I think many of theses posts attribute qualities to "active" that are not due to the active vs passive nature of the system. Truth is a proper active system is MORE holographic and MORE detailed than an ordinary passive system, in the same room using the same drivers and sources. You can easily hear a difference using different pucks, speaker cables, power cables and all the same exotic gear you use with passive system. I have demoed this many times at shows or private demos. It all makes a difference and its only more obvious in active.
There’s also this undercurrent "what if my amp [in my speaker] fails? AH, remove the amp and send it in for repair just like your stand alone amp? There is no throwing a speaker away unless it’s a cheap piece of crap that cannot be repaired. Active doesn’t mean unrepairable. I have many active speaker that have been powered ON for 20 years and have not failed- in studios- used and abused 18 hours a day. So this reliability thing is a not real.
The primary sonic advantage of active is 1) improving imaging and 2) resolution of the finest details such as reverb tails, room sound where the recording was made, instrument harmonics and details, all the subtle information that brings [desired] additional information to the playback experience. Most artists think more awareness of what it really sounds like is a positive. Most great recording engineers obsess over this just as audiophiles do. The specific harmonic structure of a guitar or piano or violin is very complex and any distortion that covers up details is noted and often removed. Sometimes, a specific flavor is imparted in certain recordings by choosing specific microphones or mic preamps, just like audiophiles choose different speakers and amps for flavor. But the overwhelming target of the recording process is more resolution, so the myriad of differences become more obvious in the final result. Skilled listeners such as recording engineers like George Massenburg cannot stop hearing these details and have en endless pursuit of greater and great resolution: ie. better sound.
If the recording sounds bad, active will not fix that. If your front end has flaws, active will not fix that either. If your room sounds off or weird, it will still sound weird with active. All the same rules apply to your system and sources where everything makes a difference. There is no magic in active. Cheap active will not be as good as excellent passive just as cheap Class D sucks but very good (and expensive) Class D is pretty darn good. Excellent active will be better than excellent passive, every time, as long as it properly executed.
All this discussion of active "taking away options" is marketing by amp companies or those who don’t have a role in an all active loudspeaker universe. It’s critical to understand what active really is: "powered" is not active; "powered" is a passive crossover speaker with a full range amp inside the speaker box. This will sound the same as passive system except using shorter speaker cables.
In understanding active, it’s hard to argue that adding parts between amp and speaker (inductors, capacitors, filters and cable) could possibly improve definition. This is counter to everything else we know in audio, where less is almost always more. Insisting on passive "is the only way" is like insisting 30 feet of speaker cable is always better than 6. [30 feet of Cardas could be better than 6 feet of lamp cord, but 30 feet of Cardas cable will never sound better than 6 feet of the same Cardas cable] This is the point of active, it’s removing filters and things that color the sound before it ever hits the speaker, ie. a bunch of parts, circuit boards, caps and resistors and the speaker cable itself. Active is moving the amp closer to the driver, removing everything we can between the two. active is removing the lack of control of the driver, such as phase linearity relative to the other drivers in the system, which in active form restores control over elements of the speaker we previously could not. This "shorter path" and "straight wire" approach works not from an engineering perspective, but a sonic perspective as well.
Brad
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I think the one issue not addressed in responses is controlling [driver] phase to create a phase linear system. Phase control is not possible in the passive or the outboard amp active system (unless you have a very sophisticated line level crossover with phase controls on each band, which I have not seen outside of DSP crossovers). It always requires careful measurement to be able to accurately adjust phase. Therefore, phase linearity is one attribute of an active system that is hard to compete with.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against passive, its not shite, it can sound very very good indeed, It's just that active has so many positives that seem so poorly understood in the audiophile community. It's like there is this feeling of "I'll give you my outboard amp when you pry it from my cold dead fingers!" It's a little odd when the science on this is not new or controversial and the sonics are obvious to anyone whose has tried like for like.
The anecdotal evidence I read in this forum doesn't really compare active vs passive, like for like. Its usually comparison one brand to another with other differences that are not explained. Granted a proper demo is extremely difficult to pull off, maybe impossible. I've done it because I have the same speakers in active and passive and the same amps built by the same company. Not everyone hears the difference, like my wife, so tis not black and white. But it certainly is as significant a difference as one cable vs another., one CD player to another, one DAC to another. Maybe sometime I'll invite you all to Las Vegas to hear this comparison. Or maybe we'll do this demo at AXPONA next time and have a party doing it!.
