I'm just not crazy about running the amps into a very high reactive impedance for half their bandwidth.
I have a vintage set of Yamaha NS-2000's that I recently put in storage (were my mains for a couple of years), replaced with Cornwall IV's for a while... anyway, I'm wanting to get the 2000's on the bench to take a look at the x-overs, do some cosmetic work......... or maybe I just want to sell them. It's a platform that might be worthy of a little fun with x-overs.... Or maybe not.
Some of the ones made for pro audio are very good, things like BSS, Dynacord, Lake, give you the flexibility to actually match the crossover to the speakers. But this requires the ability to do accurate measurements. They also give you the flexibility to well and truly hang yourself. And with these processors you're committed to a digital signal path, there's no way to keep it all-analog.
Dunno mate, I've never gone down that route. Have a chat with the guys at Linkwitz-Riley and get their advice. They're as good as you'll find.
We left off our conversation in your original thread at this point... I haven't tried bi-amping... looked into it but wasn't prepared to go "active" and the passive route sounded like it wouldn't yield results anyway. Pretty much just this side of a waste of time but with all the expense and hassle... pretty much a lose/lose scenario. But because I haven't actually tried it myself I didn't feel I had the credibility to make a comment. But if I had, I was going to say exactly what you've said... a great idea in theory, but perhaps more trouble than it's worth in reality and results can be unpredictable.
What's interesting is the strong disregard so far for anything *but* active bi-amping in this thread. When compared to some reading on the topic, you'll find many out there that claim benefits to passive bi-amping. Surely there have to be some on the forum that perceived a benefit! Then again, you'll also get positive feedback from bi-wiring attempts too. Most will never do active bi-amping, due to the potential complexity / management -- but I'm not sold that passive bi-amping is a "complete waste of time" that seems to be a common theme in the thread.
AVI provided amp-packs with their Neutron passives years ago. Active Neutrons as they called them (they went on to dedicate themselves to true actives not long after). Details in this review below:- AVI Active Neutron review
I passive bi-amp. Benefits increased headroom, more clarity. Plus I always have a "spare amp" available in case one of my two amps breaks down, haha. It doesn't require I reinvent (rewire) my speakers. Just needs a speaker with four terminals on the back (or more). And it requires I spend more money for two amps and some four conductor wire. Not a terribly expensive or complicated "Upgrade." Plus the biggest benefit is I can "tilt" the treble/bass balance to either make the speakers brighter or warmer...depending on the room location etc. You wouldn't believe what this does to Harbeths. Like, wow.
Bi-wiring helped maybe 5-10% increase in clarity. Definitely could hear it on the last three setups I used it on. Still running it in my control room. Great cheap upgrade when it works. Some speakers and amps may not have enough inherent resolution to tell one way or the other. But all my attempts stayed bi-wired after I heard what it did to help out with clarity. Helped more than just larger wires did for instance. My two cents. If it doesn't work for your setup it's not a big deal one way or the other. Just nice to get any improvement at all for such a cheap experiment. PS...You can just use cheap lamp cord to see if you hear an improvement before shelling out for those boutique wires you are lusting after.
Never went down that route. Went straight to actives in 2015. By coincidence though, I use a separate preamp these days that plugs into the AVIs (which have their own preamp, just too few inputs). Sounds great though. EDIT: the other thing is, though, you will never get past the limitations of passive speakers. You can bi-amp by all means, which might improve matters, but biwiring and biamping to a passive speaker is lipstick on a pig. (No offence meant, I've been there and done that!)
Well on the other hand, I have installed and wired well over a thousand systems as an installation contractor. My customer would have to sign off on the extra expense of biwiring having heard the improvement or we would suggest another route for those systems that didn't benefit from it---which DID happen on occasion---you never know until you try it out yourself. I typically avoided PASSIVE BI-AMPING for customers as it adds an extra degree of complexity, and I didn't want the customer to screw up the install after I left. ACTIVE crossover setups were a different animal altogether. These typically would have a "set it-and forget it" approach so the customer wasn't even aware in some cases what settings we used on their job and they would leave it alone and not screw it up later. Sometimes I would put the controls behind a locked panel cover to keep little fingers from twiddling those knobs! And of course commercial night club sound systems for dances and stuff you always go that route simply to get more output from the speaker stacks. Yup. Done a few setups here and there, haha. Super high power concert systems really began with Michael Lang in Miami at the first Miami Pop Festival with Hendrix---right after the Monterey Pop Festival (which had an unimpressive sound system). My pal Paul Ledford had the idea to build Michael a wall of speakers for that early concert. The Dead were so impressed they got Owsley to build them a wall for touring. I was fascinated by all that power! Paul introduced me to simple passive bi-amping with his own double stack of McIntosh MC275s using AR3a/KLH5 speakers hanging from chains attached to his ceiling over at the "Hippie House" Paul had in the Grove. I liked what I heard for sure but it might have been the weed... So me and installs go way back. What year is it again?
