Why do passive speakers still exist?

[krabapple]

Nearly all active plateamps are junk and will fail a lot sooner than a standalone power amplifier. DSP and other trickery is an excuse for lazy manufacturers to implement poor drivers. I'd rather have great drivers than "correcting" them thru artificial means. I also don't like that my analog signal has to go through another AD conversion inside an active speaker. Active crossovers might be theoretically better but passive crossovers can be just as good.

Genelecs have 'poor drivers'?

I'd like to see some correlation of subjective impressions and claims like this, with the objective data Amir reports. (he also reports subjective impressions)

 

[RobS]

Genelecs have 'poor drivers'?

I'd like to see some correlation of subjective impressions and claims like this, with the objective data Amir reports. (he also reports subjective impressions)

(1) Genelec 8351B Teardown (2nd Disassembled) | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum

They are just ****** Chinese drivers with big magnets dude.

 

[krabapple]

ooh China, therefore cheap/bad.
Ohmygarsh

But hey what:

Those who are disappointed at first sight, shouldn't be—this very clever and top-notch engineering with a no-nonsense holistic approach.

Working in the ODM industry myself, I can assure you the choice of components is well-considered, and those days, not many manufactures will choose this route. On average BOM, WIMA, and Rubyocon, Wurth, etc., is very expensive.

The drivers must be costly to make, with all die-cast tailored chassis. The coaxial is a masterpiece by the looks of it. Beautiful (die-cast) basket, massive neodymium magnet, and voice coil. That might explain the excellence and clarity of the mid/high range. I remember KEF only utilize neodymium magnets in the uni-q drivers for the Blades but not for the reference-line.

The Infineon gate drivers are decent for solid and robust Class-D amplifier design. I would wish/hope Genelec applied some post-filter feedback (PFFB) scheme, which is possible with some work-around. But perhaps this is my wishful thinking on my part, but who knows..

Last interesting part, those "ribs" in the woofer surrounds on the sides. I guess similar in philosophy to the Purifi PTT6.5W04 woofers to battle cone-surround distortion.

Well, that's neat too.

How does it measure?

 

[dfuller]

(1) Genelec 8351B Teardown (2nd Disassembled) | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum

They are just ****** Chinese drivers with big magnets dude.

Spoiler for you, Peerless is all Chinese production at this point and those are very solid drivers. Besides that, they're doing the Neumann thing and having someone else build their own designs. These aren't off-the-shelf drivers by any stretch.

 

[RobS]

Yes and charge $8000 a pair LOL. Embarrasing. I could literally pull a similar speaker from my local dump. That woofer looks like it comes from an old TV. You won't fool me into spending that kind of money on that junk.

 

[RobS]

$8000 quality at its finest:

 

[EJ3]

Nearly all active plateamps are junk and will fail a lot sooner than a standalone power amplifier. DSP and other trickery is an excuse for lazy manufacturers to implement poor drivers. I'd rather have great drivers than "correcting" them thru artificial means. I also don't like that my analog signal has to go through another AD conversion inside an active speaker. Active crossovers might be theoretically better but passive crossovers can be just as good.

My Dahlquist M 905's (bought new in 1990) are +-2 db from 26 Hz- 20 KHz: Proof that a passive crossover done right can be very, very good. Add a true sub-woofer, DSP & room correction to this and you will beat 99% of the active speakers in near field, medium field & large field listening.

 

[Blaspheme]

$8000 quality at its finest:

Maybe you are objecting to non-circular species on principle: there are a number of obvious visible differences between the Genelec driver pictured in the teardown and the drivers you've pictured here. I'm going to call this a casual verisimilitude fallacy.

 

[carewser]

My Dahlquist M 905's (bought new in 1990) are +-2 db from 26 Hz- 20 KHz: Proof that a passive crossover done right can be very, very good. Add a true sub-woofer, DSP & room correction to this and you will beat 99% of the active speakers in near field, medium field & large field listening.

If your speakers remain accurate down to 26hz who the hell needs a sub? Many subs don't even go that low

Nearly all active plate amps are junk and will fail a lot sooner than a standalone power amplifier

That hasn't been my experience and I own a number of speakers with cheap plate amps

 

[sigbergaudio]

The active speaker market is as diverse as any other, so there are good and bad products, there are cheap and expensive products, and there are products focused on cost, and there are products focused on sound quality. Seems like this discussion somehow bunches them all together. Doesn't seem fair (or accurate).

A well designed active speaker will have many advantages in both sound quality and ease of use, will not have excessive noise/hiss and will not prematurely fail.

With regards to failure we had the same discussion somewhere here on the forum around active subwoofers. After the introduction of high quality class D that generates far less heat than traditional AB amplifiers, the game has somewhat changed for plate amps with regards to failure rate. This has been the case for many years, but a bad reputation dies hard.

 

[q3cpma]

$8000 quality at its finest:

So it has the same shape. Now what?

 

[hege]

So it has the same shape. Now what?

Just ignore the obvious troll and don't respond, cause my ignore can't filter the replies too

 

[q3cpma]

Just ignore the obvious troll and don't respond, cause my ignore can't filter the replies too

Sorry, it's Saturday morning and I had too much time.