Brad
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HI Brian
So fun to read your posts!
Brad
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Well said Donavabdear!
Does anyone, even the most passionate Audiophile, think the amp is more important to the end sound than the transducers?
Brad
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Fred 60
I can tell you what it costs to repair an ATC active amplifer. The same as it costs to repair a regular [passive speaker] amplifier; perhaps less as with passive speaker amps, often the damage is inflicted by connectrors, or shorts in cable, etc. Active amp failiures are often (in analog amplifiers) one failed circuit part: a through hole resistor, sometimes a MOSFET or output device. Passive system amplifers can be that, but are more often multiple burned output devices or other failures from self inflicted shorts (from speaker cables or connectors). There is essentially no differnce between an internal analog amp and external one.
In active, if an amp fails, you take it out of the back of the speaker box with a screw driver, disconnect the wires to the drivers and ship it in by itself for repair. If a passive amp fails, you are diconnecting it from the drivers and sending it in for repair. IN either case, you aren't sending the entire speaker in. Saying active is a problem due to reliability is like saying a tube amp is more reliable than a solid state amp because you can "see" which tube is out. Or a class AB amp is more reliable than a Class A amp because Class A amps get hot.
Unless your idea of active is all this cheap chinese crap beng sold on amazon, or entry level active speakers, there is no difference between reliability in an active and passve -depending on how its engineered. ATC, the brand Ive worked with for 20+ years, the internal amp pack is 100% all analog and hand made in factory by people, not machines. It is not cheap, it is not unreliable. By itself, the amp pack cossts about US$6,000.
Many of the amps talked about favorably here use mostly chinese boards built by machines. How that is so much more comforting than a 100% hand made pure analog amp? ATC amp packs are built better than most of the audio gear out there. There is no magic dust or other hidden process.
In this active discussion, everyone keeps ignoring and bypassing the #1 issue of passive: how adding a whole lot of parts and wire between amplifier and speaker is a good thing. It amazes me that this "truth" is just ignored. Would you want to run signal through a "speaker level" preamp after your amp? Or some "speaker level" processors? People freak out over running a speaker level switcher, that this affects performance (and it can); a passive crossover is not invisible or transparent in any way. A passive crossover is a series of filters designed for speaker level instead of line level - when line level is where it can be done with low distortion. Speaker level is the WORST place to attempt using lots of copper wire and filters and then hang even more speaker wire after that. Why can’t people see that as a major issue? Is it because we’ve been doing it that since 1950 and damn it, we are gonna keep doing it?
Its true that passive can be good, very good in fact, but how does that mean active has to be worse? That active is somehow is inferior becasue we might not understand it as clearly? People that deny active are not understanding the basics of what a passive crossover does vs. what an active crossover does. I sometimes feels like this active vs passive argument is right up there with the sun rotates around the earth or electric cars are inherently better for the environment (while we dig up lots of litium to put in batteries and your electricity is supplied by a coal fired plant).
Brad
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@mijostyn
You have been at this a while! I too have listened to Hill Plasmatronics and they were amazing. I've heard almost every Accustat, Maggies, KEF, Dahlquists, Time Windows, Advents, double stacked advents, and a LOT of conventional speakers. I ran a high end store in the late 70s, then was a hi fi rep out of Chicago in the 80s.
You say "The problem for Active speaker designers is that the room is an integral part of the system." This is the problem for EVERY speaker designer, active passive or any design between. This is the mystery sauce behind so many radically different opinions/posts about a given model or brand: "I tried that, it was awful", then "Hey-I own that, it's marvelous". It's all about the room, making a speaker wonderful and awful at the same time. This is the confusion of speaker demos- you aren't demoing speakers, you are demoing the room.
Brad
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@invalid
Okay, I get that nothing is really colorless. But what path offers lower color? Active or passive?
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Speaking of subs and rooms, I have to add the general trend toward smaller subs in higher quantity is proving to be a better solution for most rooms and studios. The desire for one big sub creates dominant rooms modes that are a bear to remove with giant nulls and huge peaks. Although counter intuitive, adding more does indeed create more modes, but fewer are dominant. We lose the lack of bass in one part of the room and the over abundance in another. Locating 4 subs on 4 different walls at varying distances from corners can be a revelation. Forget the stereo thing below 100Hz, sum it to mono and it can be very surprising.
