hey guys, im sorry to resurect the age old war between going active, or custom passive, but if i were to buy some top end speakers, is it better, (for competition purposes) to get a processor, go full active with 2 amps or, would i be better off getting one higher quality amp, and getting a custom passive built??

would i still need a processor with the passive?? or will they get the perfect sound from the crossover??

is it even worth going active when my mates at focal and rainbow spent months designing a crossover for me???

im refering to Be 3 ways, or possibly Platinum 2 ways??

i dont mind either way, and i understand that i will have a crap load more tuning options with the active setup, but the active setup is also much more expensive..

thanks guys...

Bear in mind both are expensive speakers, and people usually only go active after they are dissatisfied with the results of being passive.

Same as the processor - you may want to see if it is required for your system after you've decided on the speakers and found the optimal speaker placement, and you still want that little bit more control.

Unfortuantely its not as easy as having a formula which is x + y * z = perfect sound.

It takes a lot of experimentation, tuning and patience to get the best result possible. That why we are still on this forum!

If you refer to the Focal Utopia BE's, then dont go active.

The reason i say that is we recently had a visit by Dominic Baker, the head engineer behind the Utopia Be project, and he said anyone trying to run them active is wasting their time. He said they spent perhaps 30% of their design time perfecting the crossover block to be perfection for the drivers, and that absolutely noone with anything short of a speaker engineering doctorate and many years designing and building drivers would be able to improve them in the slightest by going active, and will be highly likely to in fact make them significantly worse.

The Be crossovers still allow one amp channel per driver, biamping if you will, so you can still use time alignment etc, but use the passive crossover mechanism to chop the sound up otherwise you'll be wasting your investment You have to remember, the Be crossover does a LOT more than just chop up frequencies - read up on it

Very interesting comments from Focal bearing in mind they go out of their way in their literature to mention how perfectly behaved the new Utopia drivers are and that, quote, "it is now non neseccary to include any kind of correction in the crossover".

I read this to mean that standard crossover functions are sufficient since the drivers are so well behaved.

If this is the case then there should be no reason why an active crossover could not be used to also give perfect results.

If however they are now saying that this is not possible then they are in fact contradicting the claims they are making in their own brochures and implying that the Utopia drivers are NOT well behaved which is why they would need the special "tailoring corrections" more possible from the passive crossovers.

So, which part of the Focal propaganda is correct and which should we believe?

i will second that while scratching my head, the active kit for the Be's is 2799, the full kit No.7 with crossblock is about 5large??? thats almost 2k on a crossover?? as gabby said i can run em active, spending the money on amps instead, and should in theory get the same result... could our trusty friends at focal be trying to jib us into buying 2k dollar crossovers for the sake of making a sale??

if someone from focal or anyone in the know can clarify, and prove with a demo that the Be's sound better off the crossblock rather than active, i will hapily purchase the crossblock...

but now, if i do get the crossblock, my funds dont stretch enough to buy two or three amps just to try both ways,

in effect, wen installed, i will always be thinknig wot if RAZOR was right maybe i should have gone passive, OR i will go passive, and wonder how they were active...

if proof cant be had from a focal rep of some sort through a demo, im not willing to fork over 5k on speakers that are going to sound

i will simply buy dyn audio 360's with the esotar, or supremo, and know that i have the speakers sounding as good as they could be without worrying bout the fricking crossblock

Hi Caydin,

If I was to make a call, I would go with the crossblock and run a single more powerful amp. You can always add a second amp later and run bi amping set up for more power.

If the drivers are not as perfectly behaved as Focal claim (no driver is 100% perfect) then some crossover correction may be needed which is much harder to do with the standard active crossovers that come with car head units.

Unless you can design your own passive crossover, if you needed to, then going with the crossblock would be your safest bet.

If you went active and could not adjust the sound you will be in trouble but if you go with the crossblock, you are guaranteed it is made for the drivers and it does offer massive adjustment options which should allow you to get the best sound from your car acoustics and installation set up.

Good luck..

don't like poking holes in people's ideas, but fully active is always going to be a better option.

Bi-amping a passive setup is really wasting time - unless you get the active crossover points and slopes exactly correct, then time alignment will not work. ever, and in most cases it will be worse due to the changing time delay (phase lag) through the passive circuits.

for that amount of money, you could easily put together a system with far superior flexibility and control.

The only thing you would lose in a DIY is the focal name and 'esteem'.

