Active Designs & Their Favorability

[stevenswall]

Curiosity has me. What did you end up with ?

A Genelec 8260 pair. Three way, 10" woofers, coincident/coaxial midrange+tweeter, +/-1dB in their operating range, minimal hiss, incredibly even, controlled dispersion from left to right and too to bottom.

Basically, their pinnacle of engineering and what led to The Ones.

If they had a version with regular inputs and no app or firmware update issues, I'd have kept a pair of Devialet Phantom Reactors and stopped there.

 

[aac]

I kid

Not far away from truth - large speakers are objectively better, lower distortion, better directivity control, etc

 

[Jukka]

Hiss and Noise

Hiss is the worst. I had to reduce the gain on my hypex nc400s to 13 dB to get rid of the hiss from the 110 dB/w sensitive JBL M2 tweeters. Also had to ditch Minidsp in favor of Hypex DLCP for the same reason.

If you don't hear any hiss it's because your deaf or have insensitive speakers.

While reading this thread I've been smirking to myself about hiss being the noise of system and what the noise floor of most equipment measured here is. But if NC400 hisses, be it in 110dB horn, then it is a real problem.

Amplifier amplifies hiss from preceding devices, did you experience hiss from 26 dB gain with DLCP or just with miniDSP?

Did you try to attenuate with resistors after amplifier? That's one method to reduce hiss.

Hypex electronics are world famous of failing, even the new FusionAmps (the amp modules themselves are fine, it's there accompanying other stuff). Have you had any reliability issues?

It would be greatly appreciated if users posted about this aspect of their products, good or bad. I own Hypex amps, but turned away from DLCP because fear or immature failing. My amps have been running great!

 

[aac]

It was not his amplifier, it was his DAC noise floor
I have a similar problem with my DAC, it has quite bad SNR of 104 dB and output is 12 volts (+24 dbu). So when you connect to amplifiers that are designed to be driven with +4 dbu for full power it hisses. Using 20 dB pad solves this

Resistors after amp are a terrible idea as they affect performance

 

[Absolute]

Hiss and Noise
While reading this thread I've been smirking to myself about hiss being the noise of system and what the noise floor of most equipment measured here is. But if NC400 hisses, be it in 110dB horn, then it is a real problem.

Amplifier amplifies hiss from preceding devices, did you experience hiss from 26 dB gain with DLCP or just with miniDSP?

Did you try to attenuate with resistors after amplifier? That's one method to reduce hiss.

Hypex electronics are world famous of failing, even the new FusionAmps (the amp modules themselves are fine, it's there accompanying other stuff). Have you had any reliability issues?

It would be greatly appreciated if users posted about this aspect of their products, good or bad. I own Hypex amps, but turned away from DLCP because fear or immature failing. My amps have been running great!

Hypex DLCP has a signal/noise ratio of 113 dB and is specified to 7,4 uV noise on the outputs. I don't know what that is, but an online calculator says something like -129 dBu.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=...load/doc/dsp/dlcp/Documentation/DLCP_04xx.pdf

The hiss from either Minidsp was not tolerable, so changed to DLCP. That hiss was far less, but still enough for me to be annoyed by it with the standard 26 dB gain in the Nc400 while sitting around 3.5m/11 feet from the speakers.
Since I have Nc400 with both 26 dB gain and 13 dB gain laying around, it was easier for me to just switch them than to try different remedies. Now I can't hear any hiss unless I stick my ear next to the tweeter.

Doing it this way will cost you gain headroom, meaning you need to turn the pre-amp way up to reach the same spl level, but you gain signal/noise ratio out from the pre-amp and you amplify less of that pre-amp noise in the amplifier stage.
If you have enough gain to reach desired spl, it's a win-win.

Oh, and all electronics will hiss. Even if you turn off the pre-amp the amplifier will hiss. It's just a question of how much and how sensitive you are to it. I'm very sensitive, it seems. But I also usually listen to music at around 65-70 dB.

Hypex reliability;

I've had amplifiers from Hypex fail in both of the Kii Three speakers I had. The software in Hypex DLCP has gone AWOL on me on two occasions, both happening while I'm adjusting dsp settings and uploading it to the DLCP. Bloody infuriating because you need a total reboot of the whole shitbox with fresh installment of the operating system.

The Hypex Nc400 monoblocks I have (I use 4) have so far been reliable. I never turn them off and they are placed inside a small space with limited ventilation. They have been at work like this for around 10 months, but I expect them to fail eventually. They don't really get very warm, at least not compared to those inside the Kii Three's that share the space with 6 modules without ventilation.

I would not expect any Hypex to survive for 20 years, but let's see.

 

[hege]

Hypex reliability;

Agreed, I've had 2 x PSC2.400 which both crapped out (I bought them used, and the first owner even had warranty replacement before me). I've read too many similar stories on many forums to ever consider atleast the <=UcD models or 400-smps..

 

[Tim Link]

I've recently compromised my pure active digital system by incorporating 1uF caps on each tweeter. There was an amplifier hiss problem with the JBL 2426H combined with the big constant directivity horns I'm using. It wasn't the dacs because turning the volume up and down or turning the dacs off made no difference. Also the horns have the typical rising response all the way down to 1 kHz, where I cross them over. The cap solves the rising response (some digital EQ still needed) and drastically reduces the amplifier hiss to inaudible unless I put my ear up in the horn and listen intently. Without the cap I ended up with over 15db of digital attenuation at 1 kHz, and a lot of digital EQ power used up, and still couldn't get it to not start rolling off early. Now it's flat to around 16 kHz and only 5db down at 20kHz. ( I can't hear that high but I like the fact. ) I don't notice any other loss of audio quality in the highs so I think this is a good compromise.