In studios, its a common complaint to have bass build up on the back wall (the wall behind you) so you always put the client couch there; he or she hears lots of bass and usually likes it. At the mix position different story. In studios were multiple people are working simultaneously in sessions such as tracking, scoring recording, the band in the control room while drums are tracked etc, good off axis performance of monitors and smooth room coverage of low end is much preferred.
Duke, who posts on this forum, has been espousing this multi sub solution for years.
Brad
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Good arguments all Phusis. I can think of locations we’ve been involved in where symmetry worked; other places it did not. Visually we are always drawn to symmetry. My clients want the subs right under the mains and this "looks right". But most of the acousticians I know would argue against it, even if the physical offset is smaller than they are asking for. Their argument is that both subs at 12 feet from a corner sets up a mode relating to 12 feet in length. One at 12.5 and one at 11 is better. 4 subs should be at 4 different lengths from corners. An alternative plan is an array of all 4 subs next to each other on the front wall but we can leave that for another time.
One difference may be that in my applications, the mains are NOT high passed. The argument is that all crossovers create a hole (a dip at the crossover point itself) which is increased with increasing slope of the crossover. In studios, a 48dB slope is a big NO. Most of our applications have a 12dB slope, minimizing that dip. Introducing a dip right at 100 or 80 or even 60 is very noticeable and counter intuitve to the goal of "more bass". The other issue is phase and the introduction of another phase shift that is not wanted. Subs are low passed, usually with gentle slopes.
In all types of music now, we see extraordinary low end being inserted at the artist behest. London Grammar’s "Hey Now" is adjust such an example of unexpected but likable low end.
In our business, a filter to make sure a speaker rolls off at a new higher place is not desired, as now we have added something that makes a sound across the mains and changes them. Even in the case of a simple and well executed LF filter, it is audible. In this application, low passing subs and not filtering anything on the mains is the basic idea. Subs are usually sealed, have no EQ and no DSP of any kind. Blending them can be a relatively easy process and sometimes requires inverted polarity (180) to make work. Depending on arotating phase control, which only works over a portion of the sub band, is not the fix but a fine tune.
In large rooms one wishes for DSP to create a delay of the mains to match up to the subs, but this is often not accepted due to the audible change the DSP introduces plus the barely noticeable delay created by DSP. Any offset in time makes tracking odd, sometimes difficult where one artist is in the live room and one is the control room- both being recorded at the same time. If the entire system is DSP driven that may be a different scenario, but with ATC we prefer 100% analog output to speaker.
Brad
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I can very much appreciate the experience of others. SpeakerDude, yes, the speakers in question are good down low without subs, almost always a 2nd order roll off. All analog from a good converter, usually a Burl. Target for max SPL (for dynamics) is 100 to 110dB SPL.
Mijosten, I appreciate corners are where subs can have the most boundary gain but corners are rarely available in a studio. They are frequently occupied with gear or bass traps. Somewhere along the floor where it meets the wall is usually the best available location, with only 3dB less boost than the corner. Sub arrays are certainly a goal but its extremely rare to have a studio actually allocate the control room space (often living room sized) to implement one. In 25 years I have not seen a single studio example. In live or fixed install, I have seen many examples.
Is this the conflict of the practical vs the theoretical?
Brad
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A very interesting mix of perspectives in this thread! I agree with you Phusis, a lot of ways to "get there". It does baffle me why audiophiles disike amps inside the speaker, as though this is somehow more detrimental to sound than the massive hunk of copper hung on the amplifier’s outputs, completely hiding the speaker.
Brad
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@phusis Something tells me a primary reason why active ATC speaker models are so coherent and well sounding is due the consistency of their excellent, in-house and carefully manufactured drive units being coupled to what’s essentially the same, quality class A/B amp sections, just scaled in accordance to the driver sections they’re feeding. That’s how it’s been for years - decades even - fairly unchanged and with no crass PR efforts or claimed "cutting edge" new tech nor dubious matching parameters to sell their product. They may be old school in that respect, but to hell with that: to this individual’s ears they’re still among the very best out there of the bundled solutions (along with Meyer Sound).
