Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Blind testing between active and non LFR1100??

Well, lets be honest.. you don't even need to use a screen as both speakers effectively look identical.

So I am wondering .. Craig, you have both active and not active LFR1100. have you tried doing a test between the two to see if they are really night and day better as Mojo seems to want to poetically paint?

I am sort of wondering if trading in and trading up is justifiable for the $4000+ in cost.

Matt - I have not done a direct comparison. The actives are better, but $4000 better is a really subjective concept.

Considering the actives, to my ears, outgun the Magico speakers for $40,000 per pair tells me what a great speaker they are, and thus a bargain at about $12 g's with amps.

But - the passives are REALLY good as well. If $4000 isn't a burden, yes, it's worth the jump. If $4000 is a lot of money, and you love your passives, keep them. They are a wonderful speaker.

I am more curios for the Floyd Toole blind test to see what it is that people hear between the Active vs Non Active of the same speaker. Effectively, I wonder if the internals are the same between the two. I know that the active will have no passive crossovers inside, and will require to have some different wire hookups, but the fundamentals of the speakers are the same.

So it is a real interesting wonder for me, if you have single Active speaker, and a single Passive LFR1100 speaker sitting in a room, and you played a passage of music then switched, if anyone will notice a difference.

if your two LFR speakers are the same grain finish, then you could even do some fun to really test what people are hearing by randomizing if you have two of the original passive or two active, or and active and passive speaker. Logically if the speakers are the same then people should hear the same.. but it really puts to test if we hear what we want to hear. And will test how much better the Active are over the non.

I know for me that it is very unlikely that I will ever find the need to trade in and upgrade a speaker that blows me away when I listen.

As a different side note, I have the M3 inside my office room and the limiting factor with those speakers is being allowed to play them at a loudness level that will make them really shine.

It would be an interesting blind test to do between Active and Passive as the only difference. We have a switcher that allows us to switch between two different crossovers to the same speaker and we have a switcher that allows us to switch between different DSP codes to the same speaker. With some modifications to our switchers we should be able to do both simultaneously.

What we do know is that the difference between an LFR1100 Passive and an LFR1100 Active is not only about Passive versus Active. When designing the LFR1100 Active I wrote DSP code that replicates the passive LFR1100 Family of Curves in an Active speaker. I did this so we could do blind testing between the Passive and Active Family of Curves. So we do know that putting very linear Listening Window and Sound Power curves on top of each other wins the blind test.

The passive LFRs are not compensated mid-band. This is evident in the curves and is a really big deal. It may actually be a bigger deal to the listening experience than equipotential listening window and sound power. In addition to passive vs. active LFR listening tests, it would be interesting to also do active LFR vs. active bi-polar.

BTW, Axiom might want to stop using the term "active" for this line. Active implies using electronic filters which are, for many reasons, not nearly as good as digital filters. Not calling this line "digital LFRs" may therefore be causing confusion for prospects.

That's what I find most confusing about this newer craze with active speakers.
How much different from the limits of a passive filter is it?

Also understanding the difference of powering {bi wire} with each band having it's own power.

Mostly I've seen people take out and redo the whole crossover with "Highest" quality components caps. filters, and power each band with an Amp. channel. Not easy conversions.

Totally cool is Axioms approach with a version of their D.S.P.

Suspecting the Axiom approach has greater control and bandwidth ranges from Digital D.S.P. Avoiding limits of Caps./filters etc.

A multi-driver DSP like Axiom's gives the designer fine control over each driver array's frequency response curve. Fine control means three things: bespoke roll-off profiles, bespoke mid-band compensation and bespoke system response. Bespoke roll-off allows for improved integration between all the driver arrays. Bespoke mid-band compensation minimizes resonances. Bespoke system response allows for equipotential sound power and listening window curves. These are all impossible to achieve in a practical way with traditional means like passive filters, and driver and cabinet improvements for many reasons. The digital filters, located upstream of the amplification, result in a simpler speaker load for each amp channel. The result there is much improved control over each driver array.

The benefits for the audience are all the poetry I've offered up in past posts. Those benefits are impossible to achieve even with fictitiously ideal components in passive filters. Note also that the passive cross-overs in v4 (and I think v3) are as good as a designer can practically achieve.

