot down’ since in a sense they are grossly unfair. The amps I’ve used for comparing are much more costly than the speakers. You cant get the sound from the Atma-sphere MA-1 or the Krell FPB600 from inside a compact active speaker. Not that I know of. So my only point, in describing the experiments, is to draw attention to the quality of the amp in the active speakers - I think this is often overlooked.
An argument for active speakers is that the amp and speakers can be more closely matched and tuned to each other. Yet I have not been gripped by this, with the low cost active speakers I have tried. Instead, the big amps just made the speaker sound better. Interestingly, this main effect was the same even with two quite different amps (tube, solid state). My guess is that ’matching’ in affordable active speakers is only approximate, "good enough", so and so many watts drive them to required volume. The amp and the matching are hopefully much better with mid to top level active speakers - I have not tried.
Active loudspeakers have widespread use in pro audio. If they didn't sound good I doubt they would be used as much if at all.
@bottomzone Absolutely true. Active crossovers offer significant benefits in power efficiency that is much more important for megawatt installations than modest home speakers though, so pros are much more heavily invested in active configurations. In the home we can afford to waste some watts for level matching, etc.
Thanks.I can see you didn’t cheap out on those electronics. Perhaps this is one reason why your passives sound better than the actives? I don’t think the plate amps in the actives can be compared with the much more expensive Mcintosh powered amps. Just saying...
I was very interested in the ATC 40 actives for a while, but upon listening they were kinda boring, with a discolored and over-controlled sound, maybe it was the cabling used (some Nodost I think). Some passive 19's in a different system were pretty good, though, precise, detailed, competent.
The only way to properly evaluate this on a like for like basis is to amplify the passive speaker with the same amplification as the active speaker. That's somewhere between difficult and impossible to do.
Absent that, what's being compared is amplifier/crossover combinations and not speakers.
I started a post about this subject and there were over 69k comments people know active and powered speakers are better in so many ways.
powered speakers have amps in them
active speakers can be connected to external crossovers and amps
passive speakers have built in speaker level crossovers.
These speakers show the ridiculous cult of the audiophile, I’ve listened to many systems in which the most expensive component was the speaker cables, so why not get rid of the cables altogether? Doing crossover electronics designed for one driver and its amplifier at line level is obviously better than designing a speaker level crossover for some amp that you don’t know essential aspects of the amp and its specs. And in the professional world of recording studios powered speakers are practically the only choice. Also all the audiophiles who spend 25k on their vibration isolating equipment racks imagine the hostile environment of 120db inside a speaker to an amp, they sound fine. I think all the ultra high end new speakers in the last year from Magico, SonusFaber and the like are all using external crossovers. The only equipment manufacture that designs every aspect of their systems in this way is Steinway. I spoke to the head Bryson engineer and he said of course powered speakers are better but people are still reluctant to embrace them. Sad
I hear a lot of comments about vibration, and while I have had equipment that was subject to microphonics, that was in the late 1980s and probably because of the use of very cheap ceramic capacitors. I think that overall, outside of tubes and turntables, the subjects is a bogey man without a shred of evidence. It’s a real shame because honestly it’s super easy to test for. I mean, super easy. And I’ve yet to see anyone produce a credible study that vibrations or isolation of solid state gear matters.
Please put me down as a complete skeptic until someone has any sort of study showing any piece of solid state gear has microphonics. I'm definitely not going to worry about a separate enclosure housing an amp.
I have both SCM20 passive and active and also SCM150 passive and active.
The preamps are Mcintosh C1100 and the amps are MC1.25KW for the 150s and MC462 for the 20. The DAC is MSB Premier and all Cardas cables. I can tell you that ATC speakers love power.
the comparison is that (at least to my ears) the passives are in every aspect better except that the actives are ever so slightly more detailed.
In my experience, when I horizontally bi-amped my speakers with an active analog crossover design by the same manufacturer (of the speakers) it brought my speakers two notches above the passive crossover in sound quality. There were lots of improvements with an active crossover, four that stood out the most were better dynamics and transient response in the bass, highs were cleaner and better delineated, the sound was more live sounding then recorded. All amplifiers and active crossovers are external of the speakers. In my opinion, amps inside speakers is not a good idea because the amps are subject to all the vibrations and air pressure and stray electromagnetic fields from the drivers inside the speaker cabinet. I guess I’m not a passive guy. LOL See here. 😎
A bit of history for the fun of it, the first powered and active speakers from JBL 1959-64 Hartfield and Paragon see here.
I have not tried top of the line active speakers. Only mid level and below. But my experience is this: take the ’passive’ speaker from a pair of active speakers. Instead of the output from the amp in the active speaker, give it the output of a good amp (in my case, the amp in my main rig).
Result - to my ears, it usually sounds much better! So I am sad, reconnecting it to the so-so amp in the other speaker.
Comment?
What’re the technicalities of your experience/experiment here? I mean, what do you do filter-wise with the active speakers once you’ve stripped them to a passive state - fit them with passive crossovers between the amp and drivers instead, or use the existing DSP and then combine it with your own external amp + 2 more amp channels if it’s a 2-way design?
Let’s say it’s a 2-way speaker you’d want to keep actively configured, then you would need to add another of your preferred stereo amp (one for each driver section), somehow use the existing DSP and your once active speaker with built-in amps and DSP has now been retrofitted by-passing their internal amps and re-configured actively with amps of your choosing. Is that the way of it?
You make exactly the right argument for an external, active crossover. If you want to roll your own amps you can’t do this with a fully active speaker design.