Thats it Phusis.
Brad
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Thank God for the objectivists, otherwise we would not have ANY of the technology we now have in the world of audio.
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Paula is now working for UMG where they have built a new studio in Santa Monica (mostly for Def Jam records and Dr Dre) and every room is equipped for ATMOS. Many of these early ATMOS rooms are still feeling their way. Some of them don’t sound that great. Sometimes it’s severely compromised speakers used for these extra channels, as tho they can be something different from the mains and "blend". I for one don’t think that’s right, they must all be the same and be extremely consistent off axis or you have nothing but major dips in response via lobing.
Some of the record companies look upon atmos a clever way to squeeze more revenue from an old record they already own from long ago. They are hiring kids to remix the 2 channel into atmos, paying them almost nothing. They are doing it all via plug ins and their computer, and the music creators are NOT HAPPY about it at all. Some think they don’t sound very good or capture the original recording energy- from any perspective. Some love it. Some of theses early ATMOS mixes are not mastered- just squirted out and sold on Apple Music as Spatial. There are arguments going on about HOW to master ATMOS and I am witnessing some that as artists or mixers ask what is working. We helped top Petty's guys jump to ATMOS and it sounds great in the studio but the Apple processing changes some of that. Brian Lucey has posted here before and he is one that is doing work in ATMOS mastering with some success (and he is not using ATC or PMC). One of my favorite mastering engineers Emily Lazar is doing great work too, but other very good mastering houses are staying on the sidelines for now.
Some of the old timers aren’t sure how they feel about ATMOS as some still think it a special effect that works mostly in a binaural type ear bud format for Apple. Some think it’s the passing fad of 5.1. I personally see its best value as a 3 dimensional playback medium but Im certainly not in the majority. I want more mixes that represent actual 3 dimensional events or space, such as a concert hall or a room. Think of hearing it like it really is in Disney Hall, or how it was in a living room with Cowboy Junkies- maybe listen to Alanis Morrisette's "Jagged LIttle Pill" in the real living room they did it in. This could really open up options for many forms of music, like Americana, Bluegrass, classical, jazz (think Patricia Barber in a club) and so much more. That part is exciting.
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@pcrhkr The only difference between a "plate amp" and a "chassis amp" (in an enclosed box) is the metal that surrounds the actual amplifier circuitry inside. Seriously- its packaging. nothing more.
Some of these "plate amps" amps you are describing might be crappy entry level amps, where the purpose is to build as cheap a system as possible, but we are not talking about that. That’s comparing an audiophile amp to a junk amp that was never intended to compete. So thinking a plate amp is crap is equal to saying "all speaker cables sound the same", or "all Class D amps suck" or some other generalization that does not prove itself true.
In the case of ATC, we make exactly the same amp outboard and onboard with heatsinks showing on the back of the speaker - a "plate amp"- that can be removed and serviced, should need arise. ATC also makes a fully discrete on board "plate amp" in their SE series, but these amps are better than the ATC chassis amps and are concealed inside the box with remote power supplies and all kinds of audiophile parts.
Every time this on board or outboard amp thing arises it seems like the ""active is not good " crowd is saying "the amp makes the most difference of any component so I need to be able to upgrade that". I would challenge that idea. It does make a difference, no doubt, but it’s certainly not THE most important. I smell marketing.
Brad
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@thespeakerdude I’m with you.
If you want to significantly change the sound of a system, transducers- speakers and phono cartridges - are the way to do it.
An open question: Is this above statement about change something audiophiles agree with?
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@thespeakerdude No, not at you! I was commenting on your most recent transparency post where you talk about amplifiers.
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Isn't the bulk of amp/driver "match" really about coordinating [the same] dynamic range of each section of a complete system? I mean an active system cannot be considered high end if it clips its HF amp on the tweeter before the LF amp clips on its LF driver. This is the most basic of requirements, yes? The same rules apply to a full multi way active PA system, yes?
There has been little talk of dynamics with active, but that is where one of the larger benefits occurs. The level of LF demand on an amplifier is often underestimated, yielding a negative result for a HF device on a single way [passive full range] system.
Brad
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A lot of system/equipment distortions are amazingly easy to hear with a signal generator with variable frequency and level. We use these to check for driver distortion during the recone process. That would be a good place to start and being simple, easy for everyone to hear. It isn’t unusual to use one in a studio to check for speaker rub and buzz but also room/equipment/ furniture mechanical vibrations and resonances.
