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I wouldn't call it "the ultimate performance upgrade for a pair of Maggies?" ...

Posted by andyr (M) on January 17, 2011 at 18:29:01

In Reply to: How does an active crossover stack up? posted by ggking7 on January 17, 2011 at 14:33:40:

But I think it's one of the 4 essential legs of an "ultimate" upgrade programme. IE. these 4 legs are (not in any order of significance):
* line-level XO (active or PLLXO for the 2-way Maggies)
* braced stands
* hardwood frames
* something to prevent RFI picked up the drivers (especially the true-ribbon) from getting into the amp ... aka the "choke tweak".

Then there are of course:
* razoring - either half or full. I haven't tried that yet but sufficient numbers have reported back good things about it that it seems like a definite goer.
* removing the steel wire connectors and replacing the fuse holder with a decent one (or removing it entirely).

I put these 2 in a separate category because I think that, whilst they do provide an improvement, it's not at the same percentage increase as any one of the "4 basic legs". Then again, doing only 1 out of the 6 mods will not take you to the optimal state - IMO you need to do all 6 to get your Maggie to the "ultimate" state. :-))

As previously posted, if you go active with a sophisticated digital device like the DEQX, you can do much more than simply replace the passive LP & HP filters with active filters. Phase correction and room correction would be wonderful facilities to have ... unfortunately, my active XO is a simple analogue setup. :-((

3 byproducts of going active that no-one has mentioned so far are:

1. Given that Maggie bass panels can soak up as much power as you like to give them, it means you can use a super-powerful (but not necessarily "great sounding") amp on the bass panels and a powerful-enough-but-great-sounding amp on the mids & tweeters. So Maggie gets the best of both worlds. :-))

You can also use medium power amps successfully - like 2 nice-sounding amps in a 2-way active setup which are each 200w into 4 ohms and which, by themselves, are insufficient to power the Maggies on their own.

As I understand it, the more output watts that are delivered, the more output devices are required ... and the more difficult the task becomes to keep these output devices locked in step.

2. When the bass amp is called upon to deliver all its got, the mid/tweeter amp is not affected and can still deliver what it needs to, to make the high frequencies sound good, without being compromised like a single amp is in the passive XO situation.

3. You can mate Maggie with subs and roll off the bass panels (thus reducing distortion) without forcing the high frequencies to go through the sub's highpass active XO. (Only the bass panel amp is affected by the sub's highpass XO.)

Regards,

Andy

Edits: 01/17/11

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