 

[lc155]

I see the reliability question in this thread and people using longevity as a point to passives, but ask yourselves the honest question: how many of you have actually kept a pair of speakers for 10 years? If you're on this forum as an active participant, very likely that you're going to get the upgrade bug or just fancy a change of sound at some point.

IME, those who keep speakers forever tend to just buy what they like the first time then stop there, and go focus on other things.

 

[stevenswall]

I see the reliability question in this thread and people using longevity as a point to passives, but ask yourselves the honest question: how many of you have actually kept a pair of speakers for 10 years? If you're on this forum as an active participant, very likely that you're going to get the upgrade bug or just fancy a change of sound at some point.

IME, those who keep speakers forever tend to just buy what they like the first time then stop there, and go focus on other things.

I own ten year old speakers, active, purchased used.

 

[lc155]

I own ten year old speakers, active, purchased used.

Genelec? Not surprised then, the Finnish are known for making unbreakable stuff.

 

[LTig]

I own ten year old speakers, active, purchased used.

My current active ones are 14 years old (K&H) and 12 years old (Genelec). The passive ones (Magnepan) before the K&H I owned for 13 years.

 

[lc155]

My current active ones are 14 years old (K&H) and 12 years old (Genelec). The passive ones (Magnepan) before the K&H I owned for 13 years.

I really wish the Genelec cast aluminium designs didn't just remind me of crappy PC speakers from the 90s. Aesthetically, they're so off-putting to me compared to traditional Hi-Fi designs.

If it wasn't for that I'd have just bought Genelecs forever ago and been done with it!

 

[richard12511]

Honestly never heard any Axiom Audio speakers, but the designer had some refreshing comments on the active vs passive debate. And by refreshing, I mean his comments agree with my own personal beliefs

OTOH, I have heard several very accomplished and respected engineers, like Andrew Jones, Laurence Dickie, and @Joachim Gerhard argue in favor of passive designs. Don't remember who it was of those three, but one of them said something like ~"There's a reason all the best speakers in the world are passive. If active were better, that wouldn't be the case". This does go against my personal beliefs, but I do think it's important to challenge my own beliefs, especially when those beliefs are at odds with engineers like that who know far more about the subject than I ever will.

 

[lc155]

I'm pretty sure Jones actually argued there are things you can do with actives that are simply impossible with passives. He seemed in favour of them. His argument for passives IIRC boiled down to customers like to upgrade and tinker, not that it was in any technical way superior.

 

[sergeauckland]

I see the reliability question in this thread and people using longevity as a point to passives, but ask yourselves the honest question: how many of you have actually kept a pair of speakers for 10 years? If you're on this forum as an active participant, very likely that you're going to get the upgrade bug or just fancy a change of sound at some point.

IME, those who keep speakers forever tend to just buy what they like the first time then stop there, and go focus on other things.

10 year old 'speakers are barely run in! Mine are currently 37 years old, although I've only had them for 10, my previous 'speakers were bought new and I kept them for 20 years when I gave them to my brother 5 years ago.
Buying new 'speakers more often than 10-20 years just says to me that they were the wrong ones.

As an aside, my CD player was bought new in around 1990, my preamp used in around 2000. Get it right first time and one doesn't have to keep swapping equipment every 10 years or less.

S

 

[richard12511]

I'm pretty sure Jones actually argued there are things you can do with actives that are simply impossible with passives. He seemed in favour of them. His argument for passives IIRC boiled down to customers like to upgrade and tinker, not that it was in any technical way superior.

Hmmm, maybe he's said both then? There's definitely a video on youtube where he talks about favoring passives. I also remember a specific video where he describes why the decided to not go fully digital with the Navis. His argument, iirc, was that with fully digital speakers, they're essentially as good as they're ever gonna get. More passive systems, by contrast can be upgraded in the future with better DACs, better amplification, etc.

*Edit: Here is the Navis video(timestamped).

 

[LTig]

10 year old 'speakers are barely run in! Mine are currently 37 years old, although I've only had them for 10, my previous 'speakers were bought new and I kept them for 20 years when I gave them to my brother 5 years ago.
Buying new 'speakers more often than 10-20 years just says to me that they were the wrong ones.

Yep. For me the K&H O300D are endgame, and when they finally break down beyond repair I shall replace them by their successor (currently the Neumann KH310).

 

[q3cpma]

I really wish the Genelec cast aluminium designs didn't just remind me of crappy PC speakers from the 90s. Aesthetically, they're so off-putting to me compared to traditional Hi-Fi designs.

If it wasn't for that I'd have just bought Genelecs forever ago and been done with it!

Ehh, even in white?

 

[q3cpma]

Buying new 'speakers more often than 10-20 years just says to me that they were the wrong ones.

Or maybe you weren't as rich 10 years ago =).

 

[lc155]

Ehh, even in white?

Yeah, I don't really like the white ones either.

Admittedly, the black ones do look a lot better and I could probably live with them, but I don't think I can really find them for sale in the UK?