You quoted my post in this response but it seems unrelated to my quote - did you mean to reply to someone else? I notice you were on a bit of a roll with the rapid fire replies there mate...
Thanks for the advice, friends. But this actually illustrates my point earlier about personal choice based on how important things are to you. Because of my love of music, especially well reproduced music, I easily choose to invest time, money, and space into multi-amped systems. But, posting pictures on the web is not the center of my universe, thus, I choose not to invest time and aggravation into seeking out free hosting sites on the web just to do something which is a very simple task on other forums. Just personal choice based on values. To keep this on topic, I neglected that this thread asked for cons in addition to pros. One of the cons is that it does take up a bit of volume in your living space. There is also complexity. Also, it takes a bit of time to get everything turned on. Other than that, I don't see any more cons.
There is another way to eliminate all that terrible indecision, conflict and wasted money. Just buy a real nice rack system. They've kind of gone out of fashion (for no good reason), but they are still out there. You just got to go find one! You not being from around here, you might not have the same choices, but I'd recommend a good ol' Montgomery Wards rack system. They take all the guessing out of it. No need for wires or any of that difficult and costly stuff like that. Everything you need comes in the rack and is all pre-wired for you. This means no costly mistakes, no problems with decisions, no effort at all. Just plug it in (the store may be able to help you there if needed) and drop in an 8-track and enjoy!!! CJ
There definitely are a lot of cons, but a very good pro. The main cons I've found are: (1) finding a very good set of speakers where you can easily remove the passive crossovers (or put them back in, if necessary); (2) finding a very good set of speakers with a simple passive crossover network so that you don't have to use an active crossover with op-amps, signal processing, etc.; (3) high cost for analog (not digital) active crossovers that are easily adjustable; (4) high cost for the extra power amplifiers you will need (especially if doing dual mono power amps); (5) high cost for all the wires you will need; (6) steep learning curve about speaker design and crossover networks (though many settle on a Linkwitz-Riley 4-pole or 24dB/Oct slope); (7) need for good testing and measuring equipment to confirm what you are hearing; (8) amount of time (weeks/months) you need to listen and dial in the active crossover just right, because what looks good on paper doesn't always work. Going to an active setup takes a lot of time, energy, and resources. If you're a set-it and forget-it type or don't want to tinker, stop right here. The main pro I've found is (1) it can sound (and measure) a hell of a lot better than with passive crossovers. Agreed. Most digital active crossovers (using op-amps, signal processing, etc.) don't sound very good and add a lot of noise to the system. A few are getting better though. If possible, I would recommend analog active crossovers. But if your speakers need some further manipulation, like notch filters or time alignment, then that may not be possible. An active crossover setup with extra amps and cables doesn't always degrade sound. If done right, it can sound much better than a passive setup. For a while, I have been using two First Watt B4 (analog) active crossovers for a 3-way crossover setup in a 2.1 system. They are very easy to adjust, listen, and measure on the fly. I do agree about the high cost though. The B4s are costly. But Nelson Pass, who built the B4s, relatively recently uploaded some PCBs and parts lists for anyone to build their own, fully adjustable analog active crossover. There are other DIY active crossover designs out there but I haven't found ones as adjustable. DIY is a good way to keep costs down on the active crossovers. No way to get around the cost of all the amps. At one point in time I tried a 4-way active crossover setup but I did not find much of an improvement so went back to the 3-way setup. See above about headaches! LOL. Also, my opinion is that you can't just order up some amps, build an active crossover from spec sheets, and have it all work. You need to spend a lot of time listening and measuring afterwards to get them adjusted and sounding correctly. The are some very good, though costly, off the shelf, adjustable active crossovers - First Watt, Merchand, older Bryston to name a few. DIY is a good option. You can check my info for my active crossover setup.
Oh, I get it, you were being *funny*...! Or mebbes you were just an teensy weensy bit irked. Esp if one spent a wad on all dose cabley wablies and dangit just hears a difference!!