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donavabdear
What a great experience! Wow.
Brad
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How could a Harmon company abandon these and not support them? Are these very old? From my little corner, I’ve never seen an ATC amp failure we could not repair.
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@pcrhkr My question is not that you bought a great amp and speaker, but that you are listening not to the speaker, but mostly wire. IF anyone realized how much wire is in a good LF inductor, then additional wire in the other inductors for midrange etc, they would be horrified. It's tens of feet -maybe even a hundred feet of wire in a giant LF inductor set up for a very low crossover point. We all know what 3- 6 feet of speaker wire between amp and speaker can do, imagine all that wire in the [passive] crossover does AND YOU CANNOT CHANGE IT. Does anyone actually think they are using Cardas in that Inductor? In active, there is about 12 inches of wire and no big inductors in the single path.
Brad
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Audiophiles clearly care about speaker wire a lot, there's a huge industry built around it. Somehow all the wire inside a passive speaker's crossover is just forgotten about. When the differences in wire are so widely accepted, I can't imagine how a person who invested in great speaker wire would think the much longer length of wire in the speakers crossover inductors is in any way sonically invisible.
Brad
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@thespeakerdude
Wise comments about purity. It is absolutely true that not everyone prefers the active version of a well executed design. I sometimes wonder if posting in favor of active makes people think there is no alternative. I've done this demo, this comparison, I've demo'd active vs passive (ATC SCM40) of the same speaker using the same amplifiers right next to each other in the same room. Despite the audibly clear advantage of the active to me, some still picked passive (without knowing which was which). I have noticed how seating position can impact this choice, so a great observation that crossover differences can lead to room differences that may be part of the listener's choice.
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@invalid
Amps are the same? Where did anyone say that? Sounds like you are pulling in a different argument io you don’t have to listen to these ideas anymore.
In this thread we have good examples of both onboard and outboard amp active systems. Its NOT about amplifiers! It is clear you too have fallen victim to high end amp marketing,
Active is NOT about where the amp is, it’s about where the crossover is!
Why do I feel like I am standing at the end of the dock arguing that you really won't fall off the end of the ocean?
Brad
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@texbychoice
I have some comment on your post
1) " every speaker passive or active is designed to a price point". Absolutely not true! I can tell you as fact that many products are engineered and then the manufacturer/engineering department figures out how much it will cost to build and sell. My own manufacturer, ATC, does not design to price point and its frustrates many people on the business side as the price point steps are not what the end users would like. It has holes and odd steps in value that relate to parts and improvements in major components (such as discrete vs non discrete amplifiers) but not nice even steps that relate to a person deciding what to spend- should it be $5 grand or $10 grand or $15 grand? Instead there are jumps like 5K to 15K with nothing in between- which appears curious to end users.
2) Many consumer lines that are owned by investment companies DO design to a price point, are heavily researched, even employ focus groups and definitely have product management departments that have targets- we need something at "5K, 10K and 15K" etc. These assumptions of price steps are logical and make dealers and distributors happy that a nice logical path exists to "step up" quality. Such even steps may not exist in terms of actual product engineering- meaning there are many exam plus of a class D 50W amp costing no less to build than a much larger one. A 15 inch woofer costs nearly the same to build as a 10 inch, but everyone expects the prices to be radically different because a 15 is "more".
Virtually every one of our great speaker companies, KEF comes to mind, was engineering driven and to hell with price. It costs what it costs and this continued while the founder was in charge, usually to some point where the company became large enough that it was beyond the scope of a product engineer to manage it.
3) The reliability likelihood relating to parts count in active vs passive is not an accurate way to look at it: Active speakers are a speaker + amplifiers just as a passive system is a speaker + amplifiers. When one party has control over more elements of the system from an engineering perspective, you can make it MORE reliable. Everyone in engineering and repair knows the failures most often occur where there are connectors, and passive systems typically more connectors (inside and outside) than active system do. In addition, these passive connectors are more likely to have end users using those connectors hooking and unhooking amplifiers from speakers to change them out. The very process is where many failures originate.
