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What is even the point of passive crossovers in 2021?

Thomas_A

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You must admit, the folks at Linn realized many years (decades) ago passive sucked. Their method of adding the crossover in the amp may not have been the best solution but it worked.
In 1979 there was the Audio Pro A4-14 three-way active speaker with ACE-BASS. It was and still is a great speaker that people use and buy used today. I think the speaker and its constructor Karl Erik Stahl was way ahead of time.

 
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dfuller

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The way a speaker manufacturer 'voices' their speakers is a huge part of their identity. If the end user is easily able to mess with that voicing, the manufacturer looses some of its identity. Passive crossovers lock in the sound of the speaker to a greater degree.
Right, but so do active crossovers if the company just makes an "amp pack" with the amps and crossover in one box a la ATC. That seems the solution to me here...
 

JRS

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Given how many speakers Sonos sells, not to mention all the Bluetooth speakers out there, I would say active speakers by volume are doing amazing.
I suspect also that they are more technically adept at getting this type of thing sorted--not because they are mechanically or electrically adept per se--just that between cars and decent IEM's, that they may have a sizeable chunk who really do care about sound, and know the difference. These are good things as the price point for a seriously effing good system is what, 2k? I bought for my daughter who was London at the time a set highly rated active smallish bookshelf units, some nice stands, and blue toothed DAC for about 750 USD that was way, way beyond competent. You double or triple the expense--remember it's all going into the speakers, no TT, CD player to worry about, you have got some bad ass sound that was nearly unthinkable on the same budget 20 or more years ago.
 

DonH56

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When one part of the chain goes down the whole system is down till that integrated product is repaired.
If I lose a DAC or amp, I can plug a new one in immediately and be back up.
I lumped that in with "reliability" but expanded my answer so it is explicit.

Good catch, thanks. - Don
 

JRS

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Right, but so do active crossovers if the company just makes an "amp pack" with the amps and crossover in one box a la ATC. That seems the solution to me here...
And I see the potential of offering 4 or 5 flavors for the price of 1. West Coast, British, Scandi, Tubey, lumpy, squeaky....
And when I say lumpy--you know the car sound we are innundated with, Tubey will have the mushy bass ad=nd rolled off highs, add some second, squeaky will be that "fast" sound where transients jump out. In some ways isn't this what audiophiles have een doing for decades and spending a whole lot of time and money on. So what if the high end salons die--the marketing model is aging and going to be replaced.
 
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MakeMineVinyl

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Right, but so do active crossovers if the company just makes an "amp pack" with the amps and crossover in one box a la ATC. That seems the solution to me here...
In theory, yes. But at that point it makes more sense from a manufacturing perspective to build active speakers since that configuration is bound to be more popular than external boxes which the average Joe is not likely to want to deal with. Just getting people to buy something better than a soundbar is difficult enough. :(

I'm with you though, I've always had active crossovers and believe passive ones are at best kludges, and kludges which waste power at that.
 
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NiagaraPete

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Linn, made active an upgrade and built the crossover changes in their speakers. I started passive added an amp and crossover, then added a third amp a crossover so it was orderly.
 
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Tom Danley

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This. Not sure why it isn’t obvious.
Yes!
I design passive xo speakers, self powered speakers and speakers with one or more separate rack mount amplifiers.

If you were a speaker designer, one immediate question would be "is my aim for people that have existing power amplifiers?"
Does my audience care about latency or FIR or DSP in general and if so is that philosophical or based on an actual problem in use? Some are kinda phobic about data bit's and such.

An observation with efficient horns is that often the amount of correction to get to flat is less with a passive xo. A Voltage source loaded by a changing R produces a larger amplitude variation than the matched impedance source.

A misconception about passive crossovers is that they are inefficient / lossy.

They can be if there is a lot of current passing through resistors but the reactive parts normally have small losses.

The problem / reason it seems like it is lets say you had a 300W woofer, a 100W mid range and 25W tweeter with an all passive xover and wanted to reach that power with an imaginary signal peak.
To do this, you need an amplifier that can swing the full Voltage needed for the 300W woofer plus the full Voltage needed to reach 100W to the mid-range plus the Voltage needed to produce the 25W for the HF.

