Huge difference on kudos 707s from going active with 2x300s. Definitely not slight
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Kids love dinosaurs.
Yes tim i bet, but missing my point i was trying to make, but the money it costs to go with the 2 x 300dr’s a single 500dr will probably be better and cheaper. As lots of very strong and very capable amps around these days at very competitive prices that can easily drive problem or hard to drive speakers
I don’t want the number of boxes required and have instead gone for a 500 on my 808s. But it doesn’t mean there isn’t a significant improvement from going active
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The crossovers on the titans are of a good quality.
Not saying that a 500dr amp is still the way to go its not the most modern and best at driving all speakers, especially when you look how much it costs these days, but it still does a very good job and even more so when paired with its brother.
But really active these days when the amps aren’t matched to the drivers and not built in the speaker, is not the best way to do it.
Going from one 300 to 2 x 300 and active, 4 extra naim shelves, extra speaker cable, 2 extra powerlines, plus not to mention xlr’s, thats going to cost. Just go buy a much better amp and be done with it
Just remember, you can do active with Naim without an active Naim crossover. It doesn’t fundamentally change the character of the system. Consider this:
- In a passive system, you have a non Naim crossover (presumably as Naim don’t make speakers anymore) in the signal path. But it’s down stream after the pre-amp has performed signal normalisation for a Naim power amp.
- In an active system, even with a non Naim crossover, you still have crossover in the signal path, just in a different place. It is still after the all important pre-amp with signal normalisation, and as a crossover it will act on that signal, so nothing that the preamp performed for stable operation of a Naim power amp has been undone. It can’t un-normalise the signal.
In my opinion, you can still use a non Naim active crossover from the likes of Accuphase or Bryston and still have a Naim Active system.
But on another note, active is very much a mid range thing to do. Speakers do no support active at the entry level of the market in general. And then at the extreme high end, also do no support active crossovers. Once you get past the $50K mark for speakers, the whole speaker itself is generally active or fully passive. No removeable crossover.
But the benefit of active is to do with the speakers not the amp, i.e. direct drive of speaker drivers with no crossover components, and will always be better than passive. Yes the cost is a lot more for the same amps on each channel and there is always the challenge of whether a better amp costing 3x as much might sound better than active with lesser amps, but active tri-amping is more for those seeking the very best they can, or sometimes where people have ended up with multiple amps for whatever reason.
As for the box count aspect, I think it has always been a minority who have tolerated the numbers of boxes multi-amp systems use - or indeed Naim systems with multiple power supplies. There are indeed multiple threads about people “downsizing” to less complicated systems, but it would be interesting to see data to know if it is a real trend among hifi enthusiasts, or just that we notice the vocal ones.
As for active speakers, I like the concept, and ATC is a brilliant example - but so much with speakers depends on the sound character, that it will take many different options to satisfy the needs, whereas with tailorable active crossovers people can go for the speakers they like with the amps they like, and not, for example, have to go for the limited combinations offered.
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I must have lucked out as i ordered a SNAXO3-6-2 for my system about a year ago. Had to wait about 4 months for it to be built and shipped. Must have been near the last unit built. Crossover points set for my active NBL system (that was an issue on its own as apparently there is no one left at NAIM HQ with any experience or knowledge of the NBL). It was worth the wait though.
Crossover frequencies can be adjusted with NAIM crossovers, there is a pot internally for setting the frequencies, but a NAIM techie needs to do it.
You still have crossovers as thats what the snazo is.
Taking the titans for example many couldn’t chose which one they liked best when demonstrated in passive and active. But do this with a pair of SBL’s and its active all the way.
This is mainly due to the poor crossovers in the naim.
Also look at the high end of hifi, here you will normally find either a nice big amp or a pair of mono block’s, plus look how many speakers you can buy that can be run in the naim active way, its just not necessary these days and active speakers is the better way to do it if you want to go this way
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But the guy who owns Kudos, designs and builds their speakers told me personally to go active with say 3 x 500’s over Full Statement, or 3 x 300 over 500 passive 
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Having heard those combinations i think it comes down to personal preference……i preferred single 500 over active 300,s and Statement over the 500,s. But i could live with any of them.
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Indeed and Jason Gould told me quite clearly that Full Statement is better than 3 x 500’s. He carried out a dem for a customer with DBL’s. It’s facilitating the box count for active that puts me off.
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Some enterprising soul should bring back those wonderful Meridian active 'speakers - were they called M1 or M100 (looked a bit like Naim’s big DBLs)?
I heard them only once, at Howard Popeck’s Subjective Audio, all of 35 years ago now, but they were beautifully made, and sounded pretty damn good as well. (The preamp was that rather stylish matchbox-shaped 101, if I’ve got the right designation.)
They appeared to have a tank-like build quality, so there are probably some very happy music lovers still using them today.
(Apologies for the thread drift.)
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Yes with active there are still crossovers, but splitting the signal there and having a direct cable link between amp and speaker is very different from placing capacitors and inductors in between, especially at the bass end. The negative effect of a passive crossover is likely to be inherently less with lower order crossovers than high order, and I understand that is what the Titans use, however the design of some speakers is such that higher order crossovers with less overlap in output between drivers is better, e.g PMCs, at least the bigger ones which use 4th order, i.e 24dB/octave vs 6 of the Titans.
However I fully agree that active speakers with amps attached to the speakers is ideal both from the household point of view, removing visible amp boxes and making the system and setup very simple, and from the performance point of view as speaker cable can be shortest and fully at the control of the designer of the package with the amp tailored optimally, though the size and in particular weight of the speaker would be increased, but much less so with Class D amps, as I believe ATC use. The downsides are that from the bulk of hifi users point of view it can make accessing higher levels harder as the whole package must be changed, and unless the majority of quality speaker manufacturers go that way active choice will be limited.
Active multi-amp driving with separate amps of course has always been very much a minority approach in domestic hifi, unlike professional studio systems, no doubt due to the multiple factors of complexity, bulk, boxes, wires and of course cost, and that would never change, so it is unsurprising for a hifi electronics manufacturer to cease supporting. It will be interesting to see it Focal go tge active route… (i’m guessing Naim may have introduced the SNAXO when they were also a speaker manufacturer.)
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My understanding was that only the levels could be altered via pots, on a SNAXO - and that the crossover frequencies were set in hardware…?
@Richard.Dane - ?
Not to mention with both forms of active system (crossovers ir speakers), upgrades are greatly complicated and expensive propositions. It can often require nearly a whole system change. And the other is that of failure. If anything goes wrong the whole system is down.
One thing you can do to cheat is to find a pair of speakers with no crossover and a single full range driver. Then you can get the benefit of active with a single amp. There are such speakers out there. I even use a pair.
That is absolutely not the case. The amp packs ATC make are class AB and they get seriously warm when switched on. They were developed around 40 years ago when ATC were primarily serving the professional market and almost nobody used class D amps. They were also later developed into the stand-alone power amps that ATC currently sells.
Roger
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As an active user, I can see exactly where @Dunc and @TimOopNorth are coming from. I absolutely love the sound of the system and it connects me with the music, but could I have got to such a great place with a passive system? If I was embarking on the journey today, given the sums involved, the wires, box count and dusting I’d owe it to myself to look at all options to answer that question.
The fact is I embarked on this Olive journey back in the late 90s, but took a 15 year hifi break to work abroad and raise younger kids before rejoining my journey about 4 years ago. Having reached my planned end point I’m happy. I think there are more options today and for the sums involved you can spend the budget different ways to get to a solution that is best for any given ears/room/musical preference combination.
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The crossover points are fixed according to spec. Levels are variable on internal trimmers.
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