Anyone time align their Khorns with active over/delay and then go back to passive covers?

[jwgorman]

So, I've read some older posts about people going the full monty and actively delaying the squawker and tweet to time align their khorns. I have some pro audio gear, including a dbx drive rack and yamaha pro amps and I could try it, but given my personality, I am afraid I'd go off the deep end with respect to tweeking etc. 

 

In the interest of saving my sanity, I thought I might first ask the question if any of you guys went down the path of time aligned khorns and for whatever reason, decided to go back. I have a luxman sq38u that I could power the mids with if I send the preout to the dbx and send the mid output back into the luxman power amp input. The dbx would provide xlrs for the bass  and the tweets. So I could fine tune the xover points, I could in theory eq them very precisely and of course dial in appropriate delay. 

 

I'm a bit hesitant to go down that rabbit hole for two reasons: I might actually lose sleep and my experiences with sticking digital gizmos in the signal chain in the past have not been positive. The dbx is no audiophile piece of gear, but it works great for pro sound applications. 

Anyway, if you've already been there, done that and came back to good old inductors and caps and preferred to live with the bumps and warts of time smearing I'd be interested in hearing from you. 

[jwgorman]

I apologize for the auto-correcting that made this thread title confused:  *crossovers. D'oh 

[Guest David H]

Absolutely.

 

I went back to passives, and have not been happier.

 

Dave

[Chris A]

Dave, What active crossover were you using?

 

Chris

[jwgorman]

Thanks Dave, what type passives do you have. Oh, and my sanity thanks you

[mikebse2a3]

I'm a bit hesitant to go down that rabbit hole for two reasons: I might actually lose sleep and my experiences with sticking digital gizmos in the signal chain in the past have not been positive. The dbx is no audiophile piece of gear, but it works great for pro sound applications. Anyway, if you've already been there, done that and came back to good old inductors and caps and preferred to live with the bumps and warts of time smearing I'd be interested in hearing from you.

 

Thanks Dave, what type passives do you have. Oh, and my sanity thanks you

 

 

 

jwgorman I mean no disrespect but based on this paragraph I really don't understand why you even started this thread. If all it was going to take for you not to want to do active was one person saying they went back...???

 

There are good reasons to go active and good reasons to go passive and the end goals help to determine which is best for the individual.

 

miketn

[Guest David H]

Thanks Dave, what type passives do you have. Oh, and my sanity thanks you

I use ALK crossovers for my speakers.

 

Dave

[jwgorman]

Dave, I see. So ALK has a few flavors of crossovers, which flavor are you using for your khorns?

[Guest David H]

Dave, What active crossover were you using?

 

Chris

 

Chris  I know you are an active fan, and I have no desire to debate the benefits of active crossovers.

 

 I have used several active crossovers, some analog, others digital, I have experienced the benefits of time alignment and eq.

 

Active crossovers definitely have their place in the world however I prefer the simplicity of passives.

 

To this day, I use active crossovers for dialing my speaker projects, then I back engineer a passive crossover to go in its place.

 

Dave

[Guest David H]

Dave, I see. So ALK has a few flavors of crossovers, which flavor are you using for your khorns?

 

I used AP12-350 + ES5800s, before that Universals. I like them both.

 

Are your KHorns all original?

 

Dave

 

 

Edited November 30, 2015 by Fastlane Audio

[jwgorman]

 

I'm a bit hesitant to go down that rabbit hole for two reasons: I might actually lose sleep and my experiences with sticking digital gizmos in the signal chain in the past have not been positive. The dbx is no audiophile piece of gear, but it works great for pro sound applications. Anyway, if you've already been there, done that and came back to good old inductors and caps and preferred to live with the bumps and warts of time smearing I'd be interested in hearing from you.

 

 

 

Thanks Dave, what type passives do you have. Oh, and my sanity thanks you

 

 

 

jwgorman I mean no disrespect but based on this paragraph I really don't understand why you even started this thread. If all it was going to take for you not to want to do active was one person saying they went back...???

 

There are good reasons to go active and good reasons to go passive and the end goals help to determine which is best for the individual.

