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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
Ag insider logo xs@2x
o_holter
969 posts
 

Erik and others - maybe you have a comment.

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?

erik_squires OP
15,994 posts
 

BTW, I want to point out that the plate amplifier in my center is in a sealed sub-compartment.  The simple box-shape actually has 3 separate chambers:

  1. Woofers
  2. Mid/tweeter chamber
  3. Plate amplifier

All quite sturdy.  The amplifier is not directly subjected to the woofer's output, nor is the midrange or tweeter. 

The tweeter itself shares the space with the midrange but it is a closed-back design.

mapman's avatar
mapman
21,949 posts
 

Stick some tubes in there and see if that helps.

erik_squires OP
15,994 posts
 

@o_holter

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. 

emergingsoul
978 posts
 

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.

Isn't it really that simple

 

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