Gromit's music centre...

[Reffc]

You know what I'm going to say if CD impresses less I'm certain it's because of speaker issues (passive crossovers are the absolute pits, even Harbeth ones!!!). Yeah, I know the OC9 is a bit relentless and I remember how much beefier the ancient OC30 was. I could be totally wrong, but I believe the OC30 DNA is now in the 33PTG, but could be totally wrong here. My beef with ZYX is that they seem to have doubled in price? in the last ten years. Ask HiFi Dave, as he knows the ZYX intimately and will always 'look after' AOS members.

That is totally erroneous...plain wrong I'm afraid Dave!

The fact is that they've been at the same price for years up until last year, so have had to go up in price. The issues are very simple: Changes to the design, changes to the range, the falling pound against the dollar have all combined with a need to raise prices to reflect the additional investment that the founders had to make in order to increase production and improve reliability of production and distribution. These things all cost money.

The entry level R-50 Bloom cost £565 for a fair number of years with no price hikes. Now that the pound has fallen against the dollar by 30% (and this matters because the largest ZYX market is the USA so they are priced to export there), then the "old" price would realistically now become about £735. However, they couldn't keep prices as they were and keep the company afloat or improve production or distribution channels, so given the new range, the better availability and the necessary pre-Brexit price hike needed, then the £850 for the all new R-50Mk3 is STILL a very good price compared with just about any equivalent competition. Most of the R-50 competition is above £1000 anyway, and always was in reality. I certainly haven't heard anything this side of £1K to better them.

[Reffc]

Millions of people all over the world manage to live with them. I've heard some extremely good speakers with passive crossovers.

Absolutely. Well designed, there's absolute nothing wrong with them.

My take on them is that they ought to be designed with as few components as necessary to achieve the desired acoustic, phase, step, and polar responses. To say "they're the pits" is just an example of brainwashed nonsense propagated by those who know little to nothing about 'speaker design. It is true that some of those using especially complex ones can often sound a bit sat-on if badly designed. However, having heard a superb pair of original Rogers LS3/5as at the weekend, you'd have to be deaf, a liar or both to suggest that 1) the crossover could be "heard" and 2) that it detracted from the sound. Indeed, without it, the speakers wouldn't work and sound horrible.

Not everyone wants active amps and DSP, and not every speaker system needs it. I know of one relatively complex passive crossover system with less impedance losses than the loudspeaker cable connected to it!

[Arkless Electronics]

There can be no doubt that active is better and substantially so. Personally I wouldn't use digital filtering though.
Crossovers for active speakers can be built passive of course... which is usually ignored.
The main reason active is not used more widely (by amateurs anyway. It's the norm for professional studio monitoring) is "audiophile disease".... it rules out tinkering and box swapping!

[Ali Tait]

Quite happy with my active OB's run with a 4x8 miniDSP.

[Arkless Electronics]

I do analogue engineering only so would never touch digital crossovers with a bargepole, even if they were better, which IMO they are not. For the real purist as I said above a passive crossover can be used before the separate amps for each driver...

[Barry]

There can be no doubt that active is better and substantially so. Personally I wouldn't use digital filtering though.
Crossovers for active speakers can be built passive of course... which is usually ignored.
The main reason active is not used more widely (by amateurs anyway. It's the norm for professional studio monitoring) is "audiophile disease".... it rules out tinkering and box swapping!

That used to be said about CD, that unlike vinyl playback there was no room for tweaks and tinkering. Then along came 'green pens'; CD damping discs and rings, etc.

Agree re. active speakers. Unfortunately my Quad 57s do not readily lend themselves to be adapted from passive X-overs. It would require the use of three audio transformers per speaker, capable of dealing with voltages as high as 2.5kV.

[Ali Tait]

Running them with direct coupled amps would be very worthwhile Barry, some if the best sounds I've ever heard were done this way.

[Arkless Electronics]

That used to be said about CD, that unlike vinyl playback there was no room for tweaks and tinkering. Then along came 'green pens'; CD damping discs and rings, etc.

Agree re. active speakers. Unfortunately my Quad 57s do not readily lend themselves to be adapted from passive X-overs. It would require the use of three audio transformers per speaker, capable of dealing with voltages as high as 2.5kV.

As you will no doubt be aware, probably the best hi fi possible would be to do away with the transformers and directly drive electrostatic speakers from amplifiers capable 2-5KV output! Ideal for a valve or hybrid amp as it removes both the output transformer in the valve amp and the input transformer in the esl speakers.. Audio Nirvana! It was done commercially in the late 70's in the form of the Acoustat X (claimed by some to be the best speaker ever made). I recently had a look at the circuit diagrams for the amps and they were really crude....
Big enough ESL's with the right driving amps can do all the max SPL and slam anyone could possibly need as well.
Cost of course is the problem.... Although there are of course speakers selling for £50,000+ so maybe not that much of a problem other than the cost of parts in the £50K speakers is probably only £2K whilst it would be more like £5-10K for the ultimate electrostatic..

[Arkless Electronics]

Ali beat me to it whilst I typed!

[Barry]

Running them with direct coupled amps would be very worthwhile Barry, some if the best sounds I've ever heard were done this way.

That was a project of yours. How is it progressing?