Wrong. A fully active speaker design can be done fitting it all into the speaker as well as having the amps and DSP external to it. Semantically you wouldn’t call the latter an active speaker per se because its amp and DSP components are external to it, but insofar the crossover function via the DSP is done prior to the amplification on signal level (and they’re no passive crossover parts between the amps and drivers) and the respective amp channel are connected directly to their driver sections, it’s a fully actively configured speaker design. Period, end of f*cking story.
Fully actively one can use any external amp one sees fit, as long as you have enough of them to cover the respective driver sections. You would of course need an external DSP as well (again: prior to amplification on signal level, and sans passive XO parts for it to be called fully active), the real challenge being setting filter values - certainly if they’re done on your own. Or, a manufacturer could set the filter values just as they would, basically, a passive crossover - like ATC (electronic, analogue XO), Bryston, Sanders Sound, JBL etc. - and provide them as part of the design one way of the other. The ATC SCM300 Pro ASL’s, and others, have power amps and electronic XO/DSP external to the speakers, but that doesn’t make them any less actively configured.
“Seems to me the greatest motivation in buying active speakers is to save space.”
Don’t forget convenience. With active speakers, you could literally have a single component (streaming DAC) with variable volume control (certainly not rare these days) and all you would need is an Ethernet cable to the network, a pair of ICs, and “Bob’s your uncle.”
Seems to me the greatest motivation in buying active speakers is to save space. They're already making speakers smaller to have people more happy about buying them as evidence by smaller driver sizes which I think has been a negative.
Now because the speaker designs have drivers that are too small you have to buy subwoofers because the bass can't be handled as well because currently produced narrower main speakers are to narrow.
Of course they can produce active speakers that sound good but then there's always power issues and concerns that maybe can't be solved anymore which otherwise could be solved by buying a new amplifier for passive speaker.
You make exactly the right argument for an external, active crossover. If you want to roll your own amps you can't do this with a fully active speaker design.
My listening trends lately have been a lot more about movies than music though, so as I transition to more active speakers I'm interested in minimizing devices and cables as much as I can.
I have not tried top of the line active speakers. Only mid level and below. But my experience is this: take the 'passive' speaker from a pair of active speakers. Instead of the output from the amp in the active speaker, give it the output of a good amp (in my case, the amp in my main rig).
Result - to my ears, it usually sounds much better! So I am sad, reconnecting it to the so-so amp in the other speaker.
I do want to point out that as the builder of an active, 3-way speaker I can point out a number of ways in which this is a technically superior speaker vs. what I would have made as a passive version. Also that my workflow is so much simpler I’ll probably never design or build a passive speaker again.
As others have pointed out, there are a number of power efficiency problems greatly improved upon by using an active design. Those are some of the ways in which I can point to this speaker having better specs. At the same time, in a home where 10 watts is a lot, I may never hear it.
What it did not do was actually "sound better" within my modest volume requirements in my small living room. It did not say "I’m so much better than every other speaker in this room." What it does say is "I’m so much better for this living room than a lot of other designs" which is what I wanted and why I bothered to take the effort to build it. Among those requirements was introducing no more devices. I wanted to swap my previous passive, 2-way center for a powered 3-way, not add 3 more amplifiers, a 3-way crossover and a center.
Of course its all relative. There are pluses and minuses to just about everything. Dedicating on-board amplification to each driver is a potential benefit but the quality of those amplifiers must also be considered as well as the specific design. ATC speakers have been mentioned, and both Grimm Audio and Kii Audio have done fairly well using Class D amplifiers in their active designs.
@roxy54of course there are, and my assertion doesnt remove that from the realm of posiibilities or experiences, nor is it incompatible with the reality of high end speakers with built-in amplification.
and still, you dont stick an amp inside a speaker to make it better. you do it so the customer doesnt have to bother with amps.
as long as they operate properly, active speakers are a convenience like bluetooth is or a walkman or something like that. theyre not supposed to sound better. theyre not supposee to perform better. you dont stick an amp inside a speaker box for better SQ and performance. you stick it there to get it out of the way.
Just to clarify a bit, the demonstration that I heard was long ago, and I have no memory of the ancillaries that were being used, and even if I did, I realize that there are countless variables involved. I do not believe that there is an inherent superiority to active speakers.
A major growth in part counts and crossover complexity
If I ever get active speakers, it would be to go in the opposite direction (towards a lower parts count). I bet this is a big motivator for many others who switch.
The question then is, if I get the active version of exactly the same pair of speakers I now use (and like), will it sound even better? Enough to justify the cost and inconvenience of the switch? My speakers are the JansZen Valentina P8s. JansZen does offer an active version, the A8. Or maybe someone can compare the active/passive version of a more popular speaker (such as a Kef product).. But you’d need to constrain the comparison so it’s as close to apples-to-apples as possible (in terms of the component quality etc.)
There are even benefits (in passive speaker design) to having the xover Not in the Box… but separate, isolated and protected from physical vibrations. Biggest surprise/improvement in the evolution from prototype to “finished” unit I have experienced (in my most recent build). (Small sample, not a Universal Statement or Pontification… just sayin’…)
I understand the simplicity, and especially time savings. Passive crossovers can take a long time to evaluate, change, burn in, re-evaluate, etc. ...But...there are pro and cons with every option, and like most things, execution of a given principle is a key factor, as is the objective.
My hill to climb is vibrations. Just on the most simplistic of evaluations placing an amp inside a speaker seems problematic. But seems more and more popular.
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