 

[Ultrasonic]

I'm not saying that is at all factual, just possible and until such time as class D have been proven to have an operating window of at least 15 years, sorry, not for me

I know I'm replying to an old post but for info. I have a Bel Canto eVo 4 Gen II power amp that is almost 20 years old and works just fine. Class D is not quite as new as it sometimes still gets presented as.

 

[Pearljam5000]

So it has the same shape. Now what?

I think I read somwhere that the drivers are made in house and not in China but I'm not sure.

 

[EJ3]

If your speakers remain accurate down to 26hz who the hell needs a sub? Many subs don't even go that low
Maybe I don't 'need' a sub. But I 'want' subs. Therefore I have 2 subs that I think can dig down to where I want (not yet tested but seems to. If not, I will change them or build something that will).
IMHO, subs that don't go down that low are not subs at all. 26 Hz seems to be around the low note on Jazz piano.
I myself like to have the ability to hear/feel music that goes to 15 or so Hz: Mormon Tabernacle Organ would be an example (and many others). I have a pair of subs that I bought for the cabs & modified, using dual 4 ohm voice coiled automotive Pioneer sub speakers (set up as 2 Ohm units) that only go up to 80 Hz. In my former 2 condos (small rooms, neighbors, HOA), I would never have used these subs (in their original configuration they supposedly went down to 29 Hz [but the output at that frequency was questionable].
Sacrificing to live small (and still driving my 2000 Nissan Frontier 4 cylinder truck) for many years, I now have (with my wife, son & mother) a two & 1/2 story split level home with no small rooms (except the sewing room & the boiler/laundry room) on 3/4 of an acre, which is on a deep water tidal creek.
With no neighbors close enough (and none behind me due to miles of tidal creeks and marshes) to hear my stereo unless they are on my property, I will listen to what I want to and at live levels if I want to. (I have 1 KW+ available at each stereo speaker in 4 ohms [running one bridged mono NAD 2200 per speaker] and around that available at each sub [running 1 NAD 2200 in 2 ohms stereo].
Please see Amirm's review of one of my NAD 2200's.

 

[EJ3]

Nearly all active plateamps are junk and will fail a lot sooner than a standalone power amplifier. DSP and other trickery is an excuse for lazy manufacturers to implement poor drivers. I'd rather have great drivers than "correcting" them thru artificial means. I also don't like that my analog signal has to go through another AD conversion inside an active speaker. Active crossovers might be theoretically better but passive crossovers can be just as good.

I wouldn't go as far as saying "nearly all" but in my mind the average long term reliability of ones that are capable of reasonably loud levels for long term listening has not yet been proven. I have concerns about the lack of cooling airflow. They should use the best drivers & then DSP, ETC. Double conversions, etc are BS. Perhaps they are not meant for us that have great analog (as well as digital). Maybe they want us to just spend money for the 'latest greatest stuff' and stop with the analog (Not going to happen until it's proven & even then, only if it can enhance what I have IF I deem it is something I want).

 

[Ultrasonic]

I've just read through this whole thread as it was resurrected...

I don't know any current speaker which is available in both passive and active version.

One company that sells several models in both active and passive versions in ATC. The model I've heard in both forms is their current generation SCM40 floorstanding model, which for context look like this:

I heard them at a hifi show so I can't comment on any blind comparison but in the morning I visited the room when the passive version was being run and they didn't stand out in performance terms to me at all. When I went back later in the day they were running the active variant and I was seriously impressed. On other forums I also know many others who have similar views of the active versions being a notable step-up in performance terms.

ATC are big advocates of active speakers, and summarise their reasons here:

http://atcloudspeakers.co.uk/active...nce of active ATC,of the low frequency tuning.

At the same show I also heard some much cheaper active floorstanding speakers from Canton that impressed me and the combined effect of hearing these and the ATCs was to make me start to take active speakers seriously as a domestic audio option, after ballpark 25 years as an 'old school' audiophile. Very recently I've pickup up a second hand pair of Edifier S3000Pro active speakers to experiment with, in combination with my active subwoofer. Time will tell but I suspect my long term audio future is likely to be active.

 

[Ultrasonic]

If you want a freestanding speaker, usually capable of better bass performance thanks to larger cabinets, you have very few options of active loudspeakers.
And also esthetics play a role, few/none active speakers are really beautiful.
The day when a good looking floorstanding active speaker comes out at a reasonable price, the whole hi-fi industry will be turned around

Partly this depends what constitutes 'capable' bass performance but there are floorstanding active speakers available, like the ATCs I wrote about above. The likes of the D&D 8C would probably fit the bill too I'd have thought?

However, my main thought is that once someone is going down the active path anyway, there is no need for a large main speaker and instead it is positively advantageous to make use of one or more active subwoofers instead.

 

[Pearljam5000]

Partly this depends what constitutes 'capable' bass performance but there are floorstanding active speakers available, like the ATCs I wrote about above. The likes of the D&D 8C would probably fit the bill too I'd have thought?

However, my main thought is that once someone is going down the active path anyway, there is no need for a large main speaker and instead it is positively advantageous to make use of one or more active subwoofers instead.

The actives sound much better to me, he said even says so