Why do passive speakers still exist?

[LTig]

Umm, bet it has ... #Science

As far as I know CAD designed passive networks and active solutions don't have and audible differences.

Why would they ?

Does CAD design software know about the real world behaviour of real world passive components?

• Big caps either are bipolar electrolytic (which distort at high levels) or a massive parallel bundle of non electrolytic caps (very expensive).
• Big inductivities which use a core (iron, ferrit, ...) suffer from distortion at high levels due to saturation of the core.
• Big air coils suffer from high loss (deviation from ideal behaviour) due to the resistance of the long wire.
• High power resistors usually are wire wound and may carry a significant inductance.

These problems may not be audible in a small 2-way speaker with relatively high crossover frequency (small caps, coils, resistors). In a big and powerful 3-way or 4-way speaker with e.g. 250 Hz crossover frequency things are different.

 

[LTig]

I'm surprised that more companies don't use aluminum for their speakers.

Piega does, since man years.

 

[Thomas savage]

Does CAD design software know about the real world behaviour of real world passive components?

• Big caps either are bipolar electrolytic (which distort at high levels) or a massive parallel bundle of non electrolytic caps (very expensive).
• Big inductivities which use a core (iron, ferrit, ...) suffer from distortion at high levels due to saturation of the core.
• Big air coils suffer from high loss (deviation from ideal behaviour) due to the resistance of the long wire.
• High power resistors usually are wire wound and may carry a significant inductance.

These problems may not be audible in a small 2-way speaker with relatively high crossover frequency (small caps, coils, resistors). In a big and powerful 3-way or 4-way speaker with e.g. 250 Hz crossover frequency things are different.

Evidence please , rigorous listening tests that produce real data not what you reckon on a back of a fag packet.

 

[Pearljam5000]

What's a real issue is keeping things going, things fail if it's in one box that means trouble.

And yes you can make a better sounding speaker or music solution than the 90 and for less money.

Have you heard them ?

So again, anyone have data , real data thats valid to humans not paper worshipers that suggests passive networks are inferior.

Let's for now forget we want to not put everything in one box that can't be easily repaired, fancy taking a 90 back in 10 years ? Lol

This is just not true
It's a fact that good studio monitors(Genelec for example ) can work for 20-30 years
In difficult conditions in a studio with no problems .
The myth that "everything in the same box must fail" is incorrect.

 

[Ron Texas]

It looks like a die casting machine to me. First class work.

 

[Thomas savage]

This is just not true
It's a fact that good studio monitors(Genelec for example ) can work for 20-30 years
In difficult conditions in a studio with no problems .
The stigma that "everything in the same box must fail" is incorrect.

Its not a absolute, never suggested it was .

Things go wrong, its a matter of fact . A modular architecture can help mitigate the effect this has , if this build type is at the expense of performance one needs to know this as fact not assumption.

Of course if one wants to design a ' ideal ' solution one needs control of as many variables as possible.

There's advantages to a complete system in this regard, there's also disadvantages in the real world.

I dont have little near field speakers , I don't own a studio where I might just swap out a dud .

So as previously mentioned, wheres the evidence that says CAD designed passive networks are audibly inferior to active solutions ?

Audio religion review..

 

[Sancus]

So again, anyone have data , real data thats valid to humans not paper worshipers that suggests passive networks are inferior.

You don't appear to have presented even a tiny smidgen of data that passive networks are just as good as active ones, just a bunch of bad posts

 

[LTig]

Evidence please , rigorous listening tests that produce real data not what you reckon on a back of a fag packet.

I don't know any current speaker which is available in both passive and active version. Some 20+ years ago you could get the Linn Kaber in both versions (see page 7 of the manual). If someone comes up with both speakers we could do a level matched blind audition. Of course the crossover specs must be absolutely identical (xover frequency and filter steepness) to be able to base any differences in sound on type of xover. This however isn't the case here (active Kaber FR = 40 Hz - 20 kHz +/- 2 dB, passive FR = 60 Hz - 20 kHz +/- 3 dB), so we still compare apples with peaches.

What I had written on the back of a fag packet are the known deficiencies of electric components used in passive xovers. Its the difference between theoretical and real behaviour which every EE (hopefully) learns during his studies. These are facts. Active xovers don't need to use these components so they do not suffer from these deficiencies. I agree though that I have no scientific proof that the deficiencies of passive xcovers are audible.

 

[RayDunzl]

You don't appear to have presented even a tiny smidgen of data that passive networks are just as good as active ones, just a bunch of bad posts

I haven't seen evidence that passives should simply be abandoned.

 

[RayDunzl]

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

https://jblpro.com/en/products/4722-4722n

 

[Thomas savage]

You don't appear to have presented even a tiny smidgen of data that passive networks are just as good as active ones, just a bunch of bad posts

All hail the arbiter!

Any evidence that active networks are audibly superior?

No .. OK well that answers the OP.

 

[LTig]

https://jblpro.com/en/products/4722-4722n

This is compact???

EDIT: not suitable for a comparison, the xover frequency of the active version is lower (630 Hz) than the passive (800 Hz) so chances are high that the steepness is different as well. We wouldn't know whether any difference in sound stems from the filter characteristics or the components of the xover.

 

[RayDunzl]

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

LS50/LS50W

 

[LTig]

LS50/LS50W

How could I forget

Do we know whether the filter characteristics are identical?

 

[RayDunzl]

Do we know whether the filter characteristics are identical?

Why would they be, if passive is inferior and active is whatever you want if using capable DSP?

 

[thewas]

Do we know whether the filter characteristics are identical?

They aren't, same also for the new second LS50 meta generation which also exists in both versions.
https://assets.kef.com/pdf_doc/LS50Meta/KEF-LS50Meta-LS50WirelessII-WhitePaper.pdf

 

[maverickronin]

Why would they be, if passive is inferior and active is whatever you want if using capable DSP?

Because @Thomas savage seems to be insisting on a strict apples-to-apples comparison which ignores the other benefits of a DSP based design.

 

[Vini darko]

The elac navis and ub5 are roughly the same too.
Edit or it might be the unifi can't remember

 

[Sancus]

All hail the arbiter!

Any evidence that active networks are audibly superior?

No .. OK well that answers the OP.

The OP didn't say anything about superiority of active vs passive networks, it says speakers. You invented that question yourself.

I mean, I know you are deliberately trolling and I'm amused by it. But you know as well as I do that the audibility of these two things is a straw man.

Even if you can implement any active crossover in an active version and vice versa and have them be audibly indistinguishable, that doesn't tell you anything about which is better. The bottlenecks for speaker design are cost and design difficulty, not theoretical audible quality. All an active crossover has to do is be cheaper to implement and/or easier to design and it wins. From a manufacturer and consumer's perspective.

However there are plenty of other advantages and disadvantages to active/passive speakers that are explored in this thread which don't have anything to do with the crossover network.

I dont have little near field speakers

As an aside, what's up with certain audiophiles and speaker size and weight being associated with quality? Compensating for something?

 

[Sancus]

I haven't seen evidence that passives should simply be abandoned.

I don't think they should be abandoned either. They pretty obviously have some convenience advantages especially in terms of wiring, reliability, and sound quality can go either way depending on the specific model and price bracket.

However the OP was written from a perspective of passives dominating 90% of the market, and that seems to be mistaken. If anything, it's passives that are on the way out, because all the emerging audio markets(portables, sound bars, etc) are active, and it's only low volume, dying markets(hifi, high dollar home theatre) that are still dominated by passive speakers.