Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

[microstrip]

View attachment 5063No crossover beats active . For more money though.

Greg,

All Soundlabs have a very elaborate crossover - my A1 PX have the same crossover as the Majestic, and I have carried several upgrades in them myself. They are single panel, and use a mixer to sum the bass, medium and treble. And they sound excellent, but have an horrible frequency response - something that will make some of our WBF friendly readers very unhappy.

 

[mep]

Where did you come up with 90%??

 

[cjfrbw]

Insertion loss for passive crossovers can be between 2 to 5 db, most commonly about 3db. Active crossovers have insertion loss, too, but it occurs at the signal level and is easily bumped by a preamp boost.

3db loss requires about twice the amplifier power for the same sound level output. However, there are also complex impedances and other things that passives impose on the amps.

Two 50 watt amplifiers with an active crossover on a two way speaker will generally give the same loudness as a passive crossover on the two way speaker and a 200 watt single amplifier of the same sensitivity.

 

[Robh3606]

Where did you come up with 90%??

It doesn't take that much attenuation to get there. Look at it this way 3dB you loose 50% 6db 75% and 10Db 90%

So 10 watts in 5 out 2.5 and 1 out.

Depends on the driver type and differences in sensitivity. The woofer will have very little actual attenuation. If you have 6 Db pad on the tweeter you have lost 25% of the available power to that driver. Worst case attenuation are passive boxes using compression drivers. It is not unheard off to have 13db of midband attenuation to compensate for the mass roll off of the driver. So at 1K your 10 watts turns into about 500mw the rest is just gone.

Here is the voltage drive of a JBL L250Ti Jubilee. It's a large 4 way cone system. The 0dB line is the woofers sensitivity. You can clealy see the attenution between the different drivers, there is about 10db loss in power between the woofer and the 8" lower midrange.


Rob

 

[Soundminded]

http://www.ultraaudio.com/index.php...st-give-me-a-break&catid=25:opinion&Itemid=27

Enjoy, hopefully . . .

All sound like all other stimuli is ultimately subjective. However, there was a promise made and a promise broken. Once upon a time this industry promised it would try to build machines that sound like real music, the kind people went to concerts and paid money to hear live. Not through speakers and amplifiers but by the sounds they made with their own bodies using their own voice and musical instruments. That promise has been broken. WhY? Because they couldn't solve it, it beat them to a pulp. It was simply beyond them. Why is that? Why can we go to Mars, decode DNA, split atoms but we can't reproduce the sound of a symphony orchestra from a recording? Because nobody with the brains to solve it cares, there are far more interesting things for them to think about like going to Mars, decoding DNA, and splitting atoms. Those left to do this job are frankly for the most part a technical underclass. So what have they done instead? They've redefined music to be what they can produce. This gives them a way to make a living, sell a product. Where do they find the suckers...ahmmm, I mean customers? From an increasingly dwindling market as interest in what they have continues to shrink and entirely different kinds of products compete for their attention and money.

I think the objectivist subjectivist argument reached its zenith with the cottage wire and cable trade. Electrical engineers have known for well over 100 years how to mathematically model and measure what wire does with great accuracy and precision. I think it's safe to say that electrical engineers know as much or more about the electrical properties of wire than they know about anything else. Over the decades they have created an industry that meets the requirements of every conceivable wire application reliably and cheaply. Wire was never intended to be a control element. In fact it was intended to be exactly the opposite, to have no influence at all on an electrical signal. The criteria for selecting wire is just to define the nature and limits of the signal, that defines what wire will be appropriate. Does that mean you can't design wires to be control elements or misapply them to do that? No, it can and is done. But as an engineering tool, using wire, a distributed parameter filter network stinks. It is usually unpredictable in a given situation, it can't be adjusted or controlled for different situations, and it is unnecessarily expensive for its purpose where far better, cheaper, more effective and predictable alternatives are available. So when "objectivits" say to "subjectivists" who claim to hear differences in wires say prove it, can they? Well maybe sometimes they can. That still doesn't mean it's not a stupid idea.

Where objectivits fail is in their science. It isn't adequate to explain the physics of sound or hearing ability. So their measurements are incomplete, not directed at where the differences lie. So we rely on our memories. And mine is particularly good for remembering what real music sounds like. And to this subjectivist, the best this industry can offer so far does not even begin to compare.

 

[mep]

A 3dB loss would be losing half the power. We haven't got to 90%

 

[Robh3606]

A 3dB loss would be losing half the power. We haven't got to 90%

Did you read my post?? 10db pad 1/10 the power or 90% lost to heat.

Rob

 

[mep]

You were talking about a 10dB pad on the tweeter. Who uses that?

 

[NorthStar]

Is that one of the reasons why we have Automatic Room EQ?

 

[Robh3606]

Hello Mep

Take a look at the voltage drive I posted for the L250Ti. There is an 11db pad on the midwoofer a 7dB on the midrange and about 3dB on the tweeter. Here is another one of the 1400 Array there is over 20dB of attenuation on the midrange compression driver between attenuation and frequency compensation.

Rob

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Do you have any real substance backed by your or others experience to support your views about active speakers?

Micro there is a ton of engineering substance to back up the obstacles to reproduction that passive crossovers put up like roadblocks into the signal chain. Google is your friend. Or you could simply consider the fact that active monitors went from a new idea to a technology that completely dominated pro audio in less than a decade, and ask yourself why. Then Google.

Tim

 

[cjfrbw]

Micro there is a ton of engineering substance to back up the obstacles to reproduction that passive crossovers put up like roadblocks into the signal chain. Google is your friend. Or you could simply consider the fact that active monitors went from a new idea to a technology that completely dominated pro audio in less than a decade, and ask yourself why. Then Google.