We have active systems in play 18 hours a day at high SPL levels for 15 years plus- NO FAILURES- with routine maintenance. Locations like Blackbird in Nashville, Sterling Mastering and Dolby Labs use these speakers constantly. There are no reliability issues.
Brad
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One can easily see that this support model is very different for large public companies with strict product plans and clear cut departments that operate the business vs small engineer owned private companies that pursue new ideas and build what might look risky to the large corporation.
The different responses in this thread make sense with different scales of business. What amazes me is the level of intelligence expressed in this thread - starting all the way back to a baseline of Kenjit all the way to engineers and operators of consumer audio businesses. An excellent discussion overall that should help users understand that engineering and science drive most audio innovation and the day of the freewheeling entrepreneur who just experiments in his garage are over. Bullshit may still sell but not for long.
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@donavabdear I find your comments interesting about movies/video. We hear tell over in music about the procedures in location sound. I am solely focused on recording studios and I do not find that to be true there. Al Schmidt, one of the better known "good" engineers (Diana Krall for example) had a story floating about him spending an entire day getting a good snare drum sound. Knowing him, I believe it, he was old school (you MOVE THE MICROPHONE you don’t use EQ). Some of the newer guys using plug ins and zero analog gear are different, but most of their work is not audiophile targeted work. George Massenburg is another one, loves analog, very particular about everything in the studio-his recordings are pristine. The guys I know in between, the ones that work a lot and have multiple projects going all the time, work to get "a sound" Chris Issacs sound in Wicked Game, I know him and he would work all day to get a "cool" sound-not necessarily an audiophile one. Killers Hot Fuss was another, I know him well and he used a lot of mid level end gear to get the sound he was looking for. But that’s the point, these guys are looking for a "sound" that is unique.
Brad
spent an en most of the music recording guys I know, fin that
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I called on Coffee Sound in Hollywood for years and it was indeed a whole different world of gear.
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@markw1951
You are completely missing the idea. Active is not about where the amplifier is, it’s about where the crossover is. Sticking an amp in speaker box using a passive crossover is just the same (passive crossover with lots and lots of wire between amp and speaker) mess repeated. The technical reasons this old fashioned passive system is bad is
1) the losses through the passive crossover with what could be hundreds of feet of copper on the LF crossover in an air core inductor
2) the lack of the amp "seeing" the speaker directly,
3) the changes a speaker presents to a passive crossover as the speaker heats up, and finally
4) the lack of phase control through a passive crossover.
In short, the bulk of the benefit of active is NOT about amp to speaker cable length- that is merely one benefit out of many. I dare say all the money you spent on that wonderful pass labs amp is mostly lost sending it "through" a passive crossover with all those lossy parts and lots and lots of wire that change what the amp sounds like. You think you have 3 feet of wire on your [passive] speaker? Guess again.
I am convinced the passive speaker crowd is just being manipulated by amplifier marketing. Or manipulated by speaker makers who cannot build an active system. What a shame! Now building an active system around pass labs amps and an electronic crossover- different story. That would be remarkable.
Brad
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@donavabdear
Sorry I thought I answered this. I have not heard the Lyngdorf system so I don’t what to think about it. I assume it’s a good product (to have a business actually survive on it), but worth the money? No idea.
In your video he talks a lot about the "Story" behind the model he designed, so if you are a fan, it’s a cool video. If you don’t know anything about Lyngdorf, they’re inner tech, you won’t learn much from this. These kinds of videos are effective and convincing you when someone smart like this starts talking about bass that is "so fast, it’s like a real live concert". You tend to believe them but they actually say little about the support information that proves what they are saying is actually true.
John Meyer, Billy Woodman (ATC), Ilpo Martikainen (Genelec), Raymond Cooke (KEF), these folks knew what they are talking about and got straight to it.
By the way, I don't think John Meyer had the first active studio monitor, that was Genelec in the very early 80s. I know as I was hauling their samples round Chicago in the early 80s. No one wanted to hear it! ATC was also building active systems around this time, locally in the UK, mostly custom systems for specific buyers. The Meyer HD1 which had some success for sure, came a bit later, around 1990. By this time Genelec and ATC was already installing large far field active monitors. In the UK ATC had customers like the Astoria Boat owned by David Gilmour. Genelec already well on its way in the monitor business in the US with an active small meter bridge monitors (1031) that completely dominated LA movie score mixing and music recording. You still find people using them!
