Simple brief description of Passive V/S Active Speakers

[Audioman]

Overall, my experience is listening to different active setups. I have not heard genelecs but some other equally regarded ones. If the definition of high end is the following; complete absence of electronic artifacts , the musicians in the room performing for you , absolute neutrality with correct tone and timbre --------- then these all one box speakers do not do it for me. I am not saying they are bad. They sound very good. And they will beat similarly priced passive setups in many parameters. But they fall apart when you compare to the really high end active setups and passive.

Now I am keeping this very open. If I hear an all in one box which I like and I am unable to hear a different variety which comes close to the all in one box, I will be a convert for sure. Only time can say

Some problems you listed are compromises found in mid & low quality systems to keep the price down. The top brands have figured out how to overcome all the problems you have described and have all stages perfecty designed in their premium active loudspeaker models. The so called all-in-one design thats done perfectly, keeps all the stages in the designers control and is designed to be immune to all matching, mating and synchronizing problems of the various separate stages leading to an extreme performance standard that is as good as it can get.

Pandamaudio recently organized some interesting Genelec DSP demos in Bombay & Madras which you can read about in AV Lounge. He plans to do a presentation in Bangalore & Delhi soon and will invite youll to listen. Hope you become a convert after you hear that dsp active loudspeaker system play

 

[binoymehra]

For me it has been a different story. I once sold genelec 8030a but soon started missing its sound , I must confess that it sounds like a foolish decision of buying again a product after selling it so soon(with in a month) , but believe me the sound from good active pair like genelec has many qualities like dead neutral sound , ease of use , very good transient response etc that you do not get normally these attributes in mid priced passive system . Plus the pleasure of attaching a balanced connection of ordinary mic cable as one sees in studio will further leave you wanting them to use. I also think that Genelec as a brand has lot of glamour quotient and so in their company one feels good . You just connect them and crank up for a very live room filling sound for enjoying music without bothering for audiophile qualities /attributes of listening music.
I am now again owning a pair of Genelec 8030.
The story tells that if one has acquired taste of actives he will start enjoying them and can be very happy with them.

 

[GeorgeO]

Binoy

Im just curious-what do the 8030s cost?

 

[binoymehra]

price of genelec 8030 is there on forum(hifi mart)

 

[square_wave]

Some problems you listed are compromises found in mid & low quality systems to keep the price down. The top brands have figured out how to overcome all the problems you have described and have all stages perfecty designed in their premium active loudspeaker models.

Can you suggest some of these examples and their prices ?

Thanks.

 

[Pandamaudio]

Pandamaudio recently organized some interesting Genelec DSP demos in Bombay & Madras which you can read about in AV Lounge. He plans to do a presentation in Bangalore & Delhi soon and will invite youll to listen. Hope you become a convert after you hear that dsp active loudspeaker system play

Yeah this is the configuration we plan to show

 

[issigonis]

>>>
Excuse me, but I don't see any single driver cross over less speakers included in this thread. I wonder why.
Regards

 

[kanwar]

A single driver X-over less speakers can't be termed as active speaker, because a single driver doesn't covers the whole audio spectrum.

 

[denom]

Hi Kanwar,

Thanks for bringing this thread alive

Any updates on your current speaker projects???? Pls enlighten

 

[Edward]

So does this therefore mean that bi amping a speaker that has bi wireable terminals wont have seperate amps driving seperate drivers? that due to the configuration of the crossover the amps mix there combined power? I thought that was the point of bi amping was to have drivers independently driven by different amps but would this mean that they aren't???!!

 

[kanwar]

So does this therefore mean that bi amping a speaker that has bi wireable terminals wont have seperate amps driving seperate drivers? that due to the configuration of the crossover the amps mix there combined power? I thought that was the point of bi amping was to have drivers independently driven by different amps but would this mean that they aren't???!!

BI-AMPING with speakers having an inbuilt 2-way passive XO is no more different then driving them with a single amp and having their XO inputs joined. Surely when BI-AMPING passive speakers the each driver gets a separate amp but also a separate passive XO between amp and driver. So there is not much to benefit.

A proper 2-Way active XO is a different thing which DOES improves the sonics by letting each driver has its own amp and no passive XO inbetween. Since in this case the XO is sitting at line level at amplifier's input .

 

[dillihifi]

Kanwar has put it very aptly, adding to his statements I would like to state that the signal is cleaner as the amp is only amplifying that much frequency ranges of the signal with other amps for different frequency ranges.

 

[raman.s]

Passive Loudspeaker Systems
Passive loudspeaker systems are the most common kind one finds in the home hi-fi market as they are economical to build. A single amplifier which amplifies the whole audio signal from 20Hz to 20kHz drives the loudspeaker system. Inside the loudspeaker system, a passive crossover network splits the amplified signal into three way - high, mid and low frequency to the separate tweeter, midrange and woofer speaker drivers. These speaker systems at most, have a tweeter & midrange passive level adjustment. Since the crossover is after the amplifier, it is difficult to design variable passive filters in the crossover for low frequency slope adjustment / calibration, to correct the low frequency response in various acoustical environments or spatial loads. The passive crossover also introduces power losses, signal & phase distortion, thus deteriorating the quality of the audio reproduced

Active Loudspeaker Systems
Active loudspeaker systems are not so common in the home hi-fi market as they are expensive to build. Although these days they are becoming more and more popular in home audio, they are usually built for professional applications as their performance can be far superior to passive loudspeaker systems. Inside the active loudspeaker system, an active crossover network splits the line level signal into three way - high, mid and low frequencies to the separate tweeter, midrange and woofer power amplifiers to their respective speaker drivers. Since the signal split is done at line level before power amplification, it is easy to design and provide advanced active filters for adjustment / calibration of the low frequency slopes for various acoustical environments and spatial loads. Also circuits for driver time alignment and phase alignment and various necessary compensations can be incorporated. The result of this is a flatter frequency response, maximum amplifier-driver efficiency and minimum distortion.

The information is quite helpful and I was on the lookout for one such information. Thanks for that.