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

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.  

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

I'll second poster @fiesta75's first reply above. Active at its core is simply defined by having the cross-over placed prior to amplification and acting on signal level, instead of it receiving the output power from the amp on the receiving end between that and the drivers. This holds many advantages, like giving the amp(s) far better working conditions and effectively lessening their importance. This is what "matching" amps with all-in-one actives mostly comes down to, I find, as a means of economizing or down/up scaling each amp section to its respective driver segment (not to say there can't be a degree of SQ-matching with parameters involving damping factor, topology etc., but this opportunity goes for active-as-separates as well), rather than some fancy "they're a match made in heaven you won't find elsewhere." Marketing tactics, right? Or at least a modified truth that calls for the need of the reader to decipher "matching" and its possible meanings. 

Nothing dictates for active configuration to be a bundled solution, but as such would likely just be called an active speaker because it's a product ready for implementation with a source/preamp. That is, an active speaker simply points to being an actively configured plug-and-play product with the XO in some form prior to amplification as this principle dictates, whereas 'active configuration' just points to its basic principle as mentioned, which can be either a bundled or separate component solution. I use the latter solution.

I prefer the former but I’m not a DIY guy and I don’t want to fry a speaker using the wrong parameters. I know some have used different amps and tweaked the settings for JBL M2’s but setting up actives with DSP crossovers is more than simply picking what amp you like and randomly plugging numbers in the control engine.

Boy I must be living on a different planet. You guys are talking about having an active VS passive crossover. That has ZERO to do with active loudspeaker that have the amplifier/Amplifiers built into the speakers with electronics to provide not only the crossover but also to EQ the speaker. Sonos speakers are an example of "Active" loudspeakers. Active crossovers and bi or tri amping have been around for decades. Whether doing this is better than a well designed passive crossover is a toss up and depends on who you talk to. You are using passive loudspeakers. As long as the amps and crossovers are outboard the speakers are passive. If you think you can do better using an active crossover than the designer's passive crossover you might be sadly mistaken.