Active x-over for 2 CHNL......

treitz3

I have heard from many folks that an active crossover is the way to go. I have heard this many times over the years but I have recently found somebody noteworthy of mentioning that an active x-over takes the sound stage and imaging and FUBAR's it. While it may be good for frequencies, is it good [or bad] for the other aspects of audio reproduction?

If you have experience with one, what say you?

ben62670

Fully depends on the drivers if you want to run an active XO. Active can be tweaked like passives can, but that is not for the faint hearted. You heard mine with the ring radiator tweeters. I was constantly changing the level of the tweeter to compensate for it not working well with the transition from the upper mids to the highs. Now I have a different tweeter, and changed the phase. George was over and he told me not to change a thing:) Finally excellent sound stage, and SQ. Back to the opening statement. Fully depends on the drivers used. The Berhinger DCX2496 is a very capable XO that is completely tweakable for using with difficult drivers. There is a learning curve, and a lot of trial and error to get it right. What speakers are you thinking of?
Ben

treitz3

SDA 1C's and the Clearview x-over if it will work with them. If not, I have other plans for it. That's not the point though.

SCompRacer

My experience with active crossovers has been confined to ESL speakers with transmission line bass modules. I have had three different active crossovers; two InnerSound (first and second design) and one Marchand. I also had a pair of the well built passive crossovers designed for my speakers (the compromise was described as small). I lived with the passives until I could acquire the amps I wanted. I experienced improvement with sound stage, imaging and bass control using the active crossovers as compared to the passives. It was well worth the added investment to me.

jm1

Over the years, I used several external active crossovers with various components. This past seven years I have had dual subs in a two channel system using either the sub’s built-in or an external active crossover. My results of using subs in a two channel configuration have been good to most excellent. In any of the configurations I have tried, I have never been left in a situation where the imaging and soundstage have been FOOBARed.

I introduced a Bryston 10B Sub active crossover to the system four months ago. I am still making very minute changes to the crossover settings to optimize the integration. I can assure you the results are breath-taking, surpassing my expectations of this component and the obtainable results.

Ultimately, the overall results are dependent on the quality of the chosen components, the parameters available to integrate the two distinct sound sources and most importantly, your ability to locate the speakers within your acoustic environment then optimize the crossover settings.

TNRabbit

I am currently biamping Carver AL-IIIs with Sunfire 400~7 amp; I absolutely LOVE it. It's good to be able to shift phasing, though, through an external active crossover. Several have used Rane and are happy with them. Rane was started by former Carver Corp. employees, if I'm not mistaken.

jm1

treitz3 wrote: »

SDA 1C's and the Clearview x-over if it will work with them. If not, I have other plans for it. That's not the point though.

Which Clearview crossover do you have. It looks like some include internal equalization for specific driver types.

treitz3

Don't really know at this point. I told the cat who has it that he could keep it for a week or two to get done with a project he's working on. I'll try to get a hold of him and find out which one it is. I'll have to be honest with you though, I had no clue that there was more than one model. I guess you learn something everyday.

Gary, I know the Clearview was built by ex-Carver employees but I'm not sure about the Ranes. I have never heard that one before.

treitz3

Ok, I found out that it's apparently a CR1 and that there are 4 four versions of it. Mine is / was built for the big boy Plat's. Two way.

unc2701

A crossover system (passive OR active) really needs to be designed for the drivers in question. It's hard to find this off the shelf.

Are you planning to rip out the existing network entirely?

treitz3

It's just a tinker toy for the 3 or maybe soon to be 4 pairs of speakers I have. They are rare and it's something that I have always wanted to tinker with. I have a line of some Plat's [which this one was designed for] brand new, in the original boxes that haven't even been used.

I don't know which direction that I'll go. I was just wondering if an active would help or degrade. Most observances are that they enhance or improve, however I have heard one respected audiophile say that the imaging and sound stage are FUBAR'd. I hadn't heard this before with actives.........which is why I ask.

As far as ripping out the existing networks entirely? I wasn't planning on it. Why? Is there something that can be gained by doing so?

TNRabbit

treitz3 wrote: »

Gary, I know the Clearview was built by ex-Carver employees but I'm not sure about the Ranes. I have never heard that one before.

Here ya go, Tom:

The Rane Story

Rane Corporation History & Philosophy

Rane Corporation, founded and incorporated in 1981 in Washington State, is a privately held company. The owners all previously worked together in middle management positions at Phase Linear Corporation, a high-end consumer electronics company. With this background, they pooled over 40 years of combined audio experience to create Rane Corporation. Owners became separate department heads based upon their expertise. This organization created an unusually strong structure, since all department heads had a unique owner's perspective in making it succeed.

The company name was selected from an anagram created from the common letters of the first and last names of the original founders. This particular anagram was selected because it was short, easy-to-say and remember, and they liked the double-entendre possibilities implying wet-links to the Northwest.

The essential ingredients in Rane's successful philosophy are knowledge, integrity, pride and common sense. At Rane, people learn to treat people the way they would want to be treated, to design & build products the way they would want theirs designed & built, and that when something goes wrong, you react quickly and decisively to correct it. It is an old fashioned, common sense way to run a business, based on mutual trust and respect.

