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Is it time for active speakers?

Chris,

Just a Tivoli radio. Considering the bad acoustics in the can it sounds surprisingly good.

Joe
 
And I thought the TV screen built into the bathroom mirror in Caesar's Palace Las Vegas was pretty cool.......

baseball highlights while shaving!
 
Shaving whose baseballs??!

I'll take canned dsp over passive radiation anyday of the week.

That is of course, when I'm trying to move my bowels.
 
Active versus Passive.

The designer of the crossover is IME of more importance to the finished result.

There are lots of thing that theory shows are superior in important areas. CD over vinyl would be the first one that comes to mind.
 
That. Plus I'd have thought with modern materials, CAD driver design etc the better speakers (i.e. those with bespoke drivers) could get away with very minimal crossovers indeed. Being a vintage audio junkie I'm out of touch with modern developments but I'd expect many of the better passives to take a leaf out of the old ES14 book and have little more than a cap on the tweeter, i.e. you should be able to design the required response and sensitivity into the drivers. I'd be quite surprised if top-end modern JBLs etc were rammed full of crossover components.
 
lindsayt said:
http://www.jblsynthesis.com/productdetail/everest-dd67000.html
JBL's £70,000 per pair DD67000's have a first order crossover at 150 hz and 4th order crossovers at 850 hz and 20,000 hz.
Click to expand...

2 X 15" bass units and nearly 0.5m3 box... and it only goes down to 45Hz (without room gain). :confused:

I also like this:
"Under a program called Project Everest, JBL® engineers designed the ultimate loudspeaker system: the Project Everest DD66000. But they wanted to outdo themselves. Using the latest technologies, they created the DD67000."

The DD6800000 should be even more uber-ultimate. :D
 
kc5819w said:
The king of actives must certainly be the Genelec 1236A DSP main monitor. ± 2 dB (21 Hz - 20 kHz).

508611d1446305066-genelec-debuts-1236-smart-active-monitoringa-sama-main-monitor-system-1236_ramxl.jpg
Click to expand...
mmmm bring one of those home on Valentine's Day.
 
something I often chat to hifi DIYers about, is how to make their own active system, it is quite easy to achieve, one requires an active crossover unit (used in virtually every professional PA system and a few high end hifi systems) an amp for each driver and one needs to bypass the speakers own crossover so that each driver can be connected to it's own amp the connection chain is: pre-amp - xover - bass amp and mid/hi amp (if keeping tweeter xover or 2 way speaker) and/or tweeter amp. The potential improvements are huge, no power will be wasted in the xover, 24db/8ve slope which is the only one after 1st order that is phase coherent, better optimization of each driver's sweet band due to steep filter rolloff, and much less overall power required as the bass amp can approach clipping without compressing the mid. A rule of thumb is that at 300hz the power above will be the same as below ie a 50w bass amp will ideally require a 50w mid amp (actually can be a little less on mid due to the program nature of mid compared to bass, but in reality matching the powers is relatively unimportant as it just means the loudest the system goes will be limited by the lowest powered amp, treble energy is considerably less so a lower powered amp can be used but best not to go too small so that transients still get full expression. levels can be matched on the xover and the vol will then be controlled as normal on the pre. Very much smaller amps can be used and can be chosen for optimum characteristics in the band they are used in. Modern xovers also allow for frequency response adjustments to optimized flatness of response or take out peaks. The improvement is measurable with test gear whereas swapping speaker cables isn't (except with the ears)
 
S-Man said:
2 X 15" bass units and nearly 0.5m3 box... and it only goes down to 45Hz (without room gain). :confused:
Click to expand...

They will still sound bass heavy in most UK settings to some. The second 15" only covers the bottom three octaves.

The guys like Greg Timbers at JBL know a thing or two about crossovers IME.

I'm biased because I have K2's but prior to these, I used the same or better drivers in theoretically ideal cabinets with the finest active crossovers on the market linked to dedicated high quality amplification.

The K2, with it's passive crossover is simply more homogenous and natural that I could ever achieve with the active setup. Sure there were moments when the actives would take your breath away but, just as a band is a collection of musicians playing as one, so a speaker is a group of components coming together as one.

Really great designers IME achieve that regardless of whether that job is done actively or passively.

In addition to the active self builds, I've been lucky enough to have owned the better ATC's and a few others. I've now had these gerbils for getting on for a decade and sometimes consider being buried in one.
 
merlin said:
The K2, with it's passive crossover is simply more homogenous and natural that I could ever achieve with the active setup. Sure there were moments when the actives would take your breath away but, just as a band is a collection of musicians playing as one, so a speaker is a group of components coming together as one.
Click to expand...
There is no magic that passive can do that active cannot. Either you like one of the artifacts of passive crossovers or the active is "trying too hard" - using too steep slopes etc
 
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