You make grandiose assumptions.
You know, a rigorous thinker wouldn't just hide behind the conclusory claim that someone else "made assumptions." Instead, such a person would spell out those assumptions and point out why they're invalid. Anything less is, well, less.
Though you have failed to demonstrate the intellectual capacity required to argue rigorously through your failure to do so and your expressed preference for personal attacks over substantive argument, others may benefit from a more thorough airing of my assumption.
The only assumption underlying my previous post is that the factory passive crossover was not a textbook filter, but rather incorporated some EQ as well. Perhaps a notch filter to tame a woofer's out-of-band breakup peak, or some baffle step compensation, etc.
For those of us who use competently-designed loudspeakers, that assumption is not so grandiose at all, but simple reality.
For people inordinately fond of underengineered crap, my assumption may not be that grandiose, but it is unwarranted.
If you choose your life-partner with the same rigiorous criteria you seem to apply to everyone else's audio gear, they probably only exist in print or on the internet, and it's probably a very lonely existance.
First, why are you not mensch enough to write about ideas rather than making everything an ad hominem attack?
Second, what's this "other people's audio systems" garbage? My standards are highest for my own system, others can do whatever the hell they want. I don't have to listen to their systems.
Third...as a matter of fact, I did apply rather rigorous criteria to selecting my life partner. Or at least outward appearance would make it seem so: my fiancee is a warm, loving, funny, beautiful, driven, and talented young woman from a wonderful and accomplished family. She is also a rising star in her field, neurology, with teens of pubs in peer-reviewed medical journals in her short career. So, not lonely at all.
However if you know what you are doing, active crossovers are easily modified to get the crossover points and slopes you desire. You have to understand how to modify the loop gains of opamps, and that is not rocket science.
It's more than that, though. One also needs some means to sculpt the response, and perhaps apply delays as well. Furthermore, unless one is using very wide-bandwidth drivers and crossing very conservatively, the electrical slope is going to be much different from the acoustical slope of a crossover.
Biamping has huge advantages, especially in the lower crossover points.
I agree that any crossover in the modal region or below should be active, if for no other reason than the parts costs for passives in the 80-160Hz region is so high. Also, in the modal region drivers are typically working in their passbands or with smooth rolloffs, so electrical and acoustical slopes are more similar.
And it should also be noted that I'm going to soon experiment with taking my mains fully active. miniDSP just released their 8x8-in-a-Box unit. Pending resolution of a question I asked them, I will order either their whole boxed unit, or their board and new enclosure. Before the 8x8-in-a-box, there wasn't a single reasonably-priced box that could do at least 3-in/7-out (needed for LCR 2-way mains and a mono subwoofer channel that's a summed mix of the LCR channels) with matrix routing and the parametric EQ necessary to make a good-enough-for-me crossover. Previous suitable products, such as
Ashly's NE line, were too expensive for me.
This will change. Now we have digital microphones, and the AES 42 standards to keep cabling optical, the push to keep everything digital from microphone to the final drivers will be unstoppable. So I think we will see, total digital pathways, to loudspeakers with digital DSP crossovers, and conversion to analog right at the class D amps for each pass band.
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This will come to homes near you much sooner than you think.
I hope you're right, but I doubt it. Don't doubt what a reactionary and anti-fidelity force the so-called high end can be.
