Active crossovers, worth the effort?

[Eurobound]

I have been built diy speaker systems with active crossovers since 1970 (the first one use 741 opamps). My current system is the diy version of the Linkwitz LX521.4 which was designed from the start using an active crossover. The LX521.4 and the Klipsch Jubilee are the two commercially available speaker systems that have active crossovers that I know off. I also built the CBT36K kit designed by Don Keele that also used an active crossover. The latest generation of dsp active crossovers (miniDSP Flex 8 for $600) are a significant improvement over what was available only 4 years ago. The active crossover puts much less strain on each amplifier channel driving it both with respect to power and bandwidth. The dsp crossover also allows you to compensate for irregularities in the individual driver responses. I have attached the plot of the dsp crossover used in the LX521.4 (note the commercial version uses an analog active crossover as opposed to digital). For the LX521.4 I am using 10 channels of amplification. Four channels at 130W per channel into 4 Ohms all channels driven for the woofers. Six channels at 125W per channel into 4 Ohms all channels driven for the lower and upper mid-ranges, and the tweeters. Having separate channels for each driver allows you to efficiently (without resistors) equalize the spl of each driver to account for differences in driver efficiency. Note in the frequency plot how much bass boost the woofers get in the LX521.4.

Nice! Coming from the car audio world, I find it interesting that DSP adoption is so slow given the amount of money people spend on home audio. I'll be curious to read along in the home audio world as to why this is. Although, I must say, in car audio, if you don't have a good person to tune the DSP then it's not going to help much and can easily make it worse than passive. I have a 16 channel Zapco DSP that I have on the shelf waiting for my garage DIY speaker system... and I have a friend who is quite good at tuning which helps.

 

[TLS Guy]

Nice! Coming from the car audio world, I find it interesting that DSP adoption is so slow given the amount of money people spend on home audio. I'll be curious to read along in the home audio world as to why this is. Although, I must say, in car audio, if you don't have a good person to tune the DSP then it's not going to help much and can easily make it worse than passive. I have a 16 channel Zapco DSP that I have on the shelf waiting for my garage DIY speaker system... and I have a friend who is quite good at tuning which helps.

We do of course use DSP it is in all our core units. Electronic crossovers are universal in subs pretty much. They have not gained much traction in home audio elsewhere, which is a pity. It is making inroads. I have used active crossovers in home audio since the 70s also. Active crossover definitely offer significantly improved performance.
The resistance seems to be, that you have to plug active speakers into the AC. Yet members and users have no problem finding AC outlets to plug their sub into and that is often four or more.

The power amp count in receivers is now well beyond ridiculous, and in my opinion very bad design, yes just awful.