fliplyricist1

Ok so I'm going to be making the plunge towards active with my dls ms6a comps up front and dls 275 rearfills and single 12 in the trunk. Currently I'm running passive with the included ms6a crossovers on a single amp setup, which is an Xtant 3300x 3 channel. For those that may not know, the xtant is a 3 channel amp (2 channels up front and a single bandpass channel for a sub) that also has 2 channel output leads strictly for the rear-fill. So I guess it could be considered a "psuedo-5 channel amp."

I'm going to be running a Pioneer P880PRS to control this entire system. Now my question is, in order to run this entire setup 'actively' off this headunit, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to get a second amplifier, since each pair of speakers up front (tweets, mids) needs their own paired channel in order to go active. And taking into considering the xtant only has a single channel pair for the front stage, that means I'll have to get another amp? I mean, would it just be better for me to get a 'real' 5 channel amp, run the tweets off a pair of channels, the mids off another pair of channels, then the sub on the last channel...and just ditch the rearfills altogether?

I just don't know how getting another seperate amp with only 2 channels (to perhaps run just the mids) while running the tweets off the xtant will effect overal level matching and sq? I'm sorry if I'm not being very coherent here, but hopefully someone will understand? I basically want to go full active and have a 3 channel amp currently...so what is my best bet?

Thanks in advance!

douggiestyle

iTrader: (3)

Is there something wrong with your current set up that's causing you to want to go active? You can get a small amp for the tweets and adjust the gain accordingly.

Osamu

You will need another 2 channels, so you can either swap out your 3ch. amp for a 5 ch. or add another 2 channel. if you have the room I think it'd be easier to add another 2 channel, either for your mids or your tweets. Not to mention then you can get something that will better fit the power requirements. I don't know what kind of power the components need/can take, or the xtant gives out, but if the mids/tweets need different amounts of power, that might not be easily accomplished w/ a 5 channel amp.

Either way, you will need to do a lot of tuning with an active set up. So any 'level matching' would be the first and probably most important step, and you would want to do that either way with a 5 channel or another 2 channel amp.

fliplyricist1

thanks much for the info!!

At this point I think I'll just get another 2 channel amp since they're relatively cheap, and I do like the sound from my xtant. I'm considering possibly just getting another used cheap xtant 2 channel to get the full effect. Reason why I'm going active is to take advantage of the real crossover/time alignment abilities of the prs880, and from what I've read, if done properly, active can have much better sound than passive setups due to channel seperation and sound loss normally associated with passive setups. Not to mention that passive setups that are included with components cannot take into consideration the acoustical/mounting position differences in cars. So since the headunit has it, I might as well take advantage of it.

In your opinion, is the sound from the tweeter amp more important than the midbass amp? I mean, if you have a slightly better build/sq amp, would you rather have that running the mids or your tweets? I can actually get a very cheap Directed Audio 5 channel amp, but I just dunno how it'd compare to the sq of an old school xtant...