Hey Painttoad, these are works of art... the kind of industrial design you may find in the Museum of Modern Art. These were developed by B&W as the Nautilus concept speaker, and while they are meant to be listened to, these are NOT the monitors B&W markets to studio clients who can pay any price. At $60,000+ they are expensive, but not beyond reach of any elite recording studio. These studios can afford anything that will make the product better, and ensure the artists’ confidence in the final recording. However, I have not had the pleasure of hearing Nautilus speakers.

The B&W monitors you find at Abbey Road Studios (and other equally prestigious studios) are the N801's and the N800's. These are not active bi-amped, but use the speakers' internal crossovers. What gives? If there is such a dramatic improvement inherent to an active bi-amp vs. a passive bi-amp scheme, you might reasonably conclude that B&W are snake oil salesmen, and that these sound engineers are pretenders. Those who believe this can stop reading now.

My inquiries to B&W have never contradicted the conceptual purity of a passive crossover scheme. However, as I understand, there are three principal reasons B&W is not currently advocating this approach:

1) Flexibility and convenience. (monitor placement, equipment and amplification types) “They know more people can use these units out of the box. Yes, that’s marketing to the dumb consumer too”.

2) The experience, time, and expense required to implement a successful and PREDICTABLE active crossover using the drivers and enclosures designed, developed and manufactured by B&W is beyond the ability of almost anyone. “They basically don’t trust you to do it well enough to meet, or meaningfully improve on their passive crossover design”.

3) and… The sonic penalties of using the passive crossovers developed by B&W for their drivers and cabinet enclosures are so negligible that points 1 & 2 above trump an active solution. “They like their passive crossover networks. And since they have demonstrated with the Nautilus Speaker that they can design and build an active crossover speaker, they believe they can evaluate the costs and benefits of each approach”.

So, if you have a great active crossover set-up, Fantastic. But, it must be done with equipment that is compatible, and with significant expertise. Personally, I do not have the level of confidence required to customize my speakers/system in this manner, and I believe there are much safer and productive alternatives to sonic nirvana. Yes… I own N803’s, and I passive bi-amp. To each his/her own.

Allan