Since that's a tall order often when one changes to full active they hear a more dynamic sound, not having instantaneous amplifier Voltage clipping anymore (which a cycle or two at a time is normally inaudible as clipping) .

It has been said "what we need is a perfect 10W amplifier that can put out peaks of 1000W"
Best
Tom
 

Thomas_A

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I switched from an DIY three-way active system around 18 years ago with three amps, electronic x-overs and Behringer DSP for taming bass to passive DIY two-way monitors and active subs. I don't miss the old system.
 

JRS

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Yes!
I design passive xo speakers, self powered speakers and speakers with one or more separate rack mount amplifiers.

If you were a speaker designer, one immediate question would be "is my aim for people that have existing power amplifiers?"
Does my audience care about latency or FIR or DSP in general and if so is that philosophical or based on an actual problem in use? Some are kinda phobic about data bit's and such.

An observation with efficient horns is that often the amount of correction to get to flat is less with a passive xo. A Voltage source loaded by a changing R produces a larger amplitude variation than the matched impedance source.

A misconception about passive crossovers is that they are inefficient / lossy.

They can be if there is a lot of current passing through resistors but the reactive parts normally have small losses.

The problem / reason it seems like it is lets say you had a 300W woofer, a 100W mid range and 25W tweeter with an all passive xover and wanted to reach that power with an imaginary signal peak.
To do this, you need an amplifier that can swing the full Voltage needed for the 300W woofer plus the full Voltage needed to reach 100W to the mid-range plus the Voltage needed to produce the 25W for the HF.

Since that's a tall order often when one changes to full active they hear a more dynamic sound, not having instantaneous amplifier Voltage clipping anymore (which a cycle or two at a time is normally inaudible as clipping) .

It has been said "what we need is a perfect 10W amplifier that can put out peaks of 1000W"
Best
Tom
Reminds me for some reason of Bob Carver's ads that even a thousand watts wasn't enough to capture scissors snipping.
 

Sancus

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This feels like a retread of https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ds/why-do-passive-speakers-still-exist.17729/ :p

Others have already said the real reason, but it's because there's a market that keeps buying them. I say "a" market, because in fact most buyers have already moved on to actives. They buy smart/wireless speakers, sound bars, etc. And the whole pro audio market is active too, as I'm sure the OP is well aware of.

So it's really only the "old school hi-fi" and the "home theatre" markets that are still dedicated to passives. For the latter, cabling mess and the default design of AVRs are both significant issues. Manufacturers trying to get past that have been working on wireless solutions(eg WISA) because that's, again, what people really want. It would take a major cooperation to change cabling standards, and why bother when what buyers really want is to be able to plug in their surrounds to the nearby wall and not have to pull a 30ft cable around the room perimeter.

As far as the stereo hi-fi folks go, IMO the main reason is the fact that it's a gear hobby. People like buying boxes and connecting them together with all kinds of cables. It makes you feel like you're building something. That and market inertia, fact is that it's an aging conservative market. Many if not most younger people getting into audio honestly just go straight to studio monitors for stereo music listening. Or stick with headphones.
 

NiagaraPete

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JRS

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I switched from an DIY three-way active system around 18 years ago with three amps, electronic x-overs and Behringer DSP for taming bass to passive DIY two-way monitors and active subs. I don't miss the old system.
Interesting--at about the same time I got off a merry-go-round that every other year meant a new set of sneakers, usually in the 3500.+ range, more often in the 5k+ range until I got active and tri-amped. Another set of commercial speakers has never set foot in my house. Point being, yea it's fine to go digital 3 or more way active, but IMHO are only scratching the surface of the potential benefit. That happens when you buy the drivers you love, and have endless and instant XO tweaking...

And with 48 dB and more sloped filters you can often make ends meet or cross just before killing a metal resonance, with the ability to go +/- 15dB efficiency you can pair unlikely bedfellows, woofers can be custom eq'ed to milk every last bit for the music you want, different topologies like dipole bass can be explored, the list goes on. So for me that's been a huge part of the draw.
 

