061 – Passive, Bi-Amped, and Active Speakers
A speaker may need more than one channel of amplification.
Written by Scott Adamson
The speaker systems we use for large-scale productions can be super complicated. Each speaker zone can need several channels of processing and amplification; each zone can have more than a dozen speaker boxes; and there can be a bunch of different zones, each covering a different section of the audience.
Of course, most live music across the globe happens in much smaller venues. For every arena show in a given city, there will be a hundred smaller concerts, happening in clubs, churches, restaurants, and other types of venues. These shows need much simpler, much smaller PA systems.
In this video, I discuss three core concepts of speaker systems: passive, bi-amped, and active (powered). Plus, to fully show you how the simplest speakers work, I open up a passive 2-way speaker, which we can drive with only one channel of amplification:
The concepts in this video are the building blocks for all PA systems. Every speaker driver needs amplification, whether it’s 2 drivers being powered by one channel of amplification (passive crossover), or each driver getting its own channel of amplification (bi-amped for 2-way speakers, tri-amped for 3-way speakers, etc.)
Also, the speakers can have this amplification built-in (active/powered), or need external amplifiers (passive). There isn’t a right or wrong choice for which of these to use — even at the highest level of audio production we can see, for example, active line arrays from Meyer Sound or passive line arrays from L-Acoustics.
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As audio technology advances, the electronic components needed to amplify an audio signal to speaker level have become smaller and lighter, so it’s much easier to fit them into active speakers. Plus, the general quality of inexpensive components keeps getting better with each generation of audio gear. This is great for smaller venues — even though the systems we use in large productions can be multi-million dollar setups, the cost of getting a quality-sounding PA in a small venue gets less expensive every year.
