Why do passive speakers still exist?

[Pearljam5000]

Let's face it, active speakers use bottom of the barrel amplification because they know nobody is holding them to account in all the usual amplifier performance parameters. They can get away with distortion levels that would be laughed out of the room, because the speaker drivers themselves have more distortion. The power output claims are ludicrous and blatantly deceptive, knowing nobody will test the internal amplifiers. The noise levels are generally very poor, hence every man and his deaf dog are complaining about audible hiss. The only exceptions are, ironically, the hypex plate amplifiers, which perform pretty well.



Audible hiss from an active loudspeaker precludes it entirely from the HiFi playground. Hiss (noise) is an anathema to high fidelity. It's the N in THD+N and by far the most intrusive and bothersome component of the metric. There is no free pass for a hissing active speaker. Strike one and it's out. Kicked to the kerbside pickup where it belongs.

Lol
If that was the case, studios would have used only passive speakers with monster amps
Unless you want to tell me that all the professionals in the world that *create* the music you listen to are stupid and use screwed up inaccurate tools and your hi-fi home stereo speakers and amps are the benchmark.

 

[Pearljam5000]

I disagree with every statement here.

I've seen no evidence that active speaker manufacturers tend to lie about power output or that noise levels in active loudspeakers owe to poor amplification. The noise levels in active loudspeakers are attributable to their inherent gain structure, which tends to make noise from the tweeter more audible than it would be in a passive loudspeaker.

I have put my ear up to the tweeters on Kii Threes, Dutch & Dutch 8Cs, some wildly expensive model of Goldmund active loudspeakers, Genelecs, Focals, etc. With all of those active speakers, I could hear hiss by putting my ear within a foot of the tweeter. I see no evidence that that level of hiss is audible from a reasonable listening distance, and it certainly has not deterred professional users from adopting these models (with the exception of the Goldmunds).

I do not think the chip amps in certain JBL and Genelec models, or the maligned Pascal modules in the D&D 8Cs and GGNTKTs, represent the bottom of the barrel in amplification. To see the bottom of that barrel, one need not look further than the pages of Stereophile.


A small amount of tweeter hiss--even if audible from the listening position--is not more bothersome than distortion. Such hiss will be masked while the music plays. Distortion will not.

Nailed it

 

[richard12511]

I know levels of hiss vary among brands and models, and that for far-field listening a very low-level hiss might not be a major issue. But with that said, for me personally, if I shelled out $8k for a pair of 8351s and I could hear them hiss when I walked up to my equipment rack to change a disc, I'd want to throw them, and myself, off a bridge.

No disrespect to any happy owner of them - it's just a personal pet peeve of mine. I feel that the relative importance and attention paid to noise vs distortion among many audiophiles is out of whack, with the former being too often ignored.

The 8351s are pretty quiet, but they still hiss. You won’t hear them when changing a disk at your gear rack, but you will hear them if you turn off the AC, refrigerator, and go touch your earlobe to the tweeter. It doesn’t bother me one bit. I see this issue as more as just different people’s brains working differently. Hiss has never bothered me at all, even when it’s loud. What bothers me more are refrigerators and ac units. Those things are a hundred times louder than active speakers .

 

[pjug]

A small amount of tweeter hiss--even if audible from the listening position--is not more bothersome than distortion..

Really? I'm not saying it will be more or less bothersome. But that would be pretty effing bothersome and always there.

 

[Dialectic]

Really? I'm not saying it will be more or less bothersome. But that would be pretty effing bothersome and always there.

What gives tweeter hiss outsized importance in many minds is that it is obvious. If there is no music playing, one can readily hear tweeter hiss if one sticks one's ear up to the tweeter on am active speaker.

Distortion, by contrast, is alteration of the signal, so it can be heard only while something is playing. And even when it is heard, it may be nonobvious.

 

[richard12511]

A little more strongly worded than I would have put it, but you are of course right

Re: tweeter hiss on many active loudspeakers, I wonder whether some of these amps are so noisy that even an L-pad doesn't bring the noise down to acceptable levels, or whether manufacturers are not padding the tweeter for some other reason (and if so, what)?

I disagree. I'd say they use bad amplification because they know it's a way they can save money that has zero affect on the sound of the speaker. If amplification mattered as much as @restorer-john implies, then people would stop buying the studio monitors that used crappy amplification. In fact, we've seen evidence of that already. Plenty of people in the JBL 305/308 thread talk about avoiding the speaker, or buying it and returning, all based on the hiss(which is real, and I can hear it from a 2 meters away). It's the same reason passive speaker makers use cheap wire(different degrees, but same principle).

 

[richard12511]

Really? I'm not saying it will be more or less bothersome. But that would be pretty effing bothersome and always there.

I think it's just a matter of how our brains work differently. Frequency response errors and distortion errors(which are much more common in passives) bother me far more than hiss.

 

[richard12511]

Really? I'm not saying it will be more or less bothersome. But that would be pretty effing bothersome and always there.

Does the air conditioner bother you? It's also always there, and it's 100 times louder than the levels of hiss we're talking about.

 

[restorer-john]

A small amount of tweeter hiss--even if audible from the listening position--is not more bothersome than distortion. Such hiss will be masked while the music plays. Distortion will not.