P.S. Many companies tout exclusivity by describing the endless investments they've made in esoteric passive cross-overs, cabinetry and drivers. These are usually exotic configurations or materials or both. But these result in very expensive, very incremental improvements. On the other hand, digital filtering like on the digital LFRs, is a step change improvement in performance and within very optimized cost for the consumer.

I'm guessing a bit here, but to me the real advantage of DSPs over hard-wired electronics is the ease of experimentation and tweaking.

I don't have much digital audio experience but I was lucky enough to get in at the start of digital video... and if there's anything I remember clearly from that time it's that at most of the really cool effects we developed happened by accident while trying to implement something much less interesting.

It's interesting that it takes a big box full of DSP to make a multi-driver tower speaker give the same kind of ruler-flat frequency response that an M2 has been doing for a decade, using "Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave" technology.

EDIT - looks like the web pages have been updated to make it clear that the active LFR's include frequency response fine-tuning... very nice.

Question for Ian - the LFR1100's response (along with that of most of the larger speakers) slopes down ~5dB between 100 Hz and 15 KHz, while M2's (for example) are flat between those frequencies. Is the slope down something deliberate ?

I'm going to have to carry even more speakers up and down the stairs to compare, aren't I ? I figure about half of my total exercise involves hauling speakers between the HT loft and the rest of the house.

The advantages of digital filters go way beyond ease of experimentation and tweaking. Analog filters simply cannot do what digital filters can. Designed properly, they are far quieter, drift negligibly, can be phase linear, have less ripple and faster transition and higher attenuation than their analog counter-parts. They can be used to eliminate high Q and low Q resonances very easily which is a very complicated and expensive thing to pull off with analog particularly if you have many resonances to deal with.

Regardless of how flat the M2 response looks, it is not as linear as the digital LFRs. I can hear the difference in accuracy without trying even at quieter SPLs. The first immediate difference is the bass and lower mids and the second is image separation.

I see the M2 graph is still just showing the basic on-axis response so we will need to update that to show the Listening Window and Sound Power. What we hear in a room is a combination of the Listening Window and the Sound Power so just showing an on-axis response or the responses out to 45 or 60 degrees off-axis is not enough information. The big change that happened with the introduction of v4 was the concentration on getting the Sound Power curves, as well as the Listening Window curves, to have a nice linear response. The Listening Window should be linear across the frequency band and the Sound Power should be linear but tilting down so it is about 10 dB down at 10k Hz. In an omnidirectional speaker that downward tilt in the Sound Power comes up due to energy being radiated in all directions. In order for the omnidirectional speaker to not sound overly bright due to this extra energy in the Sound Power it is necessary to tilt the Listening Window downwards to compensate. In the LFR1100 Active the Listening Window and Sound Power curves are the same curve and hence the downward tilt of 5 dB to 10k Hz. The bringing together of the Listening Window and Sound Power yielded some amazing results in the blind testing. There is no question we are on to something here.

Ian, the M3 amplitude response is also "old".

I thought this was really cool.

How big of a difference would the active 1100s be over the 100s?

As I've said many times, the difference to my ears is very big indeed. And that is listening in stereo. I am sure in mono blind testing, I'd hear a bigger difference. In my room, the actives disappear; the M100s do not. The M100s also don't have the clarity of the actives (not as neutral), as precise imaging or width. Depth could be debatable. Bass is far more linear on the actives too. I need XT32 on the 100 but not the actives. The actives also go louder with less power and distortion although that isn't a factor in my room.

Canes, when you get the actives, listen to Kraftwerk's Radioactivity. You will swear your surrounds are on. The effect is also there with the M100s but not as prominent or clear. It's also there with M5 and M2 (bookshelves) but more puny and not as wide. The actives make the effect larger, broader, clearer and significantly more noticeable.

This version is like Atmos at my place. It's like having height, width, a few side and overhead speakers but in stereo! I'm sure if my room wasn't cursed I'd hear sounds behind me too.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=o1kOOJwYlOc&feature=share

Sorry, I meant the passive 1100s. The curves are much more linear and closer than the 100s but I was curious as to how much difference it would be going from the 100s to the Omni-directional speakers. I’m guessing the dsp dials things in a lot better.

I can step up to the passive 1100s much sooner since I could run both plus center with my 1500 but not sure if it would be worth it vs waiting a little longer to move to the actives.

