DSP vs. active analog crossover vs. passive analog crossover. What is your take?

I agree with @phusis, when I horizontally bi-amped my speakers with an analog active crossover design by the same manufacturer (of the speakers) it brought my speakers three notches above the passive crossover in sound quality. 😎

Mike

See Active Vs. Passive Crossovers (sound-au.com)

i think many situations can benefit from dsp, but at the tip top of the 2 channel music reproduction food chain it’s a penalty.

I agree!

Mike

Having built many Xovers ,passive such as a passive preamp is not active and 

you loose a lot of dynamics , electronic Xovers will change the Xover points and enhance certain aspects of the frequency band but imo,flatten the sound no life a true active Xover you choose the parts especially capacitors, Such a Duelund being a top quality capacitor, 

vh audio ,Jupiter Jantzen Alumina Z , there are many ,

resistors for speakers there are only two, theNewer Mundorf Ultra Copper foil is most neutral and detailed , Path audio a bit warmer ,not quite as detailed but still very good in absolute terms. ,I have never cared for electronic Xovers except in Bass where it is not in the critical midrange region ,,I am speaking in Loudspeaker terms , in electronics such as preamps ,absolutely a Active preamp,

if A tube preamp many top ones don’t use capacitors on the output ,there are trade offs, with capacitor output stage you Taylor the sound with capacitors ,I use Tinned Copper foil Duelunds, in Top Vacuum tube some use very high quality chokes and Transformers to couple the output stage ,then it comes down to design 

for many use Lundahl transformers and chokes , then Upper Monolith, or Hashimoto .all depends on budget. All depends  on the application design engineering.

@mikelavigne wrote:

no simple answer to this question.

the crossover should compliment the media, and the degree of room acoustical work that has been done. dsp fixes room<->speaker integration issues. but it’s not the only way to do that. at lower price points and integrated systems dsp does result in a more listenable performance. but past a certain price point it starts to get in the way of signal path purity for 2 channel.

so no absolutes in this question.

it depends....

We may be addressing different aspects here. Digital Signal Processing can be many things, but in my use of the Xilica DSP unit it serves only one purpose: acting as a digital cross-over, and nothing else. No "room<->speaker integration," surround processing or other; 2 channels only (i.e.: 3 outputs pr. channel), with 4 outputs dedicated for the 2-way main speakers, and 2 outputs for the subs. It’s worth noticing that as a digital XO in my case there’s no passive ditto in the signal path, so each amp output channel sees its respective driver terminal directly.

Is this how your experience with DSP, acting actively as a digital XO solely, has also been formed - apart from being used as a room correction unit over already passively configured speakers?

i own the ultimate dsp processor, the Trinnov Altitude 16. i use it with my 9.6.3 surround sound system for my home theater. it uses ’object based’ dsp to create soundscapes that do make movies more real. horses for courses, and it’s the ideal solution for those type movie or concert recordings.

I looked up the Trinnov - an impressive beast of a multiple-feature, high quality apparatus. For home theater use in particular I gather it’s a godsend, and with digital inputs and a digital source one would avoid the A/D conversion, not that I find the added A/D conversion to make much of a difference sonically, if any.

for traditional 2 channel i prefer an analog crossover since i’m a big analog recording guy, as well as have no intention of ’double’ converting my digital files with dsp for my 2 channel listening. that would suck the life out of the music.

The A/D to D/A conversion necessitated with a DSP in your case with an analogue source - if the DSP were to act only as a digital XO sans any passive XO - to my mind would be the lesser evil compared to the influence of passive cross-overs on the output side of the amp, but again, that’s just me.

but i do have a separate dedicated 2 channel room. my 2 channel room is purpose built and highly tuned to avoid the need for any dsp. i’ve fixed the room, and retained the purity of my analog signal path.

With my former passive configured all-horn speakers I at one point had 3 processing stages involved: the passive cross-overs in the speakers as an analogue "processing" stage, the Xilica DSP to high-pass them, and JRiver Convolution hosting a software for room correction in both the amplitude and time domain. It was a capable setup overall, but I prefer my current fully active setup with only one processing stage: the Xilica DSP. Room acoustics have been optimized with both diffusion and light absorption, so no room correction.

my 2 channel room speakers have 2 towers per side; each tower is 7 foot tall and 750 pounds (3000 pounds total). one tower per side is passive, from 35hz and up, the other tower is active and powered for under 40hz, (on paper) -3db at 7hz and -6db at 3hz. so serious bass capability. the passive tower rolls off at the bottom and cannot be used as a stand alone speaker. the bass tower uses analog adjustments and gets it’s signal from the passive tower speaker terminal so it’s signal mimics the sound of the main amplifier. the crossover can be adjusted from 50hz down to 20hz for best room integration.

i get awesome performance, considering the years of work i’ve put into the room.

Indeed sounds like an awesome speaker setup - kudos. Have you tried running the whole system fully actively with no passive XO’s involved?

i think many situations can benefit from dsp, but at the tip top of the 2 channel music reproduction food chain it’s a penalty.

I differ here, certainly as outlined above using a DSP unit as a digital XO - sans any passive ditto - only.

I found going Active to be huge step up in Linn speakers/amps - incredible change in dynamics, clarity, spaciousness.  Unless a room is designed to acoustically match the speakers, properly applied DSP is requirement to achieve clean/natural/flat sound.