Using Devialet's active cross-over

[Music or sound]

Ironically it seems the way forward for selling active crossovers to the public is to market active speakers as lifestyle products. No clumsy great amps, no speaker cables trailing across your living room: just a digital source communicating via one cable (or even wirelessly) with the little amp/DAC packs inside your nice slim speakers.

As far as SQ is concerned, whilst I agree that passive crossovers are a bad thing, for my money they don’t rank in the top three bottlenecks in speaker design. For me the top three SQ bottlenecks are: 1. cabinets, with their boxy, resonant character; 2. electrodynamic drivers and their problems with inertia; 3. using any crossover at all, active or passive (full range, please!).

Matt

I agree with no crossover would be the best (just built such speakers this year) but I have not heard full range drivers which have enough bass energy for large rooms and good high frequency performance (except very large Sound Lab).
Also there is doppler distortion to consider. Bending Wave driver have a very wide frequency range and no inertia problem (no acceleration of a mass) but they have problems with reaching low frequencies. So a woofer with excellent time response is necessary and thus a cross-over.

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On another note; I see you have a stone floor and a high (raked?) ceiling with little furniture. Does it have a negative impact on SQ? I'm very curious because that's what our new living room will be like and I'm a bit worried about echo echo echo...

Cheers,

Pim

The floor is very reflective but ceiling is slightly vaulted and very light construction with thick layers of cotton insulation (Bonded Logic) which has a very good wide range sound absorption. Also there is a small gap around the perimeter of the ceiling only covered with speaker cloth. So the ceiling acts as a very large sound absorber.
The speakers face a wall mostly covered with a bookcase and additional absorption material avoiding longitudinal echoes.
Some more acoustic treatment would be beneficial but I have not found anything which would fit esthetically- maybe sound absorbing art objects?