GET ACTIVE

Wayne Hyde, Customer Tech Support & Education at distributor CAVD, welcomes a significant shift in speaker tech.

It’s happening, right before our ears, a tidal wave of change in the home loudspeaker category. We are going ACTIVE!

The manufacturers are all waking up to it now, the benefits of matching amplification and DSP (digital signal processing). Some are veterans of applying this technology and some have some serious catching up to do.

WHAT IS ACTIVE?

What does active mean exactly? Most loudspeakers are passive designs, they have an analogue crossover inside which essentially splits up the frequency bands to feed to each drive unit. The high-frequency band goes to the tweeter and the low frequencies to the woofers. You can use passive speakers with an amplifier of your choice.

When you ‘go’ active with DSP, that analogue crossover is replaced by a digital one, inside the speaker or in rack-mounted form. This digital crossover feeds the amplifier/s and doesn’t waste precious power to carry out its tasks. Ultimately, one of the many benefits is an improved SPL from the speaker for any given Watt of power.

DSP also allows for finer EQ and digital filters to be applied rather than using analogue components. The sound of the speaker can be shaped and tuned more accurately by the manufacturer. On top of this, limiting and compression can be there, on the side-lines for when the volume levels get pushed high. This is great, it protects the speaker drivers and maintains a balanced sound within the physical limits of the drivers. If you’re considering an active system with rack-mounted DSP amplifiers, then check if it has this feature.

THE BENEFITS TO YOUR CUSTOMER

For your customer, firstly in most cases, they hear a better sound. The speaker is under full control of the DSP amplifiers chosen by the manufacturer and presents a tighter, more controlled bass and a feeling of authority in the way the music or movie audio comes across. It’s more reliable too, the chances of a driver being damaged over the years are close to zero. It’s essentially a closed system that takes care of itself.

FASTER COMMISSIONING

When speakers are purchased with matching DSP and amplifiers, compared to the traditional practice where just about any amplifier could end up connected to any speaker, you are way ahead in terms of hearing that speaker at its best. Also, DSP can often have settings where you can select the installation type, such as on-wall, in-wall, or away from the wall, which all affect the sound enormously. Features like these chip away at the need for auto-EQ, or room compensation software. It can be very rewarding to take an hour or two to run ‘room EQ’ when commissioning a project but sometimes the results are just different, not necessarily better. So, in many cases, there are many hours to be saved on-site with active systems. CAVD supplies a wide array of advanced loudspeakers systems for CI, get in touch to find out more.