There are no absolutes. I am a huge fan of active with lower end stuff, but use passive in my system. As stated, trying to get better results than a high end passice set up, by going active, would requiiire huge expertise.
If you think active rules absolutley, then Ill see you in the lanes and we can see who wins
peace
Cyberpunky

passive xovers can reduce or even eliminate certain harmonic distortions from the amp which can make it sound better than an active setup. For eg. valve amps add a lot of 2nd order harmonics which some people like but to take full benefit of it would ideally need an active setup or single fullrange driver. Passive xovers can take out a lot of this 2nd order harmonics produced by the valves.
That said, I'm not a fan of valve amps and I'm all for active setup

there are good points to running both active and passive, i myself will run active(when my damn car is built) becasue i can... and i have a better chance of making it sound good/better, it might just take longer as i have more things 2 tune such as slopes, crossover points, time alignment and gains for the individual drivers....

i say do what you like and do your best to make it sound good.

i think im gonna go with either the Be 3 ways passive, or the dyn 3 ways, with the esotar, passive, and if im not happy, which im sure i will be, then ill buy another 4 chan and a processor and go active, im just wondering if there is anyone who has the esotar, or a store with them on display??? is thier a massive difference between them and the supremo?? the esotar is almost a grand deerer, and harder to install...
thanks for all the help too guys, much appreciated

also wot would be a suitable amount of power for a passive setup (considering i planned to give each side about 500 watts if i was to go active) would this be a suitable amount of power for a passive setup, too much, maybe a bit more??

also, obviously going from 3 amps to 1, which amp can produce this sort of power with a nice sound to it?? any recomendations??

power is really irrelevant as long as you have enough.

my total is about 600 watts including the sub, but I use most of it.

I'd say that's the lower end of what you'd need, as long as you don't blow things up.

both have pro's an con's, so why do manufacturers design passive crossover's for their speakers if active is best???

Because it means less hassle for the consumer.
Id imagine 97% of people who buy a pair of splits run passive. They don't want the hassle of running active, nor probably even know what it is.

I know the Pioneer TS-C160R sound a lot better active than passive.

And they intend to get the money back with $500 of components for over $2000

Hmm whereabouts are you I'm pretty sure Drew's ute from Northfield Moorooka has Esotars, but if your in Vic or elsewhere thats no use.

Go with Bostons.........

Hrmm see I personally think that passive in most instances that ive listened to sounds far superior to active. Infact I have always wanted to play with the idea of an extreemly sensitive sub in a passive setup...

TA and stuff comes into play when using the Focal Crossover block because they cannot allow for drive placement when they are designing the thing and thats where the TA issues come into play. I reacon run em passive, then passive biamped then try active. i mean crap a cross over is worth 3/16th of fu(k all when your spending that kind of money and I reacon Bi-amped would sound the best and even if it doesnt you can always pawn of an amplifier...

Hi Caydin,

A friend passed me a link to this passive/active discussion, said I might be able to help. We import Focal to Australia, and I've recently done a tour of Aus dealers with a techo from the Focal factory.

The active will give you better control. You can use time alignment, and fiddle around with a whole bunch of things. if you are a 'tweaker', go active. You will have more control.

If you just want it to sound superb, and not have to muck around tuning every time the atmospheric pressure changes or everytime you change CD's, the crossblock will sound superb. It's the best passive crossover money can buy, and has a thousand-and-one user adjustments too, so it's a lot of fun in itself.

Use the special Focal speaker wire if you use the crossblock. It's $30 a metre but has four conductors, a pair for the tweeter and a pair for the woofer. special copper and conductor stranding appropriate to the driver. Speaker cabling is treated with great reverence by home hi-fi crowd, unfortunately most car audio shops don't get beyond $5 a metre stuff.

If you do go active, buy the best possible outboard processors. Don't rely on the crossovers in the amplifiers or in head units. Buy something in a box by itself, preferably something like an Audio Control product. Built-in crossovers are notoriously inaccurate, and built-in time correction chips are often quite nasty in terms of how they handle the music signal.. If you are going to do active with a superb set of speakers of any brand, do it well, don't cut corners. Buy a separate equaliser, crossover, and time correction device. See, all of a sudden a crossblock doesn't sound so expensive.

If you haven't already bought speakers, I hope this is a help. If you buy Utopia Be, i can guarantee you will become a devotee, and they will give you many years of listening pleasure. There are sound-offs in Japan and China where you have to have Utopia Be to compete. there are literally hundreds of cars lining up with Be's. It's like anything really good, when you hear the price, you think 'that's outrageous', but the more you look at it and appreciate what you actually get for your money, the less outrageous it seems. Have you ever paid $5000 for a set of wheels when you could have bought a perfectly functional set for $600?

If you would like some detailed information, email me at work on the Focal website. Cheers and good luck with your new system.

Then whats the point of competing...?
They all sound the same... everyone gets equal last.