AN ACTIVE HISTORY

摘要

Active speakers are nothing new, the earliest cinema system from British Thompson-Houston was 'active', back in 1929. In the 1950s, Sound Sales had a valve system, and by the '70s no serious recording studio would be seen without one. Domestically, there have been very few successful entrants in this market. One thinks of the Meridian M1 compact monitor, and from the same era the Linn/Nairn 'six-pack' - a brace of Nairn amps and Isobarik speakers. But it is brands like ATC, which has a foot in both the domestic and pro audio field that really succeed in making active speakers. There can be great advantages to such designs. No matter how good the amplifier damping factor, the loudspeaker's crossover components are going to kill it. Controlling crossover curves can be far more accurately done at a line level with active circuits than passively at the speaker's terminals.