This claim is ridiculous and you know it. Dolby A/B/C/S and DBX were completely unnecessary in the analogue years weren't they? Tell me what happens as the music fades out? What takes over? Noise. Actually digital recording was pointless too, as the entire premise was to get S/N above 90dB. Why? So noise, residual noise, was not an issue.

Hiss (residual noise) is there all the time in amplification, whether music is playing or not. The only time it goes away, is when you mute or turn the amplifier off.

So, all the guys chasing ultimate SINAD figures and then strapping an active speaker on the end that has audible hiss are fooling themselves.

 

[restorer-john]

Does the air conditioner bother you? It's also always there, and it's 100 times louder than the levels of hiss we're talking about.

When active speaker manufacturers start to put AHB-2 performance amplification into their TOTL models, then we'll know things are improving.

 

[pjug]

Does the air conditioner bother you? It's also always there, and it's 100 times louder than the levels of hiss we're talking about.

Yes AC bothers me. Luckily I only need it in the summer and then usually not at night. I would never put together a system where I can hear hiss at LP. Otherwise I may as well try to dig out my 80s cassettes.

 

[restorer-john]

I've seen no evidence that active speaker manufacturers tend to lie about power output or that noise levels in active loudspeakers owe to poor amplification.

Have you looked inside typical active speakers? Bottom of the barrel chip amp or class D low cost "solutions".

 

[restorer-john]

Otherwise I may as well try to dig out my 80s cassettes.

Or apparently, just turn it up enough to mask the hiss and pretend it's HiFi.

 

[richard12511]

Yes AC bothers me. Luckily I only need it in the summer and then usually not at night. I would never put together a system where I can hear hiss at LP. Otherwise I may as well try to dig out my 80s cassettes.

We're not talking about hiss at the listening position, though. We're talking about hiss that you can only hear with your ear inches away from the tweeter in a silent room.

 

[A Surfer]

There are so many wonderful passives speakers that it is unfathomable. I can't for the life of me imagine that if all else is equal and the speakers are identical, one passive with good electronics, one active with good electronics, you're not going to hear the difference. I also very much agree that having the electronics embedded in the speakers has risks as well. I will guarantee you that nobody is getting 15 years problem free operation with their actives. One of them is going down. We still have passives and vintage electronics running for decades.

Does anybody really think modest class D amps are going to have a long service life, over a decade? What will you do with an active that in six years breaks down and the company no longer can source things in the form factor to replace the internals problem free? You might be faced with a scenario where you have to jury rig a solution.

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 think actives are wonderful, I have owned some, but over all, they solve a problem that really doesn't exist in some ways. Sure if you hate the space allocation or complexity of separates, fine, that is a problem, but a pretty darn first world problem. You can easily use DSP correction to great effect even with passives so that in itself is also not that compelling to me. Good quality power is inexpensive now and I would rather have the class D side of things in the ever shrinking external boxes they come in. When that goes bad, better chance of being able to find something to fit in the chassis and likely a darn bit easier than with a speaker. That is just me, who knows, three years from now I may be singing a different tune.

 

[richard12511]

When active speaker manufacturers start to put AHB-2 performance amplification into their TOTL models, then we'll know things are improving.

I hope they never waste money by putting in amplification of that quality that has literally zero sonic benefits and only serves to jack up the price. I'd rather not pay more for a product that performs exactly the same.

 

[Doodski]

We're talking about hiss that you can only hear with your ear inches away from the tweeter in a silent room.

I've heard plenty of amps, integrated amps and receivers that have hiss at that distance too. That I can handle but if it's like a snake in the room that's annoying.

 

[pjug]

We're not talking about hiss at the listening position, though. We're talking about hiss that you can only hear with your ear inches away from the tweeter in a silent room.

I'm with you there. My repl;y was to a post saying hiss at LP is OK.

Also this is not a slam on active -- no reason that hiss has to be a problem with active

 

[richard12511]

I've heard plenty of amps, integrated amps and receivers that have hiss at that distance too. That I can handle but if it's like a snake in the room that's annoying.

I was gonna mention that too. I can hear hiss in most electronics. The worst are TVs(imo), though they still don't really bother me.

 

[andreasmaaan]

I disagree. I'd say they use bad amplification because they know it's a way they can save money that has zero affect on the sound of the speaker. If amplification mattered as much as @restorer-john implies, then people would stop buying the studio monitors that used crappy amplification. In fact, we've seen evidence of that already. Plenty of people in the JBL 305/308 thread talk about avoiding the speaker, or buying it and returning, all based on the hiss(which is real, and I can hear it from a 2 meters away). It's the same reason passive speaker makers use cheap wire(different degrees, but same principle).

Ok, I'm not suggesting the amps cause audible distortion (although if you look at the spec sheets for some of these amps, you'd have to imagine the levels of distortion are at least sailing pretty close to the wind).

It's the noise that I was talking about. I haven't experienced it myself (have never used any of the allegedly offending speakers), but so many people on with these speakers complain of it on ASR that I'd assumed it was bad enough to be obvious and disturbing.

Perhaps this is not the case?