Jdunk54nl

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I have 3 way active speakers + sub in my vehicles (Aftermarket install). Definite benefits to active. However, that means every single driver needs the following:
DSP channel
Amp channel
Wiring ran to it

For most bookshelf speakers, that means you need to double your amp channels, dsp channels, and wire runs as they have 2 drivers in each speaker. That gets expensive real quick.
Go for towers with 4, 5, 6+ drivers in each speaker and increase that much more. Sure, you could run the signal to the speaker and have the amps built in, but then the whole power and connecting xlr/trs becomes an issue. You'd have to solder most the ends after you have ran the wire if you conceal it in the walls. Then add power outlets next to the speakers, and you probably do not want those power outlets on the same circuits as a bunch of other things in your house. If you are not a DIY electrician, this gets really expensive.

I was going to build the LX521.4 after hearing them at a friends house. Amazing sounding speakers. But the 4 to 5 channels of dsp, amp, wiring, etc for EACH side was just too much overall cost. You need 10 amp channels! That is how many I have total!
 

Thomas_A

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Interesting--at about the same time I got off a merry-go-round that every other year meant a new set of sneakers, usually in the 3500.+ range, more often in the 5k+ range until I got active and tri-amped. Another set of commercial speakers has never set foot in my house. Point being, yea it's fine to go digital 3 or more way active, but IMHO are only scratching the surface of the potential benefit. That happens when you buy the drivers you love, and have endless and instant XO tweaking...

And with 48 dB and more sloped filters you can often make ends meet or cross just before killing a metal resonance, with the ability to go +/- 15dB efficiency you can pair unlikely bedfellows, woofers can be custom eq'ed to milk every last bit for the music you want, different topologies like dipole bass can be explored, the list goes on. So for me that's been a huge part of the draw.
I guess I have just become satisfied with what I have now. Been listening to some Genelecs quite a lot; they are all over the place at work. But nothing have made me think to switch speakers.
 

Everett T

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I cannot for the life of me figure out an advantage here. Adequately performing amps are cheap, both analog and DSP based active crossovers are cheap, and the performance all other things being equal is far superior. Even if the amp and crossover aren't in the box with the speaker (e.g. with soffit mounted speakers where the crossover and amps are in a rack in another room), the advantages of actives still hold - steeper filter slopes, easier EQ correction of driver behavior, higher sensitivity because the crossovers don't dissipate amp power...

So what exactly do speaker level passive crossovers do that make them so popular other than "well they're how we've always done it"?
Cost is one of the biggest factors and even then it's not cheap. This has been discussed so many times by great speaker designers that you should have enough reading for a few months.
 

MattHooper

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So what exactly do speaker level passive crossovers do that make them so popular other than "well they're how we've always done it"?

Different people have different tastes and goals. Why are mechanical watches still produced?

I've heard active speakers (and used them), and I prefer the sound of my passive/tube-amp driven home system. (And I like to play with different tube amplification when the urge strikes).

And of course others have chimed in with a host of other reasons for passive speakers.
 

izeek

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I always wonder the same thing as a passive crossover designer (although I don't think steeper slopes is really much of an advantage for active designs--4th order is generally enough if you can trap out resonances). But the market rules, and people like to keep hookup simple and choose their own electronics. Fortunately, there are enough well-behaved drivers out there to keep passives competitive from an audibility standpoint.
so, does minidsp make a difference when the crossover is in the speaker?
 

Sal1950

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An observation with efficient horns is that often the amount of correction to get to flat is less with a passive xo.
Horns and efficient speakers RULE. LOL
 

Doodski

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The serviceability of active speakers is questionable. Lack of service literature, questionable parts availability, lack of ease of service, harsh working environment due to heat and mechanical stress/vibration and questionable capacitors sometimes makes for a sketchy outlook for some peeps. I've worked on active speakers and subwoofers and near every time it was a hassle compared to passive general purpose separates stuff. The active speakers often require being assembled to test and that means no laying it out on the workbench for probing, diagnosis, confirmation of fault and repair because the units are not constructed to be serviced that way. That is not to say all are like this but many are. I imagine the newer DSP and comprehensive protection circuitry goes a long way in the newer models of active speakers toward making them more reliable but the manufacturers have a challenge ahead if they want to become a major force in the marketplace for domestic consumer use.
 
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