I wish I knew. I've never compared M100s with passive 1100s. And looking at the curves, like you say, the passive 1100 is better but exactly by how much given the closeness of the curves? Remember jritz though? He claims his 660s are Nirvana. Then again there's Cork who liked the M80HP better than 660s. But that could be because of set-up and listening preferences. But then, the passive 1100 is not a 660, is it?

You could be the first one to compare M100s against passive 1100s and then passive 1100s against active. Imagine the fame that would come your way.

I’ve been giving it some serious thought. I could at least get them in and test drive them against the 100s.

This is perhaps the only way you will find peace.

I think I may go down that road. Curiosity is getting the best of me.

This is what Andrew had to say about the passive LFR line.

"OK, I've finally been asked to spill some of the beans regarding this new, as-yet-unnamed, model. By now we have received a number of questions, all of which are in a similar vein:

I've seen these before, aren't they just a bipolar speaker?
Why have drivers on the back of a speaker where I can't hear them?
Why do you need 4 amplifier channels and a DSP anyway?
What are you guys up in Dwight smoking, and where can I get some? wink

First a little background:
Many people do not realize that the sound we hear from a speaker in a room is comprised of direct and reflected signals that come from all surfaces of the speaker, except for the bottom if they are floor-standers sitting directly on the floor. smile It's an amazing sight to measure a conventional speaker in an anechoic chamber with the BACK of the cabinet pointed at the microphone and witness that there is quite a bit going on back there. The bulk of the sound does come from the front and sides of a typical speaker, but as we move higher and higher in frequency, more of that information disappears as we move around the cabinet. Low frequencies don't behave the same way as they are omnidirectional by nature. This gives us something of a discontinuity in that at higher and higher frequencies we are radiating less and less acoustic energy, or power, into the room. So why do we care? Well, simply because this issue of "most of the energy up front" tends to compress the natural sense of acoustic and depth perspective of instruments, singers, and the space they were recorded.

The idea of biploar, which as many of you know I am VERY familiar with, was to duplicate the signal coming from the front of the speaker at the back of the speaker. This signal would be in phase with the front (push-push), unlike a dipole which would be out of phase at the back (push-pull). Theoretically, you would now have an ideal radiation pattern all around the cabinet, with no reduction in mid and high frequencies. Unfortunately, there are significant issues that come with the benefits. One is that by introducing this extra energy into the room, you end up skewing the total balance. It's becomes tipped up at the top end. You also end up with some serious cancellations between the front and rear drivers which tend to wash out images and give you 10 foot wide vocalists! And because you are driving this bipolar speaker with a single amplifier, you have limited control on how different the front and back signals can be. In many cases the level of the rear section is simply reduced to try and combat these issues. We have a speaker that has a natural sense of space and depth, but with tonal and imaging issues. Great...

The solution? Come up with a way to give the speaker a perfect power response, get rid of the cancellation, and make sure the tonal balance is perfect. Easy, right? Yes, it does sound easy, but practically it's difficult to implement. You need to drive the front and back sections differently and independently. That's why we need an extra stereo amplifier for this speaker. We also need to have far more control over the acoustic response of both sections of the speaker, something impossible with conventional crossover networks on their own. 4-channel DSP to the rescue!

If you do this right, and, believe me, that takes a mountain of R&D, you can have your cake and eat it to. Exactly what we are doing and, more importantly why, will remain a secret. What we have been able to achieve is what we believe to be the first "omnidirectional" speaker, which we've codenamed LFR (Linear Field Radiator), that does not trade off neutral tonal balance and imaging precision for an artificially big sense of space. If you have listened to bipolar speakers before and haven't liked them, you need to listen to these! smile"

I’m guessing they would benefit from the 1500 vs running the ada-1000/dsp combo.

The 1000-4 will work just fine for the passive 1100s. The 1500 will drive them louder with improved noise performance.

BTW, I've been running my actives in pure 2.0 for music the last 3 weeks. There's no question sealed subbage makes a difference but I find with most material, a sub isn't needed. On some material, I even prefer them in 2.0. I find actually that I enjoy the dual 125s with them for music over any of the sealed subs.

I've come to understand that these actives are perfect for those who don't want to fuss with subs, room correction and placement. The more I listen to them, the more I realize what a gift they are to sound reproduction.

The passives would be a temporary thing until I upgrade to the actives but I feel like the omni would still have a lot of added benefit in my room.

