Recommendations for electronic crossover.

georgehifi

In general Bridged Amps
Pros= More watts.

Cons=
Worse damping factor
Higher output impedance (has relevance to damping factor)
Lower stability (especially into low impedance’s)
Current ability is reduced (especially into low impedance’s)
Higher distortion.

Yup, that’s my experience as well.I could never understand the appeal of bridged amps. If you need more power, I think the best thing to do is just buy a bigger amp. Bridging an amp is more of a "parlor trick" than a solution to anything.

Of course there are always exceptions and everyone is welcome to their personal preference .

@georgehifi --

In general Bridged Amps

Pros=
More watts.

Cons=
Worse damping factor
Higher output impedance (has relevance to damping factor)
Lower stability (especially into low impedance’s)
Current ability is reduced (especially into low impedance’s)
Higher distortion.

Some redundant info here, all of which is mentioned ad nauseam without either getting into specifics with regard to perceived impressions, nor putting the cons-info into perspective; what’s the relevance of claimed negative aspects for them to actually matter in-use, and would actual listening to bridged configurations ever be freed/independent from a preconceived, theory-laden approach?

This is my main contention with "hifi:" what’s headroom is generally looked down at as being "overkill," and further relegated to the arena of PA as something more crude and less refined. In this case I can only say my impressions of listening to bridged amp constellations, cons be damned, have been positive - indeed favorable compared to their non-bridged state. The overall impression is, by and large, that of a more effortless, (a)live, open and refined presentation - qualities I for the life of me can only associate with what is intrinsically better. If the matter was solely about comparing impressions and others disagreed with me, I’d rest my case respecting the other party’s opinion. What gets to me is the "look at the spec’d cons, man - they speak for themselves"-gist, added to the conjecture that more watts are essentially about catering to the PA-segment.

The only real negative of actual importance in my case would be that residual noise in bridged mode is amplified, and that matters with an active configuration of a 110dB sensitivity horn/driver combination. A lower gain setting would be necessitated here, but as is I’m perfectly happy with a 30 watts pure class A amplifier for this frequency region. What I would consider is buying a second Crown K2 for bridged mode with my horn subs (8 ohms) and/or EV bass section, but only because it would make what’s already very good even better - at any SPL.

Some redundant info here

Not in the least, still fact with Class-D's today.

tread lightly when bypassing the crossovers of any quality loudspeaker.  
they usually do a lot more than just filtering out low or high frequencies.  
the other highly critical functions may include:

BSC  baffle step compensation, reduces frequencies that are reflected off of the front baffle of the speaker.  bypassing this can lead to more lower midrange energy and forwardness. 

Level matching.  Voicing the relative level between the drivers. Bypassing this circuit will require re balancing the drivers.

Crossover slope and phase.  Bypassing this can lead to drivers out of phase and loss of imaging and coherence.  altering the crossover frequencies can put drivers out of their comfort zone and lead to non linear response and higher distortion.

Zoebel network.  Bypassing this can alter the impedance and linearity of a driver.

Notch filter.  Bypassing this could lead to peaks  and high distortion in the reponse of a given driver.

@georgehifi --

Some redundant info here

Not in the least, still fact with Class-D’s today.

Class-D, you mean in bridged config. or stand-alone? My experience with Class-D is far from exhaustive, but what I’ve heard is noticeably different compared to a good Class-A design or even a ditto Class-A/B iteration. My as-is unwavering preference at least what concerns the central to upper mids on up is for this range to be handled by a Class-A design, but I find it less obvious from ~1kHz and down. Certainly I wouldn’t choose Class-A here for my active set-up, for a variety of reasons.

@avanti1960 --

tread lightly when bypassing the crossovers of any quality loudspeaker.
they usually do a lot more than just filtering out low or high frequencies. [...]

Oh, absolutely. It’s a potentially complicated process and steep learning curve, and I wouldn’t as much recommend this approach (i.e.: converting a passively filtered pair of quality speakers into actives) as a design that’s born sans passive cross-over to being with. This mostly boils down to DIY and the pro sector, with the latter having sometimes preset filter-options to implement. Either outset could be a challenge, but once you get a handle on the different filter aspects I’d wager the freedom of choice, on-the-fly filter settings changes and differentiated approach to amp topology (that’s possibly) as it applies to each driver - added to the bliss, as I see it, of avoiding a passive cross-over altogether - it becomes addictive and a rather obvious bye-bye to passive.