passive vs. electronic passover


Read an interesting article on Bi Amping. It was stating that you should disconnect your passive crossovers to properly Bi-Amp, so you would need to hook up electronic crossovers! http://sound.westhost.com/bi-amp.htm#common-question
Any comments?
chiroman
Yeah, I am not sure why one would bi-amp without crossovers proximal to the amps. Active crossovers are commonly used in car audio, and why they are not used much in home audio is something I do not understand. Most notably, Linn owners in general seem to be sold on the benefits.
LOL...ski6132

The biggest benefits of bi-amping will indeed come if you remove the passive crossover. The article neglects to mention that an active crossover can also be designed to match the drivers so that phase linearity is maintained across the crossover for the sound from the drivers. (This is not the same as a phase coherent active crossover - it means fine tuning the active crossover precisely to each driver)

The article also does not mention the advantage of a steep active crossover....you can rapidly reduce out of band unwanted driver behavior (such as beaming or breakup) to extremely low inaudible levels whilst still getting the most out of each drivers linear operating range.

A digital processor may one day allow voice coil temperature and/or driver output to be monitored so that it can be controlled to precisely match the input (making the driver sonic signal match the input drive signal and even further reducing distortion). Meyer seems to be working on this but it is not easy because drivers (unlike electrical circuits) have inertia and take time to respond to feedback. Nevertheless, in future some form of correction may be expected to improve accuracy.

It is a no brainer really (from a technical performance perspective)...