I suggest 1550-5s for the actives. The actives, lacking any passive components, will allow any equipment noise to pass through unattenuated. The 1500 has better noise performance than the 1000.

If you do get the passives and then the actives, you may want to try the passives for surround duty.

You'll also want to listen to them in mono. It's pretty messed up how mono sounds like the whole band has moved forward and wrapped around you. Try it with the M100 and see if you get that effect.

I'll try them in mono this weekend. I'm going to try the passive 1100s too but I think I'll wait for the black friday sale to come back to add to my discount. Besides with tax extensions in full swing there isn't any rush to get them any time soon.

There are various omnis in refurb.

Are you talking about the actives?

Aye.

There's a set of actives in black oak in there. I could run one of them for now until I could get another 1500.

Aye, Canes. I like men of action.

I’ll listen to them again, in a few weeks hopefully (not setup right now), but this was not my experience.

Then there are only three explanations: you broke them, they suffered from position error, you need ears-brain therapy.

Or perhaps I set them up correctly

I moved from the M80 to the LFR1100 and will say the change was substantial. Now you need to remember that the LFR1100 is sort of like the M100 with the advantage of a DSP and an extra set of speakers at the back of the unit.

I did give someone a listen to my LFR's a few years ago pre pandemic and one of the things he wanted to see what what it was like if you turned off the rear speakers on the LFR. that is easy to do, so I gave it a try and the sound envelope that makes you feel like you are inside the music for lack of a better description fell away and you suddenly could sense that the speakers were infront of you instead of around you.

I was amazed by the great sound that they produced but i will always give an equal bit of warning. When I first got the LFR i was missing quite a bit of the speaker capability because the pre-amp that i had wasn't up to the task. make sure that you have a clean pre-amp as these speakers are very revealing.

I haven't heard the passive LFR1100 but I could see how it may have the characteristic sound of the M100. What do I mean by that? The M100 is no slouch but it is not transparent. The actives on the other hand have no character. They sound like an ideal electro-acoustic transducer compared to all other speakers I've heard. The closest with the same characteristic is the M2 (within its rated specifications).


Indeed. And amps.

I was able to get the m100s to disappear but I have a feeling once the room is built out with drywall they are going to appear again. I feel like I would still gain quite a bit going to the LFRs and driving them with the 1500 should produce clean sound. Hopefully the black friday sale comes back next month and I can go ahead and get them ordered. With the 30 day trial I can set them up side by side with the 100s and see how much improvement there is.

In the meantime, pick up a set of M2 bookshelves and set them up so the tweeter is 6" below your ears. Then tell us how well those disappear relative to the M100s.

If you don't have stands, set them up on the shipping boxes and soup cans.

I can do that then turn them into rear surrounds for 7.2.6

Canes, you are going to LOVE them! Walnut in natural, caramel, espresso or cherry chestnut...yum...so good! There's nothing wrong with different flavors scattered throughout.

The M100 is an incredible speaker in the range of sounds that it can produce. This is a testament to the work that Ian and Andrew are doing.

My comment is that I would guess that the LFR1100 was in extension of the M100, sort of like the LFR880 is based off the M80 speaker set. I have not ripped open any of my speakers to take a deeper look at the internet structure of the speaker to do a side by side comparison, but I would dare to say that the internals of the LFR1100 and the M100 would be pretty close in the major structures inside

The LFR by my experience takes the sound quality of the M100 and smooths out any of the edges and then wraps the sound around you so as Ian has said to me many times, opens up the sweet spot for the best listening position and makes it more the whole room.

Mojo. when you listen to your M2 or M5, do you find that the sound envelope (transparent feeling) is more focused to a small sweet spot that if you sit in the right spot you can almost feel the speakers disappear? Move 3-4 feet to the left or right and the effect collapse. Move forward or backwards and you feel as if the speaker comes back into view as to what you are hearing.

The beauty of the LFR is that there is a controlled "echo" or reflection that with the DSP just opens up the listening area so that what you hear feels more all around you and you're not required to sit in the perfect sweet spot to get the best sound. The beauty is that you get what I feel is a better effect than 5.1 recorded music in your source only needs to be stereo and the timing of sound is not as fussy as trying to perfectly tune in a multi speaker setup.


