Active Speakers - would you consider?

[Hibard]

While in Munich, I heard some fabulous active speakers. And each year we are seeing a few more. B&W just announced the new Formation Series which is a full line of active speakers with Roon connectivity. KEF has the LS50W. Estelon had some large floor standers that were active. Goldmund has some nice active speakers too. There are many others.

Would active speakers be something you would consider? If no, why?

[Kaynin]

There's plenty of folks around here who run active speakers.  In fact I remember an SNA poll of members a number of years ago asking what their favourite speakers were, and the majority were active models.

Edited February 4, 2020 by Kaynin
Typo.

[Decky]

Try to ask yourself the other question: why would anyone consider passive speakers to start with? 

[cazzesman]

Once you go Active, you never go back. 

 

Active with DSP is even better.    I might be bias...............yep probably bias.

 

Regards Cazzesman

[genkifd]

past 12 months through my search of my next hifi system one of my final contenders was the ATC 100 actives. These ATC has a magic mid range. 

 

also thinking getting a pair of KEF LS50 Wireless.

Edited February 4, 2020 by genkifd

[Satanica]

I prefer active crossovers. Then you can run any amps you like and more importantly replace them much more easily.

[Brendon Foster]

Yeah, recently heard some really good active speakers that have begun to sway me but I'm still into the whole Hifi journey rather than the destination.

 

As such, I just bought a deqx processor and am taking my first steps into active crossovers and room correction. Still allows me to upgrade individual components and experiment, rather than being at endgame stage!

[Bunno77]

Currently using Dynaudio studio actives and they are great. Would love some Dyn 600XDs, anything ATC or the Dutch and Dutch. There is a few that I don't really like but I would sell all my gear for those above

[brumby]

Well, I've been messing about with separates - including passive speakers - for a long time now.  Are active speakers something I would consider?  Not to put too fine a point on it.  YES!

 

In the first place, I've never been one to chop and change components on a regular basis so not being able to change the amplifiers driving my speakers is not something that would bother me.  Active speakers will have a different amplifier for each drive unit and will also have active crossovers placed before the amps in the signal chain.  This allows the amplifiers to be perfectly matched to the drive unit they are powering.

 

Throw in DSP for room correction and other things and what's not to like?  In fact, I am seriously considering a TWO piece stereo/AV system consisting of:

 

My recently acquired Sony 65"X9500G

A pair of Buchardt A500 active speakers - with hub and remote control.  These really interest me.  They can be pre-ordered now for a June delivery.

 

Don't need a NAS because I don't have a big enough music/movie collection to warrant one.  Don't need turntable facilities since I haven't used one in decades.  Don't need a CD/DVD/BluRay/4K player since all my music/movies/videos are already ripped to an external USB HDD. 

 

Without question (in my mind), Active speakers are the future of Hi Fi.

Edited February 5, 2020 by brumby

[Hibard]

Actually thought about them many times. Would absolutely need a demo to make sure that I’d be able to achieve my style of sound but they are making more sense these days.

[almikel]

it seems the OP may have ulterior motives, but we can still discuss active speakers in this thread...

 

...I've run active crossovers for >20 years, and DSP active for >10 years - I wouldn't go back to passive crossovers.

All of my speakers are just drivers in boxes, or drivers in horns - I use DEQX for crossovers and DSP at a pre-amp level, and separate power amps for each driver.

 

Active Speakers combine DSP/EQ/power amp into the speakers - I don't run them, but many will sound amazing - and you don't have to spend that much to try them out...an example here:

https://jblpro.com/products/705p

 

There is good science behind why well designed active crossovers/speakers out perform passive crossover speakers:

• enables steeper crossovers than passive (at least 24dB/octave), reducing driver interaction throughout the crossover region
• the impedance of the driver doesn't muck with the crossover response - good passive crossovers cater for the impedance changes in the driver - most passive crossovers don't, so the crossover frequency wanders as the driver impedance changes
• 3 way passive is virtually impossible to implement well - the filter stages (HP for tweeter, BP for mid and LP for woofer) will inevitably interact with passive crossovers, as they're not steep enough to avoid interaction
• In the bass end, the room response dominates - which is where carefully/well applied EQ can assist greatly

cheers

Mike

[dragonscrawling]

