adamslim;140952 Wrote: > Is it reasonable for me to summarise your post to say that you think it > makes more difference by going from passive to active than by going > from active to digital active?
Yes. An active crossover solves the main issue of passive crossover networks (even the ones designed to be critically damped): they keep the drivers resonating long after the signal is gone. No matter how good your DAC, AMP or speaker cable is, a passive crossover will water down the damping quality of these components. On the other hand a driver connected directly to an amp will quickly dissipate its kinetic energy since absorbed by the amp (which looks like a short from the driver point of view). The human ear is very sensible to resonance and reverb (Which is why, among other things, I construct speakers with a minimal baffle around the drivers). The longer are these ringing tails/ reverb the more noticeable (easy to locate) will be the source of the sound (where the speaker is) which is the opposite effect of the sough after open soundstage (= cant tell where the sound comes from) that speaker manufacturer like to advertise (of course speaker positioning and room acoustic make a big impact too). To make the point more scientifically, you could perform this simple experiment: while talking, position the flat palm of your hands on both sides of your mouth (to create a reverb of your voice on your palms). Youll notice that the tone of your voice will be changed by the presence of your hands. In this case the delay of this reverb is less the 1 millisecond. My approximate calculation is: 0.1m(distance of hands from mouth) divided speed of sound 300m/sec = 0.3 millisecond. One millisecond more can actually double the typical decay time of a tweeter. Dont get me wrong; the rare well designed passive crossover speakers can sound pretty good. They can be well equalized (natural sounding), phase coherent, low reverb, dampened with mechanical tricks and dynamic. But to get that sense of effortless ease that you get from tri amping you do need a 400w Audio Research (or forget the dynamic). Digital active crossovers (speaker management system!) provide a refinement over the analog ones in their capacity to perform better equalization/gain control with lower S/N. But the low tech detail of volume control still remains elusive. -- arge ------------------------------------------------------------------------ arge's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=6155 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=27916 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
