vikinger wrote:

"Conclusion All of that being said,

if your electroacoustical behaviour of every component in your audio chain was “perfect” (whatever that means) AND if loudspeakers behaved linearly (i.e. they gave you the same frequency response at all listening levels, and they didn’t change their behaviours when they heat up, and so on and so on) AND if you did everything properly (meaning that your cabinets were the right size and shape) AND if your production tolerances of every component in the system was +/- 0%. Then MAYBE a passive loudspeaker design could work just as well as an active design."

I think that that was acheived with the S45/S45-2 speakers.

Graham

Lee wrote:

The S45's are great speakers but they don't match a single one of those criteria.

That's because:

-Amplifiers don't have to be perfect and linear
-Speakers don't have to be perfect and linear
-Production tolerances don't have to be perfect and linear
-Your room doesn't have to be perfect and linear
for something to sound good.

Natural sound can only be produced naturally. Believing you can produce (or reproduce) natural
sound using vibrating cardboard funnels is naive at best.

Looking at graphs and numbers won't tell me if a setup sounds good or not.
I don't listen to graphs or numbers either, I listen to the sound.

The active speakers I've listened to may be linear and all that, but to me they sound grey and wearing on my ears. I don't want them.

Give me the warm and pleasant sound of a discretely built amplifier and a pair of decent speakers.
It may not sound natural and it may not be linear but I can enjoy listening to it without
looking forward to switching it off.
That's important to me.

If I wanted to enjoy the purest form of the contents of, say, a CD, I could print it out in binary form and look at it for hours.
That would be the real deal with no distortion, resonances or whatever.

Oh - and I happen to both like and use Loudness.

Martin

Well Martin, I'm a firm believer in active speakers but you're absolutely right you can get pleasant, good sounding conventional speakers and amp setups. But like you, I use loudness, bass, and treble controls when needed to make things sound better or more natural. I've often said the thing that I love about my BS9000 since the beginning was being able to adjust such things from the listening position with the remote. The audiophile hair shirt approach of only listening with no tone controls to recordings that happen to sound good is nuts IMO. Too much good music on bad recordings that benefits from a touch of contouring to give that up.

I can't and won't say anything against the listening habits and preferences of Dillen and Jeff (and probably others).

But it seems to be a widespread mistake, that speakers should be able to '(re)produce natural sound'.

As Dillen says 'natural sound can only be produced naturally'.

What a speaker (or rather the amp/speaker/etc combo) should be able to do, is to reproduce, what was signed off from the matering engineers, who finished the recording, before it was distributed in whatever form to the costumers.

I expect a speaker (= the combo) to be accurate (!), so that I am able to hear, what was intended with the final step of the recording. There is a lot of 'coloration' going on in the recording/mixing/mastering process, which is perfectly fine and part of the art of making recorded ( = not natural) music.

I don't feel a need to add my own coloration (eq-tweaking...) to the recordings, I have bought.

On the other hand. - everyone should be free to add his own preferences to his listening experience.

Personally I expect a loudspeaker company to (try their best to) built speakers, that are aimed at not adding anything to the recordings, that they reproduce at my place.

With an intelligent active speakers concept (like in the current BeoLabs) this is a lot easier. When a speaker furthermore (like the BL90 does) adds 'Room Compensation' to it's concept, it - for me - has come a lot nearer to realizing this.

MM

There are B&O passive speakers but they're for building into your walls. http://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/sound/loudspeakers/beovox-2

I was really questioning why B&O had ignored the passive market having produced such fine passive speakers in the past. I fully understand why the B&O complete systems are for the most part active.

Active speakers may well be the best and it seems that many manufacturers may now be waking up to the benefits of the active approach, but as the main market stayed with passive speakers and amplifier separates for so long it really does look like an opportunity lost in terms of the market that was there. The availability of passive speakers (other than built-in for walls) would have kept the B&O profile up in the separates market. The fact that the S45/45-2 speakers are still so highly regarded makes it more of a mystery as to why the opportunity wasn't/ isn't grasped to reproduce the design.

Graham

vikinger wrote:

I was really questioning why B&O had ignored the passive market having produced such fine passive speakers in the past. I fully understand why the B&O complete systems are for the most part active.

Active speakers may well be the best and it seems that many manufacturers may now be waking up to the benefits of the active approach, but as the main market stayed with passive speakers and amplifier separates for so long it really does look like an opportunity lost in terms of the market that was there. The availability of passive speakers (other than built-in for walls) would have kept the B&O profile up in the separates market. The fact that the S45/45-2 speakers are still so highly regarded makes it more of a mystery as to why the opportunity wasn't/ isn't grasped to reproduce the design.

Graham

I think there is something to be said for B & O NOT going passive.  There are already so many speaker manufacturers out there, and so many of their speakers look alike.  Therefore, making only active speakers is a way for B & O to set itself apart.

Also, active speakers can use smaller cabinets that their passive competitors to get the same bass output.  This also allows B & O to be different than the competition.

Also, I have my doubts about the important of passive speaker and power amplifier matching.  However, I think the use of active cross-overs vs. passive cross-overs can make a huge difference in overall sound quality if done carefully.

D