Atomic Amps - "Coincident Linear Reference" Designed by Jay Mitchell

There is the mindset that the actives would have better performance, due to the amps being designed for the cab, but that's not always the case.

Well, it wouldn't be correct to state that the ideal coupling between amp and loudspeaker makes an active cab the best possible choice (from a sonic POW). It's true that, all other things being equal, the amp in an active cab is optimized for the coupling within its quality\cost range; but if you use a much higher specified external amp, chances are the rig will sound better.
Note that an "higher specified amp" may not necessarily couple better with a specific cab tho. This is the reason why the most serious Hi-Fi magazines test couples of cabs and amps, and their interactions.
 
If I were looking for a FRFR solution the switchable compensations for speaker placement in the active version would be worth it's weight in gold.

Terry.
 
Well, it wouldn't be correct to state that the ideal coupling between amp and loudspeaker makes an active cab the best possible choice (from a sonic POW). It's true that, all other things being equal, the amp in an active cab is optimized for the coupling within its quality\cost range; but if you use a much higher specified external amp, chances are the rig will sound better.
Note that an "higher specified amp" may not necessarily couple better with a specific cab tho. This is the reason why the most serious Hi-Fi magazines test couples of cabs and amps, and their interactions.

That makes perfect sense. Here goes another wait for comparisons to be made between the two (sigh).
 
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Well, it wouldn't be correct to state that the ideal coupling between amp and loudspeaker makes an active cab the best possible choice (from a sonic POW). It's true that, all other things being equal, the amp in an active cab is optimized for the coupling within its quality\cost range; but if you use a much higher specified external amp, chances are the rig will sound better.
Note that an "higher specified amp" may not necessarily couple better with a specific cab tho. This is the reason why the most serious Hi-Fi magazines test couples of cabs and amps, and their interactions.

Home "Hi-Fi" magazine's reviewing processes are not a very good barometer of what gear you should choose professional touring gear Viabcroce. And your premise doesn't support, IMHO, your conclusion that any given 'higher specified external amp' will result in this: "chances are the rig will sound better". Assuming I am misunderstanding you, can you define 'much higher specified' and 'better' within this context? I'd like to understand what you are driving at.
 
The actives are proven to deliver a particular performance specification.

With an external amplfiier, the performance of the speaker would be subject to change depending on the amplifier.

That was the bottom line for me in choosing the active model.

Richard
 
Active speakers have at least two advantages over passives, provided the amps are well designed:

  • The gain and frequency response of each amp can be custom tailored to each individual driver, and that can result in a flatter overall response.

  • An active crossover can have a much steeper rolloff than what you can achieve with the passive crossover that's required for a passive speaker design. That helps clean up the speaker's response near the crossover frequency.


Either of these advantages may be overridden by your own personal requirements or by what equipment you already have.
 
Home "Hi-Fi" magazine's reviewing processes are not a very good barometer of what gear you should choose professional touring gear Viabcroce. And your premise doesn't support, IMHO, your conclusion that any given 'higher specified external amp' will result in this: "chances are the rig will sound better". Assuming I am misunderstanding you, can you define 'much higher specified' and 'better' within this context? I'd like to understand what you are driving at.

Sure :)
My praise about certain test modes in Hi-Fi is related to the method and the approach.
It has been proven that, no matter how good an amp is, it might not result the best choice for a given cab. As for what I consider, in general, a "good" amp, this relates to its ability to linearly output voltage, keeping the distortion value low, at the different frequencies. While it sounds reasonable that a 3,000 $ poweramp might be "better" than a 150 $ one, this ability is strictly related to the load the amp sees, IOW to the (system of) loudspeaker(s) it's driving.

The distortion generated by the several causes of non-linearity in the power amps is traditionally measured (in the Hi-Fi world) loading the amp with purely resistive loads of 4, 8 and 16 ohm. Due to the combination of a number of issues, the amp behaviour (in terms of distortion and maximum voltage output) when connected to loudspeaker may differ substantially from what measured with the resistive load, and more specifically it changes depending on the frequency. Furthermore, these values are different depending on the nature of the applied load, that is of the loudspeaker system the amp is loaded with.
The point is, that different amps exhibit different behaviours with the same cab. When testing several couplings, you find that some amps are relatively "indifferent" to the cab you load them with, while others are much more sensitive, and their maximum undistorted output varies a lot with the different cabs.

You'll easily see that, while these methods have been developed in the Hi-Fi realm, they are definitely correct when it comes to determine the optimal coupling between a poweramp and a loudspeaker for playing music as well.

The point in my previous post is, that while a "better" amp might be generally considered a better choice for a good sound, a correct coupling may return a better overall result than what you might get just choosing a more expensive amp.
 
Matrix power amp with sexy glow in a rack with the Axe glowing green above it ... nice big manly cables running to some external, robust, passive FR cabs with no amp in them to get vibrated to death or showing the rest of the band your builders shuck while fouterin about with volume knobs and switches at the side. Only big girls' blouses use those powered things :razz
 
I haven't read through this entire thread so I don't know if it has been mentioned or not and it's probably trivial at best. If your just using one speaker (the cab version) dims @ 17 5/8" wide x 15 3/4" deep compared to a typical molded rack case 21 1/2" x 21 1/2 to 25" deep it's going to have a top heavy look to it for those that use it for a back line solution and use it to set the Axe on top. I thought that was worth mentioning, of course the obvious fix is to buy two :mrgreen.
 
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