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@thespeakerdude. Where it is going to get complicated is "deciding" where an active speaker ends, and where a room correction system begins.
Amen ! Especially as DSP marches on to even better and better levels of problem solving.
Brad
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@kota1 @donavabdear Far Field multi way actives are not new or revolutionary. The ATC all analog hand made 4 channel P4 amp with built in (analog) crossovers is used to power the "active" pro ATC SCM200s and SCM300s used in studios for 20+ years? These are some of the very few far fields with sufficient resolution one can confidently mix with them, everything hand made custom.
Prior to this kind of speaker and the big Genelecs like them, the far fields in studios were traditional horn loaded high SPL speakers used to impress the band for playback and used by the engineer for tracking (tracking live instruments can often present sufficient peaks to blow up most speakers). These were common back in the rock and roll era of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Nowadays the super high SPLhorn loaded far fields are most popular in hip hop studios.
Pink Floyds Astoria boat, East West in LA (called "western recorders" back in the 60s and 70s where Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin recorded), and the well known BlackBird Studio in Nashville (where a huge number of famous country acts, Jack White and more) all still use ATC 200/P4 or 300/P4 systems daily with a wide variety of artists using them and their near field of choice.
There is a consumer system that parallels this ATC pro set up but with a different floor standing arrangement called the SCM200 towers and SCM 300 towers, with almost the same complement of drivers, same P4 amp pair, also all analog.
Brad
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I think that’s what amazes some pro folks, that "active" is a very well worn path with evidence stretching 20+ years of success and satisfied customers. ATC and Genelec may have pioneered it, but it’s certainly well understood now. The simplest benefit isn’t DSP related, it’s developing a phase linear loudspeaker. There are still all the debates about directivity, dispersion, low end etc, but active is not a new or questionable feature in loudspeakers anymore, especially when compared to the mess passive crossovers leave behind and unresolved (lack of driver phase control being just one of many problems left behind)
As said earlier in this thread, I’ve directly A/B’d active and passive of the identical model speaker, same room, same music, using the same exact amp designs (example: ATC SCM50 active vs ATC SCM50 passive with ATC P2 full range amplification which uses the same exact devices and topology of the active amp designs). The "tone" is NOT that different. The speakers sounds very similar spectrally and many would never be able to tell the difference because the bass is very close, the high end is close, the mid range is still in the same place in the overall sound. Some listeners will use a quick listen and spectral similarity as evidence of "it’s not a benefit" or "they sound the same". But given some time, some attention, you will hear a growing difference in details, fine resolution, imaging, separation of instruments and separation of distinct unique elements (like "reverb tails" in the finished mastered track. Once you hear that info, you cannot unhear it. You get frustrated that passive just smooths all this information over, covers it up in the background, the mix now is somehow missing the little elements the artist and mix engineer worked so damn hard to put in there for you, but content wise it sounds very similar. Sort of like a better pair of glasses help you see previously hidden details in a painting.
In the record building process, there is a stage of mixing where the engineer works on "balance", the relative balance of bass vs treble you could say. Are the drums forward enough or should they be less loud compared to the guitars? Are background vocals loud enough or too loud? For this lower resolution passive nearfields are quite handy, things like Auratones and NS10s, etc help you hear balance quite well. But once you get past that, to work on making the guitar track PERFECT, you need resolution so you can hear every mistake, every tiny error. IF everyone does does their job right, the final record is nearly error free- and it is a marvel to hear! a well done record is so emotionally moving and engaging you can’t stop listing to it. You are impacted in a way that nothing else does.
[as evidence, if you can stand country for one moment, listen to "Send it On Down" by Lee Ann Womack- it is a master class in well done mixes (by Chuck Ainlay) with tiny details galore. Or if you like orchestra, listen to Linda Ronstadt Nelson Riddle (done by George Massenburg)- it’s like you can hear a single viola in the orchestra it’s so clear. These mixes have so much detail in them you could listen for hours and hours. Both were built on highly resolving actives.]
Engineers in the pro business sound just like audiophiles to me, Some of them use different converters for a specific song to get the "flavor" right. Some of them use a unique microphone on different vocals with the same person to get the "tone" or the "feel" of a particular song right. There is endless debate about what is right. But what there is little debate about is active vs passive.
Brad
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