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Why have actives not made bigger inroads in to HiFi?

I must not be a hi-fi buff then. Fiddling is the last thing I want to have to do. My Meridians just WORK and beautifully too with no fuss and virtually no wiring either.
I'm sure. I use conventional actives in my main rig. I might have gone down the fully digital route, but I baulked at putting all my eggs in one basket, and I think ATCs look nicer.
 
speaking entirely for myself I'd be reluctant to buy actives because it 'puts all the eggs in one basket' and gives you no chance to upgrade speaker/amp without buying the whole lot.
Isn't that why we buy separates in the first place ?
 
I must not be a hi-fi buff then. Fiddling is the last thing I want to have to do. My Meridians just WORK and beautifully too with no fuss and virtually no wiring either.

I'd tend to agree, you are not. In the same way I was a computer buff when I had multiple computers I had cobbled together and was constantly upgrading hardware and playing with new software, but am now just a computer user who can fiddle a bit if I need to, but if everything is working will just let it be.

My A3 just WORKS beautifully with no fuss, but I can no longer claim to be the car enthusiast I was when I used to weld ever more plates on my rusting MK2 Golf chasis every MOT, or change the coolant thermostat and retune the carb for winter and summer running. Now I am just a driver.

There is a big difference between just getting pleasure from using a good 'something' and the hobbyists additional pleasure from making that 'something' your own through your own exploration and effort!
 
Plenty chance for fiddling even with active ..all the stuff upstream like pre's, dacs, source , turntables, carts , arms , dsp room correction , cables and then downstream you can fettle room treatments , position , toe in etc..all you dont have to fiddle with are power amps and speaker cables
 
If using traditional non integrated active then there is more to "tweak" than with a passive... 2 power stereo power amps for a 2 way speaker and 3 for a 3 way speaker for a start and then if one is deluded enough to think cables make a difference just think of all those interconnects etc!

One would need some technical knowledge and test gear though to be able to do this properly.

Maybe one day I'll get my active Mission 770's up and running again.... (no Mission didn't make active 770's. I did, by adding extra binding posts and bypassing the passive crossover). I had teething troubles with them that meant I put them back into storage when I last used them maybe 20 years ago but I now know what the problem was ;)
 
Active speakers means active crossovers. Single drivers have no crossover!

I'm not sure that's quite true, what I was suggesting is a Single Driver being fed by a DSP Crossover/PEQ board and a built in amplifier, its still 'Active', still has DSP just a single driver.
If you are taking it that far, what about PLLXO, a passive crossover network, fed before the amplifiers to split the signal? Gives many of the advantages although at the expense of newer technologies such as DSP, PEQ etc

I think people are getting hung up on one part of loudspeaker design, without taking it as a whole design.
A poorly designed active speaker is still a poor speaker, its all a compromise and really depends on the final implementation.
 
Some may remember A.L.S.O from the early to mid 80's. Active Loudspeaker Standards Organisation. Some did try to make them more popular and IIRC ARC, Linn, BLQ, A&R and a few others were members. Some made "plug in brick" passive crossovers that could be simply unplugged when the owner was ready to upgrade to active.

I remember it and it always struck me as a half-baked idea as the active crossovers of the day were just so crude being little more than fixed 12 or 24db slopes with a gain pot and no real ability to shape for the speaker in question. This also being why I never got on with Naim active systems, they always sound ‘wrong’ to me somehow and I’m sure that is down to such simple slopes that barely match the context. IIRC the same crossver was used for a Kan, Sara and SBL, which is obviously bonkers in the extreme!

The best speakers tend to have very carefully thought-out crossovers that are tailored very tightly to the exact driver and box configuration. I find the idea of a generic mix and match active crossover system as preposterous as thinking you could use say a Tannoy MG crossover on an LS3/5A or whatever. Sure, you could get a very rough and ready fit and maybe not actually blow the drivers, but compensation for baffle step, cone resonance, response quirks, phase and all the other things good crossovers need to deal with are far beyond the scope of this approach and it was no surprise to me the idea failed. I heard a few Nytech/ARC systems and they certainly didn’t convince me active was the way forward anymore than Naim did.