Rane started out with four products aimed at small bands, designed to make their live performances better. At the forefront was a unique 12-input, 6-output matrix mixer (MM 12) used to create six different monitor mixes for driving stage monitor speakers. The idea was to help performers hear themselves better. Up to that time, either the small group had no monitors at all, or they were all driven by the same mix. What Rane provided was new, compactly designed, affordable tools to help solve the many problems of on-stage monitoring. Complementing the matrix mixer was the industry's first 6-channel power amplifier (MA 6), and a companion 6-channel headphone amplifier for rehearsal (HC 6). The fourth initial product was a unique combo unit, consisting of a 1/3-octave graphic equalizer and a simple realtime analyzer (RE 27), aimed at giving the performing musician a handy, easy-to-use tool for improving their sound in all venues. In doing all this, Rane established a new price-point for performance, quality and reliability. Rane products were priced well below the top high-end equipment yet outperformed and outlasted them, but were still priced significantly above the low-end products -- thus creating a new middle ground.

A noteworthy testament to Rane's design significance and reliability reputation, is that in their first two years of production, Rane designed and shipped eight new products -- five of which are still in production today.

Rane Corporation today is an established innovator in providing problem-solving professional audio tools, affordably priced, with unequalled reliability.
Rane Corporate Milestones

1981: Incorporated in Washington State, USA
1982: 1st Constant-Q EQ & 1st EQ/RTA combo unit - the RE 27
1983: AES paper: 4th-order state-variable Linkwitz-Riley crossovers
1984: 1st Linkwitz-Riley crossovers: AC 22 & AC 23
1986: AES Journal publishes Rane's landmark Constant-Q Graphic EQ paper
1986: 1st Interpolating Constant-Q EQ
1987: Rane's 1st digital audio product: AD 13 Audio Delay
1988: Publish PI 14 Pseudoacoustic Infector data sheet
1989: 1st 8th-order L-R Crossover
1989: 1st MIDI-Programmable EQs
1989: Develop Accelerated-SlopeTM EQ
1990: Patent: Constant-Q Topology
1991: Patent: Accelerated-Slope EQ
1991: 1st THX Home Cinema EQ: THX 44
1993: 1st Dolby Time-LinkTM pro audio delay
1994: Home Cinema Products launched
1995: PAQRAT® Digital Audio Recording System
1995: 1st RW 232 software product: RPE 228 Equalizer
1995: Launch website & Pro Audio Reference
1996: Mojo Series introduced
1997: Rane 1st DSP digital audio product: RPM 26
1997: Rane 1st teleconferencing product: ECS
1998: Patent: teleconferencing product
1998: New standard in DJ performing mixer: TTM 54
1999: Rane 1st Ethernet product: Via 10
2000: Rane 1st CobraNet products: NM 84 & NM 48
2001: Twenty-Year anniversary
2001: First magnetic fader DJ performing mixer: TTM 56
2002: Drag Net 100% drag and drop DSP
2003: DEQ 60 Perfect-Q Graphic Equalizer
2004: Patents: Magnetic Fader and Acoustic Echo Canceller
2004: SeratoTM Scratch LIVE digital audio computer interface
2005: SeratoTM MP 4 digital audio file mixer
2005: Digital Amplifier: MA 4
2006: Scratch LIVE Mixer: TTM 57SL
2006: Twenty-five Year Anniversary

We may be reached via telephone during normal business hours (8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Pacific Standard Time) at 425-355-6000. You may fax us any time at 425-347-7757.

Our postal mailing address is: Rane Corporation, 10802 47th Avenue West, Mukilteo, WA, 98275, USA

If you prefer hard copies of literature in the mail, you may email or call us at 425-551-1833.

unc2701

treitz3 wrote: »

As far as ripping out the existing networks entirely? I wasn't planning on it. Why? Is there something that can be gained by doing so?

Ok, there's two kinds of active:
1)You replace the passive crossover with an active one. Each driver is mated directly to an amplifier, nothing in between but speaker wire or a simple network to stabilize the impedence. Alternatively, you might have, say, mids&highs on one amp and woofer on another, but there would be no low pass on the woofer and the mid/high would be a simple 1 way. The active only sends the appropriate freqs to each amplifier for each driver.

2)You leave your network alone, add an active crossover & biamp. People do this WRONG all the time. Their speakers cross at 1khz, so they set the active at 1khz and it sounds like ****. This is because they are double filtering the signal in the crossover area and getting the sum of the problems with each filter. You need to set the active at least 2 octaves above & below the crosspoint. With a 1khz crossover in the passive you should send everything from 250hz up to the high amp and 4khz down to the low amp. The passive will filter out the rest of the signal.

TNRabbit

unc2701 wrote: »

Ok, there's two kinds of active:
1)You replace the passive crossover with an active one. Each driver is mated directly to an amplifier, nothing in between but speaker wire or a simple network to stabilize the impedence. Alternatively, you might have, say, mids&highs on one amp and woofer on another, but there would be no low pass on the woofer and the mid/high would be a simple 1 way. The active only sends the appropriate freqs to each amplifier for each driver.

2)You leave your network alone, add an active crossover & biamp. People do this WRONG all the time. Their speakers cross at 1khz, so they set the active at 1khz and it sounds like ****. This is because they are double filtering the signal in the crossover area and getting the sum of the problems with each filter. You need to set the active at least 2 octaves above & below the crosspoint. With a 1khz crossover in the passive you should send everything from 250hz up to the high amp and 4khz down to the low amp. The passive will filter out the rest of the signal.

I've wondered about this; your comment just cemented it for me. I KNEW something was missing in my setup (active w/passive xovers in place). THANKS!