Thank you for taking the time to respond. Your contributions on this subject carry significant weight with me, and my understanding of this subject has been significantly enhanced.

First... I do believe that an active crossover, properly designed and implemented is a fundamentally superior approach. It makes sound sense that employing the crossover at line level would promote very precise control of the signal contours and simplify the circuit between the amplifier(s) and the driver(s). Assuming this is a simple demonstrable fact, any opinions to the contrary, no matter how well intentioned, would be ignorant, uniformed and otherwise false, period. Opinions are like #@$%&$#, everybody's got one.

I personally do not have the expertise or resources to perform a detailed comparison and evaluation of the advantages and/or disadvantages of an active (line level) crossover vs. a passive crossover. This comparison should be the subject of a very large number of research papers, authored by researchers in both the audio industry and academia. The quality and motivations of the research are sure to vary widely.

Even if we accept the simple truth that an active crossover design is fundamentally better, there are important questions that beg asking... How much better? What criteria do you use to evaluate sound quality? And, what weight to you place on each of these criteria? Is the sonic degradation you describe so severe and inevitable that no passive design can compare favorably? At this point, things start getting in to the subjective realm.

Please consider this experiment. To provide an "optimum" "performance benchmark, we expertly design a "spare-no-expense" active crossover network to complement a three-way speaker using the best drivers available. If we could demonstrate through careful measurement and analysis that SOME passive crossover designs were significantly inferior to this optimized active design, would that lead to the conclusion that ALL passive crossovers are significantly inferior to active ones? NO it would not. Furthermore, if you could demonstrate that an expertly designed passive crossover very closely approached the quality criteria of the "optimum" active design, would it be worth consideration as an alternative approach? Depending on the savings inherent in the passive design, it might well be a worthy alternative. This is the crucial issue I am attempting to resolve.

I promise you that I will pursue your comments regarding the superiority of active crossovers, and report any research and informed opinions that I discover. For my part, it is not about winning an argument, but in developing an better informed opinion that is worthy of consideration.

Respectfully,

Allan