Active filters? (Off Topic)

by Don Reid, Rural Northwest Georgia, USA, Wednesday, February 04, 2009, 16:33 (5532 days ago) @ carlesdg

Hi Carlesdg,

I have chosen to use active filters for many years. My current choice is the DEQX HDP-3 digital crossover and room, time, and phase correction device. This is a true audiophile component.

I use it to triamplify a speaker system consisting of 18 cubic ft. folded corner horn woofers with an in room response of 19Hz to 160Hz +or- 2 dB, Oris 150 horns driven by AER MD3 drivers and Fostex T900A horn tweeters. The DEQX allows for very high order, linear phase, seamless crossovers and melds the three disparate drivers into a very coherent musically pleasing whole. Even though the acoustic centers of the woofers and drivers in the Oris horns are physically more than 5 meters apart the DEQX time aligns them as though they were separated by no more than 3 mm.

I really pity those who are still attempting to bludgeon the high level signal around with capacitors and colis which very frequently deviate 5% or more, sometimes much more, from their specified values. Passive filters also prevent the quite important benifits of connecting the power amplifier directly to the driver and also create insertion losses and diminished damping factors. However the main problem with passive filters is that they can not even attempt to accomplish many of the things that the latest generation of digital active filters accomplish so elegantly, musically and easily.

All of this is not surprising. When electric phonographs were introduced many claimed that the old wind up acoustic phonograps sounded better. When stereo was introduced many claimed that mono sounded better, and clung to their old mono systems for years. Progress comes hard for some.

Don Reid


Complete thread:

 RSS Feed of thread