 

miketn

 

Mike, I simply wondered if anyone had gone down the active path only to return to a passive crossover. And the one guy who responded in the affirmative has nearly 3k posts, so I yes, I give his opinion some weight. Like I said in my original post, I have the gear to do it, but it's pro audio gear and I am by nature a guy who never does anything half-hearted. I could totally see me getting frustrated with the pursuit of curing the Khorns of their bumps and warts rather than just living with them. Before I set off to pursue the holy grail, I thought I'd ask the question. No more/no less. And I mean no disrespect either to those who actively crossover/delay their khorns. I know there is a significant benefit to time alignment as I've experienced it in the pro audio world.  

[jwgorman]

 

Dave, I see. So ALK has a few flavors of crossovers, which flavor are you using for your khorns?

 

I used AP12-350 + ES5800s, before that Universals. I like them both.

 

Are your KHorns all original?

 

Dave

 

 

 

Dave, 

 

I just noticed the picture you posted. So I opened it and saw that you restored some older Khorns! Very impressive before/after pics. You've changed the squawker horn and it looks like you have a different tweeter driver/horn in there as well. Very nice. 

Yes, I bought my Khorns new in '98 and they are mostly original with the exception of replacing the ceramic squawker driver with the alnico version, like the ones you're using and a very slightly modified AK-3 network. 

[Chris A]

I am by nature a guy who never does anything half-hearted...

 

...if so, then I'd really recommend a better active digital crossover than the one you identified, which I've heard of no successful implementations using fully horn-loaded loudspeakers such as Khorns in a home hi-fi environment. I recommend starting with something that you know will do the job without further modification required.

 

What you propose is like using an inexpensive passive crossover to make your Khorns sound better: they may sound better in certain ways due to some specific difference in implementation from the stock crossovers, but ultimately the owner returns to original configuration later because of issues with quality of the inexpensive crossover, thus blaming the approach itself rather than the implementation for the failure.

 

Good active digital crossovers/loudspeaker processors that I know of include Xilica, ElectroVoice, Yamaha, Ashly Protea, BSS Omni Drive, etc.  These units will work out-of-the-box with sufficient fidelity to support hi-fi and you can find most of them used for reasonable prices. They are investments that you can take from loudspeaker project to project indefinitely, rather than "for dialing in purposes only".  To me, using a unit of entry-level quality like a DBX, Behringer, miniDSP, or similar, all are half-hearted approaches that I've read about over and over again, all ending up poorly.  The odds are poor using very low price-point digital active crossovers, speaking historically.

 

If you are trying to cross Khorns I also don't recommend analog active crossover units, either.  The loudspeaker time delay mismatches are too great in magnitude, and their audibility too great not to correct those delay mismatches.  It may be necessary to use all-pass filters to correct the phase misalignments in the crossover passbands: I don't typically see all-pass and parametric EQ filters in typical analog active units.

 

For those that claim that they can't hear significant benefits of time alignment, I usually start by asking questions about what they actually have tried.  In every case that I've encountered (where the owner will share with me) something in the implementation prevented hearing the benefits clearly, mostly having to do with crossover quality to begin with, but also other major issues such as room acoustics, horns, and driver quality.  There is a threshold in anything related to hi-fi in terms of quality of implementation, above which a certain satisfaction in the result is realized. Like PWK, I would tend to flash a BS button on moral relativity statements on the audibility of the results of digital active crossover implementation.  There are very few instances that I've encountered where the issue was human hearing capabilities of the person(s) involved. The audible difference in my experience has always been dramatic when done well enough.

 

Chris

[jcmusic]

I don't use an active setup but, I do have my khorns time aligned. (Mid and Tweeters) I used the ALK Universal for years and loved it, now I use a custom made network that is basically that exact same thing as the Universal except with much better parts... Also have my room EQ'ed and treated...

[pzannucci]

I don't use an active setup but, I do have my khorns time aligned. (Mid and Tweeters) I used the ALK Universal for years and loved it, now I use a custom made network that is basically that exact same thing as the Universal except with much better parts... Also have my room EQ'ed and treated...

Canyonman,

 

What do you mean by time aligned for the mid and tweeter?  Are you talking the tweeter is at the same position as the mid-range driver? 

 

With the passive network you have to get rid of the time delay (or rather delay) for the mid and tweeter to each other and the 7 ft pathway for the bass horn.  Depending on the passive network and the electrical phase of the driver, you can only get rid of a small portion of that time delay.

