Active vs Passive crossover set up
 

What's the difference?

From what I can gather a passive set up is usually what most people go with, which is basically using a supplied crossover which comes with the component set you choose. Cross over points are set by the box, and cannot be changed.

In an active set up, you ditch the crossover's from the set and send the signal and power directly to each speaker (tweet and midrange), and you set the crossover from either the HU, Processor or the amp at whatever setting you prefer.

Am I correct in my understanding of the set ups? Also what are some of the advantages of going active. I can immediately tell what the disadvantages would be, such as potential dmg to the speakers if not crossed over correctly, more power requirement (4 channels needed instead of 2 for the front soundstage), and more fine tuning is needed.

*Usually* active might be better, but for the most part, I wouldnt use em in an s2000. Sure they give you more control, but I dont think youll be able to get the real benefit of them in an s2k. Besides, most high end speakers, Focal, etc....come with pretty darn good crossovers out of the box. My vote, dont waste your money.

Nfr is right, I think so too, I have tried active croosover in S2000 already. Our car is too loud to night that kind of stuff. It's more for high end system like in the big car. Passive will set you straight. Get good component set like focal or seas lotus and you will be really fine.

I figured it was more usual for a car with better acoustical qualities and less ambient noise.

Maybe when I get a BMW 760 I will do an active crossover set up.

pretty much what those guys said.


the big advantage of an active setup is tune-ability. for your setup and the S? probably not that big of a deal... for your components, use their passive. but in the case of sub / components - you'll be using active.

i feel it can be looked at from two ways. either its worth it to "you" or "not"

no matter how you look at it, active is always better. with an active setup, you open up a lot more tuning capabilities over a passive setup. however, it costs more and requires more work to do an active setup correctly.

im sure we can all agree that the end result is always better than a passive when trying to maximize your results, but it all comes down to the end user. is it worth the extra time and money and like most of you have already stated, is it really worth doing an active setup in this car? i can say from my personal opinion, if you are trying to maximize your results in any car, active is worth the upgrade.

imagine maximized passive setup in an s2k against maximized active setup in s2k, the end result should be the active setup being the better one. the s2k doesnt change, it doesnt get shittier for sound as you go higher end in products. it stays the same. so its either decent setup in a shitty car or good setup in a shitty car.

:D

i would disagree. and i disagree because you make one flawed assumption... that the active setup is tuned perfectly and correctly. i'm much more experienced in tuning than most people i know and meet, and i'm barely an amateur by realistic standards.

sure, in theory active is better, but it requires serious dedication in tuning, even beyond all the additional gear required. most people are not prepared to buy the extra gear. and based on my experience wit the general population, there are a very limited number of people who could even begin to tune an active setup. and most people are not going to pay for professional tuning... they're going to do it themselves or get a buddy to do it for them...

so -- i'd vote that in many many cases, an all active setup will probably sound worse than a passive setup... for no other reason than poor component selection and improper tuning.

just something to think on.

My opinion is that an active setup is better for the reason that it modifies your preamp signal and not your amplified signal. You aren't using amplifier power to create sound that would be lost due to not using those frequencies at the speaker and dumping them to ground, or if you are using all the frequencies, splitting them to more than one speaker, there is still a loss through the passive components. The greater the slope, the higher the loss. Plus, there is a greater chance to pick up noise throught the passive components. Persoanlly, I use the passives because they work well enough for me , but the original poster wanted to know which was best.

I've had great results using the active crossover internal to my Alpine CDA-9833 head unit, with the internal amps. An added bonus of the crossover on this unit is that it can adjust the delay on each channel to compensate for the different distances of each driver.

With active crossovers, you can get a higher order filter (sharper cutoff) so that you're not getting out-of-band signals being reproduced by the drivers, and there is less of a directionality problem around the crossover frequency. Sure, you can get a 4th order passive crossover, but it'll be huge and cost a lot.

It's not really that difficult to tune a system with an active crossover. I guess it's "easier" to tune a passive crossover because there's really not much you can do unless you want to start swapping out components. Once you get to the level of swapping out components, tuning an active crossover is way easier.

With the Alpine it's a piece of cake. For each driver you can select the high and low crossover frequencies, how sharp the filter is (1st-4th order), and adjust the signal level.

I'm doing all this with the stock 2005 speakers (I added a 2nd set of wires going to the door) and the sound is great.

Even though I have no idea what a 4 th order cross over is, I just wanted to say that my new CDT's have one!

http://www.cdtaudio.com/satnet456-642.htm

:D