Tim

I am a believer, and regard this more or less as common sense. However, just like many aspects of psycho-acoustics, many audiophiles are impervious.

They just want to believe that the bigga badda boxes with passives are as good or better. While passives can sound good through work arounds, they do not live up to the potential of either the drivers or the amplifiers.

I had planars that I drove with passives, then bypassed the passive crossovers to use actives, and have never looked back, actives ever since. It is troublesome, but no more troublesome than a lot of audiophile stuff.

You hear about audiophiles going to enormous expense over cables, power conditioners, all kinds of bling, but if you suggest active crossovers, they put the sign of the cross on you and glaze over.

The speaker manufacturers also try to invest mythical magic in their passives as if their proprietary passive networks are the golden key to audiophilia. For the most part, passives are just the manufacturers best guess about what will make their speakers sound good in the widest variety of variable setups.

Actives can be tailored electronically to suit different drivers much more effectively than passives. Also, the volume levels of each driver can be adjusted for a particular environment, adding an extra dose of flexibility.

 

[Robh3606]

Or you could simply consider the fact that active monitors went from a new idea to a technology that completely dominated pro audio in less than a decade, and ask yourself why.

Hello Tim

The basic idea has been around for decades. JBL had a active crossover option called the Energizer back in 1966 that made a stock system a true active system as an option. Biamped/Active monitors go back to the 70's or earlier and were quite common. Small amps you could hang off the back of a console monitors go back to the 80's with amps Urie designed. It's the advent of digital and efficient power amps that lead the way now. Take a look at this catalog page:


http://www.lansingheritage.org/images/jbl/catalogs/1966/page06.jpg

Rob

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Hello Tim

The basic idea has been around for decades. JBL had a active crossover option called the Energizer back in 1966 that made a stock system a true active system as an option. Biamped/Active monitors go back to the 70's or earlier and were quite common. Small amps you could hang off the back of a console monitors go back to the 80's with amps Urie designed. It's the advent of digital and efficient power amps that lead the way now. Take a look at this catalog page:


http://www.lansingheritage.org/images/jbl/catalogs/1966/page06.jpg

Rob

Oh I know. Used to bi-amp PA in the 70s. In the statement above, the technology I had in mind was the integrated active monitor, and the decade I had inmindwas the 80s. I remember a studio I worked in almost weekly in the 80s getting a pair of small active monitors. They didn't go as deep, but otherwise sounded better than their big custom soffit mounted monitors. By the end of that decade, nearly every studio had a pair or three of small active monitors.

Tim

 

[Raffles]

Have you heard the same speaker run actively and passively or are you comparing two categories?

I have converted a pair of (budget but big) Mission passives to active, using digital crossovers and a couple of secondhand Japanese amps, and the difference really was 'night and day'. These speakers I had seen described as having an overly warm bass and muddled mid range, with which I concurred. After converting them to active, they sounded clean and clear. But a less obvious difference, I think, is to do with the way the speakers no longer 'pull their punches' or sound strained as the volume increases. This may not be something we can identify consciously, but I am sure that previously I 'winced' inwardly as big transients occuurred. I don't know whether this was because of shallow crossovers allowing cross-contamination of the woofer with treble content and vice versa for the tweeter, or whether it was inductor core saturation (not a problem with more expensive speakers which use air cored inductors in their passive crossovers), or lack of damping (and drive) from the amplifier because of the crossover's series impedance.

I don't find there's a lot of obvious difference between different crossover slopes and shapes, but my feeling is that steeper crossovers (e.g. 12th order) give a subtly cleaner sound than the more conventional 2nd or 4th order, despite the slightly increased ringing (the vast majority of which cancels acoustically between drivers). I am only using linear phase filters, and the high pass is the exact complement of the low pass, hence the acoustic cancellation of ringing.

 

[microstrip]

Micro there is a ton of engineering substance to back up the obstacles to reproduction that passive crossovers put up like roadblocks into the signal chain. Google is your friend. Or you could simply consider the fact that active monitors went from a new idea to a technology that completely dominated pro audio in less than a decade, and ask yourself why. Then Google.

Tim

Tim,

I was asking for substance and real data, not evasive claims or general feelings. Thanks for your advice about using Google, but I prefer to use it to find I never had the pleasure of listening to a fully active speaker that could outperform the best passives most of us are referring in another thread about the best systems we have listened to.

BTW, the best active (multi-amplifier) system I have heard about was a mix of passive and active crossover.

 

[microstrip]

(...) You hear about audiophiles going to enormous expense over cables, power conditioners, all kinds of bling, but if you suggest active crossovers, they put the sign of the cross on you and glaze over. (...)

cjrbw,

Can you nominate a few active speakers that you really believe outperform the best existing passives when used with SOTA components?
I only had experience in the late 70s and 80's with the Meridian M-2, M-1 and M3 that I owned, some digital modern Meridian active speakers and the Bang and Olufsen 5000. I enjoyed them but they did not perform as well as my passive references. I have however listened to a really good active system - the ultra-expensive B&W Nautilus with a custom Krell active crossover driving four big stereo Krell power amplifiers (eight channels ) in an old hotel ballroom. Really impressive, but not domestic high-end, specially the room!

 

[jkeny]

Forget about Passive Vs Active, you just need a good speaker http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIbzQ_8-aaM&feature=player_embedded

 

[Steve Williams]

neat speaker John

 

[mep]

I thought this one was better: