live and reload, active-reactive?

[oscarraap]

Hi, I am a very happy WOS user, and I will order the TL asap.

I have a question about the terminology of the load technology. It's a bit confusing to me. Other manufactures speak of either active or passive designs. The torpedo live is stated as reactive. What does that mean? Is reactive thesame as active, or in fact passive? And how about the Reload design? Is there a difference between active-reactive (for Reload) and just reactive (for live)?

Cheers Oscar

 

[guillaume_pille]

Hi Oscar,

I will try to be more explicit about the different terms, which come from electronics and are not really fit for mass-communication.

Seen form the amp, a speaker is a load. So basically a loadbox is a box embedding a load.

Active means the circuit a needs of a power supply, while passive doesn't need a power supply, there is no link between those terms and the load technology (a load can be either passive or active).

In the guitar world you will find 2 kind of loads, both passive:

Resistive : a resistor network is used as a load, this is the usual type of load used in the industry to test the amplifiers in silence (Hifi, guitar etc...)

Reactive : a speaker IS a reactive load. I won't go into details, but one of the characteristics of the reactive load is its impedance (that can be seen as a resistance that changes with the frequency of the input signal). The impedance figure is important, and in reactive loadboxes we will try to mimic the impedance of a real speaker, while the resistive load has a fixed resistance over the bandwidth of the system.

I don't think there is any active load design in guitar industry, but some manufacturer may use this term anyway.

In the Torpedo Reload, we talk about a reactive-active system (RE-ACT) : It is a loadbox (reactive, the same as the Live) followed by an amplifier (active). The whole signal coming from the amp is dissipated, then re-amplified.

 

[oscarraap]

Thanks very much for your crystal clear explanation.

I understand active doesn't neccesarily mean that the unit is reactive aswell.
Is it correct that reactive designs always need power supply?
In other words, passive designs cannot be reactive?

Anyway, tough choice between reload and live. I like the reload because I can choose between recording a real mic at lower volume and using the wos plugin. But reamping is not a neccessity for me. But the live might have the advantage of an integrated load-sim design on a higher studio grade level.

Perhaps I'll go for both!

cheers Oscar

 

[guillaume_pille]

I understand active doesn't neccesarily mean that the unit is reactive aswell.
Is it correct that reactive designs always need power supply?
In other words, passive designs cannot be reactive?

Let's try something else :

A circuit can be either active or passive, depending on the need of a power supply (active) or not (passive).

A load can be active or passive, thus a Reactive load can be active (I don't know any actually but it's possible) or passive (100% of what I saw on the market)

A resistive load is passive as well.

The load in Live and Reload are identical (same circuit). The difference is that the Live is a speakersim and the Reload isn't. The reload has more analog options (multi-impedance, attenuator, reamping and DI). The Live is standalone is you need the speakersim, Reload will need the plugin WoS III for this purpose.