I am not experienced in audio but bought a pair of active speakers around 10 years ago - Audioengine A5.  For the price I was blown away by these at the time.  I still have these and they have been running 6 days a weak in my wife's dance studio, longer than I would have ever expected.  Anyway, I was hoping to get more info both from people's experience and the technical stuff like Mike's post.  No specific questions, just hoping to start conversation.

 

Cheers, Mitch

 

2 hours ago, almikel said:

it seems the OP may have ulterior motives, but we can still discuss active speakers in this thread...

 

...I've run active crossovers for >20 years, and DSP active for >10 years - I wouldn't go back to passive crossovers.

All of my speakers are just drivers in boxes, or drivers in horns - I use DEQX for crossovers and DSP at a pre-amp level, and separate power amps for each driver.

 

Active Speakers combine DSP/EQ/power amp into the speakers - I don't run them, but many will sound amazing - and you don't have to spend that much to try them out...an example here:

https://jblpro.com/products/705p

 

There is good science behind why well designed active crossovers/speakers out perform passive crossover speakers:

• enables steeper crossovers than passive (at least 24dB/octave), reducing driver interaction throughout the crossover region
• the impedance of the driver doesn't muck with the crossover response - good passive crossovers cater for the impedance changes in the driver - most passive crossovers don't, so the crossover frequency wanders as the driver impedance changes
• 3 way passive is virtually impossible to implement well - the filter stages (HP for tweeter, BP for mid and LP for woofer) will inevitably interact with passive crossovers, as they're not steep enough to avoid interaction
• In the bass end, the room response dominates - which is where carefully/well applied EQ can assist greatly

cheers

Mike

Edited February 6, 2020 by dragonscrawling
coherency

[almikel]

the only "active" speakers I've ever run was a Logitech 2.1 setup - at the time more expensive than their other setups, but proper 3 way active satellite 2 ways with sub - sounded amazing (for the price), but clearly consumers didn't go for it, so they dropped it from the range.

It was my back deck system for years until a tweater died.

 

Active setups have some key advantages over passive setups, as I outlined above.

 

I'm biased, but in a high end system,  I don't know why anyone would accept the compromises inherent in passive crossovers.

 

Some people wouldn't like that active speakers also contain the amplifier...I accept that there are audible differences between amplifiers, but IMHO the room response based on the speakers' response in the room far out weighs any "sound" of the electronics in the chain by a very large margin - YMMV

 

Mike

[Hydrology]

Looking forward to getting a play with a pair of Cabasse Pearls in a couple of weeks!

 

[gwurb]

I am in favour of DSP prior to the DAC and therefore power amp stage. This does unfortunately mean more DACs and more power amp channels.

I am in favour of passive drivers with 'active crossover' or rather passive drivers with specific filters (LP/BP/HP).
 

I wouldn't want an amplifier in each speaker. Those are fine for desk setup or cafe or a whole bunch of places. It is also ok in a basic home theatre. I wouldn't want it in my music listening setup. Too many issues with disparity of performance between individual amplifiers. Individual amps would also age differently. The only way to combat that would be to have better QC and more engineering work or DSP re-calibration. Either way it complicates the whole system, which is really not worth the effort when a common amp can be connected to the speakers by simple and out of the way speaker cable runs.

 

I am curious about this comment:

 

• the impedance of the driver doesn't muck with the crossover response - good passive crossovers cater for the impedance changes in the driver - most passive crossovers don't, so the crossover frequency wanders as the driver impedance changes

Mike, can you write more?

 

Mike, what makes you say the following?

