Thoughts on Active/Passive Speakers? Looking for pros and cons.

mtbiker29, Like everything in this life it all depends. I have not heard an active speaker get to the absolute sound which does not mean it can not be done and I have listened to very few active speakers. The Sonos speakers that I use around the house and in my office sound great for what they are. They are background music. None of the active speakers on the market excite me otherwise from a design perspective. You can have DSP management of any speaker on the market. You do not need to buy an active one. You have to listen and judge on your own. 

@mijostyn—isn’t your system effectively active? Also, someone above stated he/she didn’t want woofers stuck where the active speakers were. You can still use a swarm with an active system. It might even help if your main speakers were less than full range. I’d love to hear ATC 40a or 50a with a swarm.

I've never heard a passive that could do what Dutch and Dutch 8c can do control the directivity down to 100hz. I've never heard a passive come close to top line actives like Genelec. To each there own. 

I moved to active ATC and would never go back to passive speakers.

hedwigstheme, depends how you look at it. My speakers are all passive so, in the classical sense no, they are not active. If you define active as having DSP shenanigans then yes, I use a digital processor. The processor is vital to get to the absolute sound. You can get there without but it is very difficult and in my experience more by accident than anything else. Not one system we ever put together at Sound Components got there and there was an excellent room for it. With the processor it is much easier but it still requires the right amp, speakers and room management. The processor has the best bass management, allows you to EQ to the exact sound you like and "control" the room to some extent and finally lets you match the channel's frequency response to within one dB across the frequency spectrum from 100 to 10,000 Hz. You still have to manage room acoustics and set up your system in a symmetrical fashion. Stereo is all about symmetry. You can not have one speaker in a corner and the other in  the middle of nowhere. Both speakers have to be exactly the same distance from the front wall and from the corners and both speakers should have clear  walls past the first reflection points on both the side and front walls. It is very difficult to treat a first reflection point over a fireplace or window. Getting to the sound you like is relatively easy. Getting to that magic image is very hard. The processor and a calibrated measurement system make it much easier but there are never any guarantees. I did not hear a system do it until 1979 and I did not get there the first time until 1997 or so. Both systems got there by accident. There were however problems with the 1997 system the killer was the fragility of the Apogee Divas and the fact that Apogee went out of business. The 1979 system belonged to a high school teacher who liked to drive Alpha Romeos. I had never heard a system image like that before and never even knew it was possible until I heard that system. I have been chasing that sound ever since, trying to figure out what the essential ingredients are. Still do not know all of it.