There is a lot of misinformation in this thread. Fiesta 75 has it pretty close, active means "amplifiers AFTER the crossover connected directly to the driver". Nothing about digital, or analog or amps inside or outside.
If you see how much copper is in the passive crossover, then how much speaker wire is added on to that, with all of it between the driver and the amp, its hard to imagine how someone would view active as more complex. The amplifier cannot "see" the driver at all, it sees a crossover and speaker wire.
You cannot adjust driver phase in a passive crossover system- probably one of the single most important issues (a phase linear loudspeaker).
To argue that you someone is "taking away your options to switch amplifiers" is to ignore how much active is increasing the importance of the front end, the improved transparency in EVERYTHING before the speaker input. The amp, while important, is only one of many things that influence sound quality. To hear a significantly bigger difference in tonearms, cartridges, phono preamps, streamers, CD players, preamplifiers and cable between all those elements is the benefit of active.
The experts in active where the first two players: Genelec and ATC. They’ve been after this idea with real commercially available product since early 80s. Look to technical research and white papers written by both.
Brad
If you see how much copper is in the passive crossover, then how much speaker wire is added on to that, with all of it between the driver and the amp, its hard to imagine how someone would view active as more complex. The amplifier cannot "see" the driver at all, it sees a crossover and speaker wire.
You cannot adjust driver phase in a passive crossover system- probably one of the single most important issues (a phase linear loudspeaker).
To argue that you someone is "taking away your options to switch amplifiers" is to ignore how much active is increasing the importance of the front end, the improved transparency in EVERYTHING before the speaker input. The amp, while important, is only one of many things that influence sound quality. To hear a significantly bigger difference in tonearms, cartridges, phono preamps, streamers, CD players, preamplifiers and cable between all those elements is the benefit of active.
The experts in active where the first two players: Genelec and ATC. They’ve been after this idea with real commercially available product since early 80s. Look to technical research and white papers written by both.
Brad