In Reply to: Do you need the capacitor when you go active? *nt* posted by MaggiesAndCats on August 10, 2010 at 07:22:55:
After my lenghtly correspondance with Satie (on the 3.3R crossover thread below) and his kind patience in explaining it to me many times!, I have now understood the following about active biamping operation of a 3 series Maggie. There are two main options for me.1. Get a HIGH QUALITY active crossover like a Bryston or another expensive one. Use this at line level between preamp and both power amps. No caps needed there.
2. The other option is for if you are using a much cheaper active crossover such as the Behringer DCX2496. Acoording to Satie if you hook this up in the same way as option 1 the bass will be great, but the mid/treble quality will suffer as the output stages of the Behringer are not up to scracth compared to an expensive active crossover.
You can get the Behringer upgraded apparently with better components, - this is available and is an option. But another option is to use the Behringer active crossover for the bass panel only. And for the mid/treble section to use partly a passive line level crossover (a cap between preamp and the respective power amp). Satie says this will give a much better sound quality to the mid/treble sections than having those important sections running through the Behrginer.So you can see this has an overlap with the passive biamping Randy wants to achieve, - for now he could use a suitable capacitor between the preamp and mid/tweeter power amp, and run the bass panel passively from the other power amp through the external MGIIIa speaker level crossover. Then perhpas at some point in the future he could then buy a Behringer DCX2496 or another active crossover for very cheap and use that for the bass panel ONLY (and remove the external MGIIIa crossover box), but leave the other side (mid/treble side as it is) with the capacitor there in between the preamp and power amp on that side.
Of course with the Behringer you can adjust the relative volume of the bass panel (you only need to adjust one section) so no probs in getting the levels right.
Its a bit confusing, - I'm sorry Randy if you don't undertsand it fully yet but hopfeully you are getting there. Have a read through my posts on this thread, - have gone over it a lot of time with different explanation so hopefulyl you'll get there eventually.
It took me while too to fully understand these two options for running a 3 series speaker actively, but thanks to Satie's patience I got there eventually!Cheers,
Colin
Edits: 08/10/10
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Follow Ups
- NO, But.... - Davy 07:43:05 08/10/10 (33)
- Interesting... - MaggiesAndCats 08:21:06 08/10/10 (32)
- RE: Interesting... - Davy 08:30:53 08/10/10 (31)
- RE: Interesting... - MaggiesAndCats 09:06:17 08/10/10 (30)
- RE: Interesting... - Davy 09:27:10 08/10/10 (29)
- RE: Interesting... - Davy 16:15:28 08/10/10 (28)
- Analog only - MaggiesAndCats 20:33:51 08/10/10 (25)
- RE: Analog only - Davy 03:52:58 08/11/10 (24)
- RE: DIGITAL only - Satie 14:49:11 08/11/10 (9)
- RE: DIGITAL only - Davy 16:09:13 08/11/10 (8)
- RE: DIGITAL only - Satie 23:04:46 08/11/10 (7)
- RE: DIGITAL only - Davy 06:33:18 08/12/10 (6)
- RE: DIGITAL only - Satie 09:55:03 08/12/10 (5)
- RE: DIGITAL only - Davy 13:09:23 08/12/10 (4)
- RE: DIGITAL only - Satie 12:59:29 08/14/10 (3)
- RE: DIGITAL only - Davy 14:35:18 08/14/10 (2)
- RE: DIGITAL only - Satie 16:30:17 08/15/10 (1)
- Thanks Satie, I'm getting there! - (slowly!) - Davy 17:43:28 08/15/10 (0)
- RE: Analog only - josh358 11:34:49 08/11/10 (13)
- RE: Analog only - Davy 12:12:21 08/11/10 (12)
- RE: Analog only - josh358 12:59:57 08/11/10 (11)
- RE: Analog only - Davy 13:33:51 08/11/10 (10)
- RE: Analog only - josh358 16:57:48 08/11/10 (9)
- RE: Analog only - Davy 17:57:01 08/11/10 (8)
- RE: Analog only - josh358 18:17:09 08/11/10 (7)
- RE: Analog only - Davy 19:11:56 08/11/10 (6)
- RE: Analog only - josh358 20:12:43 08/11/10 (5)
- RE: Analog only - Davy 06:27:52 08/12/10 (4)
- RE: Analog only - josh358 08:26:39 08/12/10 (3)
- RE: Analog only - Davy 12:57:39 08/12/10 (2)
- RE: Analog only - josh358 13:13:16 08/12/10 (1)
- RE: Analog only - Davy 13:19:29 08/12/10 (0)
- RE: Interesting... - rrob 17:26:58 08/10/10 (1)
- RE: Interesting... - Davy 17:39:44 08/10/10 (0)