 

 

The passive network implies that you will have a certain amount of eq and rolloff built into the network itself.  For a lot of people trying to simulate this roll off and eq in an active network is very painful.  Also what will sound good to one person may not sound good to another.  To each his own based on their ability to handle the complexity, tuning, and cost of the active setup.

[Chris A]

To each his own based on their ability to handle the complexity, tuning, and cost of the active setup.

 

I've seen this repeated elsewhere: I strongly disagree.  You should try it instead of listening to naysayers.

 

The only requirement for active setups is that you connect your amplifiers to the drivers via zip-strip wires, and can punch in the crossover frequencies and relative channel gains via the front panel. That's it. The settings for the Jubilee, Jubscala, Khorn and Belle/La Scala are already posted on this site. It's a 10 minute job to punch it in, and it never has to be done again: done.

 

There's no real complexity increase: only adding a stereo amplifier or two--which you probably already have on hand.  It actually gets simpler due to the fact that most passive crossovers require you to do something else to compensate for FR and phase/time mismatches in the crossover regions.  For the active digital crossover, just punch in the compensating settings, and you're done.

 

If you want to do better than stock out-of-the-can settings, you can install REW on your computer (freeware) and find a calibration microphone, and then fine tune the shelving and parametric EQ filters, etc.  There is no drift over time, unlike passive crossovers, and the loudspeaker performance doesn't shift because of heating due to resistive losses in the drivers or crossovers while under high load conditions.  And the increase in sound quality is significant over passive crossovers, IME.

 

The cost of a good active digital crossover on the used market is less than what I see for aftermarket passives advertised on this forum by forum members moonlighting--sometimes significantly less.  The new unit prices continue to decline over time and quality is increasing. The prices are about 1/3 of what they were just 7 years ago.  One of the best active crossovers on the market can be had for less than $1K (Xilica XP series).  In terms of increase in sound quality, I'd put it behind only the loudspeaker's drivers/horns and room acoustics.

 

YMMV.

 

Chris

Edited December 2, 2015 by Chris A

[mark1101]

Chris,

 

What's simple for some can be a daunting task for others.

[Chris A]

...like impedance concepts, room mode calculations, Ohm's law, how horns work (including different horn profiles), using EQ, setting up HT systems using room correction firmware, how much amplifier power is needed, how we perceive sound, differences between different types of DACs, the differences between turntables and phono cartridges, the differences between amplifier designs and implementations (including tubes/SS), different audio and video encoding formats and storage formats, the difference between digital and analog recording, how different piece part types in passive crossovers sound different and why they do, RLC network theory, the differences in acoustic drivers, T/S parameters, how computers and their operating systems do their jobs and how to set them up and troubleshoot them, how to install and use software applications, how to increase the security of your computer, how to use your computer to play music files ripped from discs, how to choose between different audio HT formats, how to build DIY loudspeakers and subwoofers, how to use an SPL meter, how to setup loudspeakers and acoustic treatments  in-room, etc.

 

I believe we know more than we let on and we learn the things that are important to learn. 

 

I don't believe that hiding behind the phrase "it's too hard" is synonymous with being an audiophile or merely a music loving enthusiast.  Active digital crossovers just aren't difficult to set up and use.  Like anything else, there may be more knowledgeable users than others, but that doesn't stop anyone from learning what they need to know. Active digital crossovers aren't even close to the difficultly in some of the topics above.

 

YMMV.

 

Chris

Edited December 2, 2015 by Chris A

[Travis In Austin]

Chris,

What's simple for some can be a daunting task for others.

I for sure concur with that. My DX 38 with Jubes was my first foray into the active crossover realm. As Chris stated, all of the settings were available, AND several forum members were running that set up and were available to help.

I would highly recommend getting whatever cable is required to hook up laptop to the crossover. It will reduce input time by over half, and you can tweak "on the fly."

I would say that if someine was playing with the idea and you could borrow a good unit it would be worth checking out. You can set it up for a program with time delay and one without and you can see for yourself whether you can tell the difference, and most importantly, whether it makes a difference to you or not.

Edited December 2, 2015 by dwilawyer

[Travis In Austin]

I know this is in other threads but what is the time differential between the bass and midrange/tweeter on a Khorn? Is it 7ms?