• 3 way passive is virtually impossible to implement well - the filter stages (HP for tweeter, BP for mid and LP for woofer) will inevitably interact with passive crossovers, as they're not steep enough to avoid interaction

I understand the filter roll off limits of passive filters. The converse part of the problem on DSP/active side is that one still needs to have overlaps not to cut off frequency components in the output. Smaller DSP bins help but that rises processing requirements and doesn't eliminate the fact that some frequency components still spill over.

 

What I am saying is that those passive and active crossover networks have challenges in regards to overlaps in frequency bands being passed to drivers. The challenges are different, and are dealt with differently but they exist in both and I wouldn't be confident that one sounds better than other in a well built system. The only thing that stops better built analogue circuits being put in lower end speakers is desire for profit.

Edited February 9, 2020 by gwurb
Added an extra sentence

[andyr]

17 hours ago, almikel said:

I'm biased, but in a high end system,  I don't know why anyone would accept the compromises inherent in passive crossovers.

 

 

+10! 

 

17 hours ago, almikel said:

Some people wouldn't like that active speakers also contain the amplifier...I accept that there are audible differences between amplifiers

 

 

It's possible to have an 'active' system where all the amps are external to the speakers, Mike.    (As in my 3-way active Maggies.)

 

Best implemented with a DEQX or miniDSP - rather than analogue active XOs, IMO.

 

Andy

 

[almikel]

On 10/02/2020 at 8:21 AM, gwurb said:

I am curious about this comment:

 

• the impedance of the driver doesn't muck with the crossover response - good passive crossovers cater for the impedance changes in the driver - most passive crossovers don't, so the crossover frequency wanders as the driver impedance changes

Mike, can you write more?

the response of passive filters depends on the impedance of the driver.

Take a simple 1st order high pass/low pass filter

 

The cutoff frequency Fc = 1/(2 x pi x R x C)

R could be the tweeter, or the tweeter could be connected in parallel with R

 

Similarly for a 1st low pass using an inductor

The cutoff frequency Fc = R/(2 x pi x L)

Similarly R could be the woofer, or the woofer could be connected in parallel with R

 

From inspection of the formulas it's clear that the cutoff frequency of the filter depends on the impedance of the driver connected.

Well designed passive crossovers will include an impedance compensation network to "smooth" the impedance of the driver as seen by the crossover network, so that the crossover frequency doesn't change.

Some good info is available in one of Rod Elliot's articles here:

https://sound-au.com/lr-passive.htm

 

On 10/02/2020 at 8:21 AM, gwurb said:

Mike, what makes you say the following?

• 3 way passive is virtually impossible to implement well - the filter stages (HP for tweeter, BP for mid and LP for woofer) will inevitably interact with passive crossovers, as they're not steep enough to avoid interaction

 

Let's say the noise floor in your room is around 30dB and you listen around 80dB, so for convenience we'll say by the time the crossover is 48dB down out of it's pass band, you'll not hear it - ie no interaction between filter stages from a volume perspective.

Let's say you picked 375Hz and 3kHz as your crossover frequencies (to make the maths easy - 300Hz and 3kHz is more typical) in a passive setup with 2nd order (12dB per octave) filters.

When you calculate the rolloffs for 2nd order passive, the mid highpass (@375Hz) is not far enough down not to interfere with the tweeter high pass (3kHz) to produce a smooth result, and the mid low pass is not far enough down not interact with the woofer low pass - so from this perspective the filter stages interact/interfere with each other.

 

The other aspect of interference that I didn't mention above is where the inductors of passive crossovers couple to interfere which their individual responses unless physically separated enough, or mounted 90 degrees opposed.

With 2nd order/3 way passive, including coils for driver impedance matching, this gets complicated.

 

Going 3rd order passive (18dB/octave) reduces the interaction between crossover stages, but increases the inductor count, making physical layout harder again.

 

24dB passive just gets ridiculous - but is the usual starting point for active crossovers...

...an LR4 (Linkwitz Riley 4th order) crossover has a flat frequency response and the drivers are in phase (electronically), and has a minimally compromised transient response.