Now to the OP question. I don't own a pair of actives. I cannot say if they are for my level of hearing will do a far better job that the passive set i have now. I have no doubt that they will be better, but by how much I cannot say. For me, the M80 speakers were an incredible improvement over the Energy speakers that I had. They had a night and day improvement over the dynamic range and gave me detail in recordings that I honestly didn't know was even there. The move to LFR didn't really improve the sound.. well maybe a bit, but what it did do is improve the listening area and enjoyment that I could get from the speakers. How do you put a percentage improvement of sound quality to enjoyment? I don't know. I'd say that the M80 were the 96% perfect sound, where the LFR1100 get me to the 99%. I would guess the Actives will push that up to the 99.9%. If i didn't own the passive set then I would have to think hard if the extra cost is worth nirvana. I would be seriously tempted.

Sadly, I have yet to wear Ian down enough to give me the deal Id need to trade in my current set and move up to Active. But who knows what the future will hold.

Response to each paragraph selected from your post:

My active 1100 is better braced and contains more stuffing than my M100.

Images are appropriately large, realistically focused and diffuse with an enormous soundstage. Centre speaker during movies and music is detrimental for MLP and one to two seats on either side. The centre image, as all others, is incredibly realistic.

The M2, M3, M5 all disappear and even when I move around, although there is some channel collapse, the disappearance remains. However, the centre image falls apart quite easily. I've found they disappear best when the tweeter is 6" below ear level. There is no loss of fidelity with that set-up.

The actives ought to disappear better than your passives and render a more expansive soundstage with improved image focus and fidelity across the entire band. The bass will be more accurate. The bass is truly something to behold.

it has been a while since i have last been on the forum. Ian has done a good number on me. A number that i simply couldn't pass up to move from Analogue Passive to Full bore DSP digital full active LFR1100's

I know that i did say that it would take hell or high water to get me to move, but it seems that looking outside the window at what is going on with pandemics, that hell looks like it's come and there definitely seems to be a flood of who knows what. So better take the plunge into the deep end with the other big boys and get some Active speakers.

as I am trading in my current LFR1100 for the newer Active, i am not going to be able to answer my original question of doing a blind A/B side by side test to see if I can tell the different between the two.

MatMan, you can give us a non scientific opinion especially if you take critical notes on various recording with the passives before you send them in.

On what is better I trust Ian … although I’m a bit surprise that this test was not tried yet.
I can say that I’m totally pleased with with my actives. Or should I say the actives driven with 2 ADA1500-5 as I can not separate them.

The Active/ADA1500 is the best system I’ve ever owned. Of this I’m certain.
It maybe the best system I’ve ever heard … but from memory I can’t be certain.
I can only comment that I’m blown away with its clarity, image, and dynamics and can not remember another system which impressed me to this level.

If someone does compare them … they need to use similar amps in the setup as
I can not say how much of my impression is the actives and how much the ADA1500. I can only guess.

I had no doubt you'd make the move to actives.

Ian is a very generous man. We are all very fortunate. I thank him multiple times a day and have been known to get extremely sentimental.

I had a 180v4 in here over the holidays. Not even that can match the phantom center from my actives during movies and music at the MLP.

All my Axioms continue to provide me with an unparalleled emotional experience.

yes, I trust that Ian and Andrew have made an exceptional speaker and that I will enjoy it.

And if my wife asks... The going story is that the speakers have a channel issue and I am sending them back up to Axiom for them to have a look at them. They don't know if it's a driver issue with the actual speakers or if its the DSP / Amp, so they said to bring the whole lot with me (as I'm a 2 hour drive to them). Now i know she is finish blind and won't notice how the speakers went from Warm Cherry to Walnut. But they are just in for service.. OK... nudge nudge.


Kind of makes me thing of a woodworking saying.. I hope when I die that my wife sells my equipment for what it is worth, not what I told her I paid for it.

I will probably be taking the same plunge later this year. Everything is on hold right now because we are finally starting the remaining construction on the basement. I will have the fronts pre-wired for actives although I will only be using the passives for the time being. Mat, I would love to hear your impressions moving from the passives to actives when you get them.

I gather it’s going to be Mid February that I have to wait. The supper too good to be true deal turned out to be a misunderstanding or interpretation of what was said. The words “all in” didn’t happen to include that horrible HST sales tax. But as I figured I’ve already jumped in it seemed a bit to late to back out.