It was more the inspiration for it than anything else tbh. Well, that and the large G&T(s) that went with it admittedly...
I think the description in the opening post is very good. Here is my personal experience. For several years I have stated on this forum and elsewhere that the best single upgrade to my system over the last 40 years has been bi-amping because of the pureness of the filtering and the additional control over frequency response. My active crossover was a Marchand Electronics XM26 tube model, my amps were a MC225 tube on the top end with an SS Cary CA-1 on the bottom, and my speakers are Altec 604(e) studio monitors. However, at one point the Marchand starting having component problems, causing the system to fade out to silence. I shipped it cross country to Marchand for repair. It worked properly again for a while, but not long thereafter it started cutting out with an intermittent problem. I decided to forego the expense of two-way cross country shipping again, not to mention the risk of another short lived repair. So I decided it was finally the time to go the SET route and go back to a passive crossover. However, I could find no ready made passive crossovers still available for my vintage 1960s 604e's. I was able to track down schematics for a couple of versions, so I chose the one I liked the most and built the crossovers myself (which is a lot easier than assembling an amp). Because I enjoy projects and saving money, I decided to build an SET amp from a kit. My choice was between Bruce Rozenblit's Transcendent Sound Mini Beast (4 watts per channel. EL509 output tubes; 6H30pi driver tubes.) and Bottlehead's Stereomour II (3.5 watts. 2A3 output tubes; 12AT7 input tubes). I opted for the OTL (output transformerless) Mini Beast. Then, because I had so much time on my hands indoors due to the pandemic, I purchased the Bottlehead kit. After taking my time over a couple of months, stripping wires here and soldering various capacitors, diodes, resistors, etc., there, following the kit's 100 steps of instructions, I finally completed the Mini Beast build and turned on the amp. Wow! The clarity across the frequency spectrum is stunning. But the most noticeable difference is the definition I hear in the stereo separation. Plus, the amp is really quiet. Fadeouts fade to no sound at all. I have since completed the build on Bottlehead's Stereomour and am currently listening to that amp in my system. It also produces wonderfully clear, defined sound. As of now, I am building Bruce Rosenblit's (Trancendent Sound's) Slider (preamp) and Fixer (Line Stage Control Center with Active Tone and Balance Controls). I am doing this because Bruce is obsessed with creating quiet gear, and I'm tired of having issues with noisy sockets, bad connections, etc. To summarize from my limited experience... I think bi-amping is great and can produce a cleaner, more controllable sound than a simple passive crossover. But I also think a good SET amp with quality passive crossovers can be just as good if not better than bi-amping.
I had a triamp setup for years that I had developed overtime. It surpassed all passive crossover results I had attained to that point. I found that the electronic crossover design used had the biggest impact over the results within an active crossover system. I did not like digital electronic crossovers at all (but boy did it have a fun toolbox to play with) Am guessing the DAC side (6 DACS in the digital crossover for triamping) is what killed this for me, not sure. In the analog realm I was amazed at the difference going from a Behringer CX3400 (still better than digital) to an Ashly analog unit. Huge. Then another large step up in SQ was remove all the old opamps in the Ashly and installing modern ones. Some trial and error there but I soldered in sockets so this eventually was a plug and play thing. Well the Ashly crashed, I did not fix it (but plan to eventually), and I moved back to passive and another diy speaker project which is what I am listening to these days. I do have a plan to go back though as I have a kit from diy audio for an all discrete (no opamps!) that has much flexibility for slope and Q to tailor to drivers. Nelson Pass designed so have high hopes for it. That active crossovers allow connection of driver directly to amp with only R (wire) in between is something that has merit. Mid and woofer I connect this way, too scared to do this with a tweeter so I do use a blocking cap here as sometimes there is a little spike, a little DC in an amp start up. I also like the fact that I can use amps for drivers to match their good attributes with the drivers I am using. You have to like amps and cables in triamping as there are lots! I think active crossover has the biggest upside but takes some trial and error to get it right. Easy to get it wrong. Anyhow, below is Mr Pass's pro list from the crossover build sheet: - flexibility that is not easily achieved with big passive coils, capacitors and resistors. - the loudspeaker driver to couple directly to the low impedance which is the output of the amplifier, maximizing the damping factor and efficiency. - two amplifiers to deliver, not twice, but as much as four times the power with lower distortion. - selection of amplifier types appropriate to the frequency region and sensitivity of the loudspeaker drivers.