Of course achieving an acoustic LR4 crossover is a bigger challenge! - an electronic LR4 usually doesn't equate to an acoustic LR4 unless the drivers in their enclosures are flat way beyond the crossover frequencies (ie >1.5 octaves away)

 

On 10/02/2020 at 8:21 AM, gwurb said:

The converse part of the problem on DSP/active side is that one still needs to have overlaps not to cut off frequency components in the output.

of course - all crossovers have overlaps - and it's a given that gaps are unacceptable.

And crossovers shouldn't be so steep to compromise the transient response too much - always compromises.

On 10/02/2020 at 8:21 AM, gwurb said:

Smaller DSP bins help but that rises processing requirements

do you mean more DSP filter taps? I accept that with DSP, the processing power (and taps) required increases as you go lower and steeper - and the processing/taps required for linear phase (FIR) are higher than with IIR (eg Linkwitz Riley).

But with my DEQX setup I've never run out of processing power for crossover frequencies >300Hz as steep as I want, say 96dB/octave, but I choose to use lower slopes.

 

It's the crossover to the sub below 100Hz where my DEQX forces me to use IIR filters rather than linear phase, as the delay gets too large...and I'd prefer to use IIR LR4 24dB/octave filters in this region anyway.

 

On 10/02/2020 at 8:21 AM, gwurb said:

The only thing that stops better built analogue circuits being put in lower end speakers is desire for profit.

Be careful with terminology - I ran analog active for a long time before going DSP active - don't confuse the term "analog" with passive crossovers.

On 10/02/2020 at 8:21 AM, gwurb said:

The challenges are different, and are dealt with differently but they exist in both and I wouldn't be confident that one sounds better than other in a well built system.

I would disagree - IMHO the compromises in passive crossover systems are too great to bother attempting to build a "well built" passive crossover setup.

Sure active setups have their issues, but IMHO a well setup active system will always exceed the performance of a passive setup.

 

Another Rod Elliot article that's worth a read:

https://sound-au.com/bi-amp.htm

 

cheers

Mike

[Brett 10]

If you think about it active speakers are the ideal solution, driver and amp match, shout signal path, compact form. However I believe that most audiophiles are collectors at heart, and the thrill of the chase (new components, fine tuning, tweaking) is a huge part of the game.

[Brett 10]

That’s short signal paths

[JohnL]

26 minutes ago, Brett 10 said:

If you think about it active speakers are the ideal solution, driver and amp match, shout signal path, compact form. However I believe that most audiophiles are collectors at heart, and the thrill of the chase (new components, fine tuning, tweaking) is a huge part of the game.

 

Well they can have quality "end game" actives and still chase after better sources, pre's, cabling, room treatment.....etc.

 

Just like me......and (maybe) gat474..........and a few others!!!

 

Great article here..........

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/manufacture/0403/

Edited February 15, 2020 by JohnL

[almikel]

On 10/02/2020 at 2:49 PM, andyr said:

It's possible to have an 'active' system where all the amps are external to the speakers, Mike. 

I understand that - I've run an active setup since the mid 90s and a DEQX setup since 2010 - all with external amps.

 

Mike

[almikel]

On 15/02/2020 at 12:26 PM, JohnL said:

 

Well they can have quality "end game" actives and still chase after better sources, pre's, cabling, room treatment.....etc.

 

Just like me......and (maybe) gat474..........and a few others!!!

 

Great article here..........

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/manufacture/0403/

I agree, except for a better pre-amp...as most active speakers will take a digital input, removing the need for a pre-amp entirely unless running analog inputs (eg vinyl), and even then add a decent Phono and just plug it into the analog input on the active speaker - no pre required.

 

If I was starting from scratch I'd definitely look at active speakers - these days they have all the features that 10 years ago only high end setups like DEQX had, and MiniDSP was in its infancy.

 

The JBL series (eg https://jblpro.com/en-US/products/708p ) includes the ability to delay the mains more than the sub if the sub has a digital input - this has been a challenge that only active preamp setups  (eg DEQX, MiniDSP and others) have been able to meet before now.

