Are Active sytems making themselves irrelevant?

I said you can bend the second law of thermodynamics (i.e. you can relocate it's effects), not completely ignore it.

jfritzen posted:

So you add some latency, which does not hurt with unidirectional audio, 

Unless you use the speakers for live music.

feeling_zen posted:

This has been nagging at me for a while. It used to be that "going active" was the pinnacle of performance for a given system. Up until the mid 1990's, the options for going active, limited though they were, were still current. You could do this with any of the current Naim speaker offerings or Linn speaker offerings and it it did not necessarily mean you intended to max-out the sytem with DBLs or Keltiks. Let's also be clear here. For this thread, by "active" I mean active crossovers + your choice of power amps, not speakers with built-in/bundled applification. Plenty of smaller systems with active Tukans and so forth sounded sublime.

But here is the current dilemma.

• There is just so little meaningful choice anymore. There are no Naim speakers. No current Linn speakers that work with this (most are 6 way designs thanks to that odd combined HF unit they favor of late) outside of the Linn eco-system. 
• The SNAXO itself needs to be customised by Naim for a "supported" speaker.
• Only "new" offering is the Kudos one.
• No indication that Statement (pre and power combined) has any place in an active eco sytem. Yes it is possible to buy a six pack of NAP S1 and a SNAXO but who is going to pair that with any of the current or older active capable speaker offerings in reality? Most I've seen in NAC S1 paired with active NAP300s.

 

Generally, you don't choose a speaker because it gives you the option to go active. It is the icing on the cake. You have to actually like the character of the speaker to begin with and regardless of how good the Kudos offering is, it is absolutely a limiting offering of one manufacterer. If 80% of Naim customers gravitated to Kudos it would be one thing, but we are a diverse bunch. I'm sure a lot of us have looked at our own speakers and thought "I wish PraAc/PMC/ATC/Harbeth/Sonus/Whoever did a crossoverless version for use with Naim active". I certainly have, knowing full well active PMC Twenty5.23s will happen when pigs fly by my office window.

You can of course home-brew an active system with digital crosovers (Devialet) and invalidating warranties. But that aside, it seems to me that active crossovers still represent the ideal configuration but the sheer unrealistic challenges of getting there now with any current speaker (unless you go for Kudos) has made the analog SNAXO a legacy product with no future. I find this a great shame. And I wonder why Naim even bothered developing this for Kudos if that is to be the only current offering (unless Naim are planning on having Kudos be the semi-official speaker partner for Naim electronics).

So does anyone think active has a future for Naim as a one-horse Kudos race? Have passive crossovers really improved so vastly much to close the gap?

Wow, missed you guys, been under the weather, a bad strain/virus been under nearly a month.

Your first question, NO!

But an active System has an future for Allante93.

It's like this, if you haven't experienced an active system in the comfort of your dwellings for an extended period, you are lucky.

And to quote Lawrence Dickie, Yes with the aid of computer analysis, the gap has been narrowed.

So he has chosen not to bring an active Speaker to the market!

Just not practical!

Lawrence Dickie Founder of Vivid Audio!

That $40K GT3, didnt sound bad with Naim's Statement!

Well, just my two cents!

Enjoy your music, The Why!

Allante93!

PS. If your crazy enough to post on this form, your system is in the top 5%.

Now if desire to become part of the top 1%!

Well, Activate your System!

SL2s, NBLs, DBLs,$

Briks$

Ovators$$$

Kudos $$$$$$

Allante93 posted:

feeling_zen posted:

Wow, missed you guys, been under the weather, a bad strain/virus been under nearly a month.

Glad you are back. Your absence was noticed.

Ardbeg10y posted:

Allante93 posted:

feeling_zen posted:

Wow, missed you guys, been under the weather, a bad strain/virus been under nearly a month.

Glad you are back. Your absence was noticed.

I on the other hand left the forum for a year, had another kid in that time and when I resurfaced a few weeks ago, not a person noticed I'd been away.

feeling_zen posted:

Ardbeg10y posted:

Allante93 posted:

feeling_zen posted:

Wow, missed you guys, been under the weather, a bad strain/virus been under nearly a month.

Glad you are back. Your absence was noticed.

I on the other hand left the forum for a year, had another kid in that time and when I resurfaced a few weeks ago, not a person noticed I'd been away.

Time flies...  

and congratulations!

