Active Vs. Passive

There is no mistaking the sound and dynamics of a properly executed active speaker.All passive speakers I have ever heard sound compressed in comparison.

Budt - Agree completely and would add that horns provide the greatest dynamics and highest efficiency allowing for the use of tiny amplifiers. Insofar as amplifier watts cost money and more money gets you more watts or more quality, it makes sense that better efficiency allows for the purchase of more quality when less quantity is required. Passive crossovers absorb a lot of power, thereby reducing your efficiency and causing you to allocate your amplifier dollars toward more power rather than better sound.

Active speakers, when properly matched, have many advantages. You don't know what you are missing.

To clarify, I'm very familiar with active speakers

Do you sell active speakers?

I would really only want an active speaker if it had it's own dedicated outboard active crossover( which of course has been equalized). Then I can still chose whatever amps I want etc.
I had the Linkwitz Orions( +) which had just that. They were excellent for music( esp classical) but not so excellent for voice. If they had done voice well I would have kept them...

Shadorne - No, not as of the moment. It's something I've been toying with. Most likely there will be two products launching sometime in 2011, but right now I'm still in the development stage. I personally love what I have been hearing. I know another guy who is a speaker builder who is also developing some active speakers. After conversing with him, I started thinking about how you just don't hear much about them. I started this thread to see if others experiences have been as enjoyable as mine.

I can certainly see the ups and downs. With a fully active design you have to either hope the builder/designer was spot on with the amplification choice OR you can go with a design that allows you to use your own choice of amplification, but requires you to outlay a massive amount of money for that freedom of choice.

The upside is coherency, less compression, less driver fatigue, ease of integration, and potentially a lower overall system cost if great amps are pre integrated by the manufacturer.