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Active Speakers Don't Sound Better

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.

 

All the best,

 

Erik

erik_squires
roxy54's avatar
roxy54
7,822 posts
 

Well, I know that you like to say provocative things to start a discussion Erik. but of course your experience with this one speaker doesn't make it a universal truth. It was demonstrated for me some years ago at an ATC dealer in Connecticut that their active speakers sound subjectively better than when passively driven. 

That said, I disagree with reviewers who have said that going active with ATC is the only way to go. They sound great being passively driven as well. 

james633
954 posts
 

So how did you go about correcting for non linearity in the drivers? Do you use PEQs in the amps or external software etc. 

erik_squires OP
15,994 posts
 

Well, I know that you like to say provocative things to start a discussion Erik

 

How rude and completely uncalled for! I’m absolutely shocked they’d allow gambling in this casino.... 🤣

 

but of course your experience with this one speaker doesn’t make it a universal truth. It was demonstrated for me some years ago at an ATC dealer in Connecticut that their active speakers sound subjectively better than when passively driven.

I’ll argue that you heard ATC speakers that were better active than passive... and that you are extrapolating a universal truth from that which did not hold up for me.

Let me clarify my original point somewhat. I’m not backpedaling, but clarifying. Based on my experience, the mere conversion of a speaker from passive to active, or design of a speaker as active does not automatically make it better sounding in a meaningful way.

That is, if I were to take an existing speaker design, map the voltage transfer functions from the passive crossover to the active crossover with precision I’d end up with an equally good or bad sounding speaker.

I know engineers, they love to change things - Dr. McCoy

And here’s the issue. The features available in DSP crossovers are vast and tempting. Even with the exact same box and drivers you almost never design the same crossover from one to the other. The economics of part costs and engineering effort needed upend what a good engineer will see as possible and you almost never get to hear a true apples to apples comparisons.

The point is, I can believe you heard two similar ATC speakers. I also believe the reproduction from the active speaker won you over. What I don’t know is all the differences that wend under the hood. Crossover points, slopes, time alignment, driver equalization, etc could all be different and so for me this is no longer a fair comparison.

I will repeat though that using DSP/active configuration gives me a lot more features available to incorporate in my design, and I can be very happy with the results but also not able to say "active is always going to sound better" because I don’t believe that to be true.

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