Eloise posted:

Dozey posted:

Active systems with amps and DSP in the speakers (Dutch & Dutch and Kii) are the way forward, providing time alignment and cartoid dispersion. 

Don’t forget the company that has been doing that in the domestic environment since 1989... Meridian.

Meridian also were pretty forward thinking with narrow cabinets and placing ther tweeters in between two small bass drivers. I had a pair of M2s (actually had them twice). Brilliant and showed up my active Isobariks in many ways. So quick and great imagery. Stylish too. The preamp was a bit iffy but system synergy helped ameliorate that.

Never got to hear any other Meridian actives, Perth was a small place, and not everything made it out here.

feeling_zen posted:

Ardbeg10y posted:

Allante93 posted:

feeling_zen posted:

Wow, missed you guys, been under the weather, a bad strain/virus been under nearly a month.

Glad you are back. Your absence was noticed.

I on the other hand left the forum for a year, had another kid in that time and when I resurfaced a few weeks ago, not a person noticed I'd been away.

I do remember your farewell post very well, and also that you said that you possibly would return.

So, also for you:

'

Glad you are back. Your absence was noticed.

'

feeling_zen posted:

 

I on the other hand left the forum for a year, had another kid in that time and when I resurfaced a few weeks ago, not a person noticed I'd been away.

First of all: congratulations from me as well! I remember your farewell post too and noticed your reappearance a short while ago. Good to see you back here, one more reason to visit the forum.

Totally off post topic but...

Cheers guys. The year seemed a lot longer. System powered off for >6 months to cope with awkward sleeping arrangements with the arrival of the new baby and a 2 year old that was all hands for a while who loved to flick the volume knob to max and booby trap the system.

I look at a picture of the system from 18 months back on the forum and look at it now nestled in a mountain of lego with grilles (thank god for grilles) looking decidedly dog eared.

Back on again and the kids have no say in the matter between 7pm and 8pm. If I am in a heavy metal or industrial mood, they are in it for the ride. Daddy's sanity comes first.

feeling_zen posted:

<snip> Daddy's sanity comes first.

Using the words 'Daddy' and 'sanity' in the same sentence is by definition an oxymoron!

Huge posted:

feeling_zen posted:

<snip> Daddy's sanity comes first.

Using the words 'Daddy' and 'sanity' in the same sentence is by definition an oxymoron!

I see that now.

I work from home, in a client facing role (on calls with clients all day), in a small Japanese apartment, with 2 kids under the age of 3. Recipe for mental health issues.

The Linn Exakt system does restrict you to the Linn digital source (into which you can plug analogue and digital sources too) and DAC, but it supports a good choice of speakers and you can run any amps you like of course.

The OP says the current Linn speakers can't be made active but they can, pretty much all of them, plus 80%+ of their back catalogue, all from an Exaktbox.  Then there are a smallish but slowly growing list of third party speakers that are compatible.  With a bit of knowledge you could sign up for Exakt.Design and build filters for whichever speaker you choose.

in the PMC space the Twenty.21 and Twenty.26 have filters available.  My Twenty.26s are running active this way and they're a couple of leaps up the ladder as a result.  I use Akurate amps at the moment, but I'm toying with the idea of sampling a trio of 250DRs to see how it goes.  The Twenty.26 is easy to convert for active, but the replacement Twenty5.26 would be a bit more effort as they went from 3 pairs of terminals to a single pair.

Devialet are doing stuff too - it seems you can set up their amps with in-built filters and therefore re-create the profiles of passive filters for whichever speaker you like (and can remove the passive crossovers of course), with one power amp per pair of speaker drivers.

The Kudos demos with Naim SNAXO I've heard have been great but its been an extremely long gestation period.  I get that NAIM will be constrained by the Focal situation, but every SNAXO they sell to a Kudos user will generate at least one, if not two, additinonal power amp sales - what's the problem with that?

sunbeamgls posted:

The OP says the current Linn speakers can't be made active but they can, ... - 

Not for SNAXO though, which is what the thread is about. The point being Active is alive for others but effectively dead on Naim unless they pull their finger out.

feeling_zen posted:

I suppose, for the rest of us, we can always insert one of these between our power amps. If I ever get speakers that happen to support active crossovers, I may in fact consider this non Naim approach. I think the benefits of active crossovers should outweigh the disadvantages of using a non Naim component at such a critical point in the signal path. Bryston 10B-STD. Though you will need 2 of them for 3 way speakers and a careless child's hand could do some amazingly expensive damage to your speakers.