 

On 15/02/2020 at 12:26 PM, JohnL said:

room treatment.....

Completely agree - if you can get away with it, room treatment makes a massive difference to the "in room" sound - especially in the bass end - but unfortunately treatment gets too big when managing lower frequencies - and EQ becomes a better option below 150Hz or so.

 

 

IMHO get the "in room" bass under control and you're 80% done in achieving great "in room" sound.

 

Great "in room" bass is a combination of best positioning of speaker/subs/listening position, treatment, and EQ.

 

Modern active speakers provide the ability of EQ, but still require careful positioning of speakers/subs, the addition of treatment, and the judicious/careful application of EQ to make the "in room" bass truly great.

 

EQ has a deservedly poor reputation - poorly applied it can yield dreadful results.

Well applied in combination with positioning and treatment, EQ is essential IMHO.

 

A modern set of active speakers, with a sub or subs - setup well, with room treatment, would be hard to beat IMHO.

 

cheers,

Mike

Edited February 16, 2020 by almikel

[Bell Ringer]

On 05/02/2020 at 2:50 PM, brumby said:

Throw in DSP for room correction and other things and what's not to like?  In fact, I am seriously considering a TWO piece stereo/AV system consisting of:

 

My recently acquired Sony 65"X9500G

A pair of Buchardt A500 active speakers - with hub and remote control.  These really interest me.  They can be pre-ordered now for a June delivery.

@brumby I’m looking at those A500 or 700 as well, bit of a gamble not being able to hear them, but they do have a 30 day return option. The DSP room correction is a very attractive option.

For me I can plug in the phono stage and Pi streamer and that’s it all done, and Mrs Bellringer can stream from her phone or PC/tablet.

 

Having said that, I’ll probably still keep a passive tube/single driver set up for my mono records. One needs one’s toys and a touch of variety.

 

[brumby]

1 hour ago, Bell Ringer said:

@brumby I’m looking at those A500 or 700 as well, bit of a gamble not being able to hear them, but they do have a 30 day return option. The DSP room correction is a very attractive option.

For me I can plug in the phono stage and Pi streamer and that’s it all done, and Mrs Bellringer can stream from her phone or PC/tablet.

 

Having said that, I’ll probably still keep a passive tube/single driver set up for my mono records. One needs one’s toys and a touch of variety.

 

I agree.  I reckon that the Buchardt A500 (or floorstanding A700) is a very attractive option.  My situation is that we moved to Australia from Canada in 1983, just at the time that CDs were starting to take over from vinyl.  After a fair amount of agonizing, we decided not to bring along our vinyl collection but to replace the ones we couldn't live without once we arrived down under.  That being the case, I haven't had any vinyl for nearly four decades and have no plans to start again.  Of course, all my CDs have now been ripped to FLAC and stored on hard drives and USB keys.

 

If you do decide to try out the Buchardt actives (either standmount or floorstanding), please waste no time in posting your impressions here.

 

[almikel]

2 hours ago, Bell Ringer said:

I’m looking at those A500 or 700 as well

they look great!...a big waveguide on the the tweeter, 3 way active sealed...

...I can't see any details of integrating a sub or subs, or a digital through - I may have missed it.

 

Assuming you add a sub or subs, depending on mains vs sub positioning, and the crossover network between, for best mains/sub integration you may need to delay your mains more than your sub/s, even if your subs are cosited with your mains.

 

Ideally you want a setup that allows delay individually across the active speakers and sub/s.

"Digital through" will provide zero delay (well almost) to the subs, and the subs should be able to manage any further delay required.

The DSP within the speakers need the capability to provide delay so they can be "behind" the digital through to achieve maximum flexibility.

 

Ultimately it will depend on the speaker/sub/listening position/crossovers and the room to determine delays to achieve time alignment across speakers, but it's not necessarily intuitive - my sub is physically closer to the listening position, than my mains,  but my main speakers require more delay to achieve time alignment with the sub.

 

You can't do this alignment by ear - but once done your ears agree it sounds better.

 

Mike