Modern digital technology does make it all far more relevant and useful as you really could tailor not only the drivers and cabinets but the room too. I’ve always been kind of curious as to what I could achieve with my La Scalas, three T-Amps and a load of DSP crossver and time-alignment software. I bet someone who really knew what they were doing could get something truly amazing out of them with this modern technology and all for a few hundred quid.
 
I remember it and it always struck me as a half-baked idea as the active crossovers of the day were just so crude being little more than fixed 12 or 24db slopes with a gain pot and no real ability to shape for the speaker in question. This also being why I never got on with Naim active systems, they always sound ‘wrong’ to me somehow and I’m sure that is down to such simple slopes that barely match the context. IIRC the same crossver was used for a Kan, Sara and SBL, which is obviously bonkers in the extreme!

The best speakers tend to have very carefully thought-out crossovers that are tailored very tightly to the exact driver and box configuration. I find the idea of a generic mix and match active crossover system as preposterous as thinking you could use say a Tannoy MG crossover on an LS3/5A or whatever. Sure, you could get a very rough and ready fit and maybe not actually blow the drivers, but compensation for baffle step, cone resonance, response quirks, phase and all the other things good crossovers need to deal with are far beyond the scope of this approach and it was no surprise to me the idea failed. I heard a few Nytech/ARC systems and they certainly didn’t convince me active was the way forward anymore than Naim did.

Modern digital technology does make it all far more relevant and useful as you really could tailor not only the drivers and cabinets but the room too. I’ve always been kind of curious as to what I could achieve with my La Scalas, three T-Amps and a load of DSP crossver and time-alignment software. I bet someone who really knew what they were doing could get something truly amazing out of them with this modern technology and all for a few hundred quid.
Fair points, but my crossover (HiFi News plans back when they did some really good DIY) could be any slope from 12-24dB (I chose 24dB for phase reasons), and I used wideband drivers plus variable baffle step equalisation.
As for digital equalisation, I am sure I am not alone in not wishing to subject analogue signals to ADC-DAC abuse! And are you really happy with the sound from T-Amps? We would have to agree to disagree there.
 
If using traditional non integrated active then there is more to "tweak" than with a passive... 2 power stereo power amps for a 2 way speaker and 3 for a 3 way speaker for a start and then if one is deluded enough to think cables make a difference just think of all those interconnects etc!

;)
But don't all competently designed power amps sound the same anyway?
 
Low distortion solid-state will,as long as they are capable of properly driving the loudspeaker in question.
The finest speakers I have heard have been conceived as a ‘whole’ , the Beolabs, Kiis and Dutch&Dutch 8Cs, dacs,adcs, digital processing are intrinsic to the design and not an afterthought.
Keith
 
And are you really happy with the sound from T-Amps? We would have to agree to disagree there.

The little Amptastic I have is very good as long as you ignore the specs. The Tripath TA2020 chipset is often wrongly advertised as a 20 Watt amp, there is huge amounts of lying to be found in modern audio specs, my feeling is it is a far less honourable game than it was back in say Harold Leak or Peter Walker’s day, and the real figure at say 0.1 distortion is more like six Watts. Six Watts into La Scalas can provide permanent hearing loss in a matter of seconds, so that is plenty! Viewed as a high quality 5 Watt amp I’d recommend the Tripath amps to anyone, they sound surprisingly good into high-efficiency speakers and show none of the grit, harshness or switching distortion of some solid state designs into speakers that run on fractions of a Watt. I use it with a decent quality 13.5V bench PSU rather than the supplied switch-mode device. It is also one of very few amps I have tried with the La Scalas that is acceptably quiet! The game changes entirely once you get to over 100db sensitivity, you need a whole different set of priorities!
 