 

 

Re-reading some of this thread this struck me. Why is it inevitably a disadvantage to use a non-Naim component? You chose non-Naim speakers, with non-Naim crossovers, and many people have happily used non-Naim sources as well as speakers, so why not an active XO? 

Innocent Bystander posted:

feeling_zen posted:

I suppose, for the rest of us, we can always insert one of these between our power amps. If I ever get speakers that happen to support active crossovers, I may in fact consider this non Naim approach. I think the benefits of active crossovers should outweigh the disadvantages of using a non Naim component at such a critical point in the signal path. Bryston 10B-STD. Though you will need 2 of them for 3 way speakers and a careless child's hand could do some amazingly expensive damage to your speakers.

 

 

Re-reading some of this thread this struck me. Why is it inevitably a disadvantage to use a non-Naim component? You chose non-Naim speakers, with non-Naim crossovers, and many people have happily used non-Naim sources as well as speakers, so why not an active XO? 

Might just be the way I worded it. I think we are saying the same thing actually.

feeling_zen posted:

Huge posted:

feeling_zen posted:

<snip> Daddy's sanity comes first.

Using the words 'Daddy' and 'sanity' in the same sentence is by definition an oxymoron!

I see that now.

I work from home, in a client facing role (on calls with clients all day), in a small Japanese apartment, with 2 kids under the age of 3. Recipe for mental health issues.

Same position here. 4 kids though, but a large detached house - which makes a difference for the better.

I've put grills on all my non-grilled loudspeakers after my #3 ditched the tweeters for the second time.

Regarding kids turning volume controls, my 2 serious systems are tested by me by running for 10 minutes having volume on 100%. They survived wonderfully. I could only see the lips of my wife moving when she was talking to me on half a meter distance. To be on-topic, one of these systems is an active Ovator s600 setup having 2xNap 200's. Only Nap 200's. But great.

There is one more system to test, this one does not work well having volume on 100%. The high volume affects the Turntable which gets amplified again etc ... Still need a solution for that.

feeling_zen posted:

Innocent Bystander posted:

feeling_zen posted:

I suppose, for the rest of us, we can always insert one of these between our power amps. If I ever get speakers that happen to support active crossovers, I may in fact consider this non Naim approach. I think the benefits of active crossovers should outweigh the disadvantages of using a non Naim component at such a critical point in the signal path. Bryston 10B-STD. Though you will need 2 of them for 3 way speakers and a careless child's hand could do some amazingly expensive damage to your speakers.

 

 

Re-reading some of this thread this struck me. Why is it inevitably a disadvantage to use a non-Naim component? You chose non-Naim speakers, with non-Naim crossovers, and many people have happily used non-Naim sources as well as speakers, so why not an active XO? 

Might just be the way I worded it. I think we are saying the same thing actually.

Ah, yes, I see 

Ardbeg10y posted:

feeling_zen posted:

Huge posted:

feeling_zen posted:

<snip> Daddy's sanity comes first.

Using the words 'Daddy' and 'sanity' in the same sentence is by definition an oxymoron!

I see that now.

I work from home, in a client facing role (on calls with clients all day), in a small Japanese apartment, with 2 kids under the age of 3. Recipe for mental health issues.

Same position here. 4 kids though, but a large detached house - which makes a difference for the better.

I've put grills on all my non-grilled loudspeakers after my #3 ditched the tweeters for the second time.

Regarding kids turning volume controls, my 2 serious systems are tested by me by running for 10 minutes having volume on 100%. They survived wonderfully. I could only see the lips of my wife moving when she was talking to me on half a meter distance. To be on-topic, one of these systems is an active Ovator s600 setup having 2xNap 200's. Only Nap 200's. But great.

There is one more system to test, this one does not work well having volume on 100%. The high volume affects the Turntable which gets amplified again etc ... Still need a solution for that.

Too late to suggest... My solution was to put rack in a cupboard (but it was a small Sound Organisation rack) -  and yes, definitely grilles on speakers. Worst thing, partly because it wasnt in cupboard, was that the VHS player (this was back in the 1990s) proved to be an irresistable ‘posting box’ for all manner of small objects...

But this is maybe a discusion for a ‘How to childproof my system’ thread...