In Reply to: RE: fool's bi-amp ? posted by b.l.zeebub on February 25, 2012 at 04:44:57:
I am well aware of the benefits of active crossovers (and typically use them exclusively). But this is not a "from scratch" DIY effort. This is an existing passive design with a specific sound, and specific voicing. Even the impedance related 'errors' are part of the final voice of the speaker. Since the final sound is not really 'erroneous', then these errors are actually part of the equation.
Let's say you have 4th order LR (electric) passive crossovers. You replace them with 4th order active. Guess what, the sonics just changed because the impedance of each driver in the passive network was not perfectly flat, which interacted with the crossover impedance, resulting in a very specific transfer function. So when people speak of "fools biamping", one could argue just as fast that an arbitrary acoustic response from an 'active replacement' is also foolish, if the intent was to preserve the original sonics of the speaker in question.
You can get the added benefits of active, but the "changeout" is far far more complex than saying "Okay - replace LR2 passive with LR2 active, there, I fixed it."
If I could offer a customer identical acoustic response with a given crossover, I would consider calling the effort a "passive to active conversion". But if the sonics change, it's really a new speaker at that point and not an improved version of the original.
Building from scratch is a whole other kettle of fish.
Cheers,
Presto
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Follow Ups
- RE: fool's bi-amp ? - Presto 16:10:17 02/27/12 (2)
- RE: fool's bi-amp ? - b.l.zeebub 02:26:12 02/28/12 (1)
- RE: fool's bi-amp ? - Presto 17:08:42 02/29/12 (0)