I remember it and it always struck me as a half-baked idea as the active crossovers of the day were just so crude being little more than fixed 12 or 24db slopes with a gain pot and no real ability to shape for the speaker in question. This also being why I never got on with Naim active systems, they always sound ‘wrong’ to me somehow and I’m sure that is down to such simple slopes that barely match the context. IIRC the same crossver was used for a Kan, Sara and SBL, which is obviously bonkers in the extreme!

The best speakers tend to have very carefully thought-out crossovers that are tailored very tightly to the exact driver and box configuration. I find the idea of a generic mix and match active crossover system as preposterous as thinking you could use say a Tannoy MG crossover on an LS3/5A or whatever. Sure, you could get a very rough and ready fit and maybe not actually blow the drivers, but compensation for baffle step, cone resonance, response quirks, phase and all the other things good crossovers need to deal with are far beyond the scope of this approach and it was no surprise to me the idea failed. I heard a few Nytech/ARC systems and they certainly didn’t convince me active was the way forward anymore than Naim did.

Modern digital technology does make it all far more relevant and useful as you really could tailor not only the drivers and cabinets but the room too. I’ve always been kind of curious as to what I could achieve with my La Scalas, three T-Amps and a load of DSP crossver and time-alignment software. I bet someone who really knew what they were doing could get something truly amazing out of them with this modern technology and all for a few hundred quid.

Exactly what I was saying the other day about generic crossovers being no good and that a decent crossover, passive or active, must be designed for a specific speaker. Hence when I've had enquiries in the past as to "can you make me an active crossover for my "XYZ" speakers" my answer has always been yes but if you have to ask the cost you can't afford it... it would be many thousands! I'd also need the speakers to measure and experiment on for the month or more it would take to design a crossover tailored properly to those specific speakers.

I also (sic) thought ALSO a waste of time as there is nothing to standardise... it's all custom by its very nature.

I would never under any circumstances even consider eq-ing a room. It doesn't work and cannot work... and no I'm not going to discuss that statement.
 
The little Amptastic I have is very good as long as you ignore the specs. The Tripath TA2020 chipset is often wrongly advertised as a 20 Watt amp, there is huge amounts of lying to be found in modern audio specs, my feeling is it is a far less honourable game than it was back in say Harold Leak or Peter Walker’s day, and the real figure at say 0.1 distortion is more like six Watts. Six Watts into La Scalas can provide permanent hearing loss in a matter of seconds, so that is plenty! Viewed as a high quality 5 Watt amp I’d recommend the Tripath amps to anyone, they sound surprisingly good into high-efficiency speakers and show none of the grit, harshness or switching distortion of some solid state designs into speakers that run on fractions of a Watt. I use it with a decent quality 13.5V bench PSU rather than the supplied switch-mode device. It is also one of very few amps I have tried with the La Scalas that is acceptably quiet! The game changes entirely once you get to over 100db sensitivity, you need a whole different set of priorities!

I prefer class A/B chip amps. Very surprisingly good performance and completely silent on the noise front for the ones I've built up... even with your ear against the speaker, also no switch on or off noise at all. Not even a quiet click. Silent. Genuine 50WPC at low distortion as well. Ideal for active speakers! And in fact used in many integrated active speakers...

There was always a load of bollox talked about power even back in the day.. "total peak music power" and such like was often specified for cheapo brands and usually meant the "30W output!!" in the ad translated to about 5WPC RMS, if you were lucky...
 
I would never under any circumstances even consider eq-ing a room. It doesn't work and cannot work... and no I'm not going to discuss that statement.

FWIW I agree with you and have argued the point at length here previously! I just mentioned it as it is a function some people want. I can understand it if the room is truly awful or there are hopeless lifestyle restrictions that dictate stupid speaker positions, but I have no such issues! ;-)
 


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