Passive vs Active set-up power requirement for speakers

[car1990]

I read somewhere that when one is running active set-up, less power is required to drive the speaker, but how much less power? Does the passive x-over really "waste" a lot of power?

[diceman1000]

i don't know about wasting power,but the crossovers on my cl61a's would shut the tweet down all the time,and before anybody says,"your gains were set wrong",my gains were turned all of the way down on my monitor 1 mk 2.70...i went active about a month ago...i'm still trying to get the eq dialed in,but for the sq,WOW... i wouldn't go back passive for anything...just my $0.02

Damon

[solacedagony]

The difference between active and passive is that in passive, you only need one amplifier channel per SPEAKER since you're only amplifying one frequency spectrum across multiple drivers. With active, you need one amplifier channel per DRIVER (meaning a 4 channel amplifier for a 2way setup, a 6 channel or 3 2 channel amps for a 3way setup). A passive crossover will lose some power in the form of heat in the components. I would imagine an active crossover would lose just as much if not more since it also has electrical components, plus it needs to power itself.

[High Society]

^^ Hit it on the head.

I have read that a lot of people wont go back to passive. Active is just more expensive, since each speaker needs it's own channel. And you have to buy more amps. So it's more on what you would rather spend.

[GlassWolf]

the power "lost" in a passive setup comes from heat losses across the capacitors and coils in the crossover network. It's measurable but not significant.
Active setups use one amp channel for each speaker, and a line-level electronic crossover so no power is lost across caps and chokes.