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

I would trust a mic more than my ears but I'm 65 so...

While nearly everyone in this hobby admits that the cable makes a difference everywhere it is used in the system, how is it that here, between amp and driver, it doesnt make any difference? Isnt that up there with all cable sounds the same and all amps sound the same? Isnt a passive crossover a whole bunch of cable PLUS a lot of other stuff in the audio path?

Brad

Nearly everyone but not all. 

You diy's are great at explaining fundamentals, but sometimes ignore the commercial segment many of us are asking about. I get the idea ya'll come from an 'everything being equal' stance where in the retail so much more can effect the quality of sound besides a passive or active xover. As to comparing the founder line to the persona line thats more than double the price paradigm needed a bridge product as the price gap was so wide b4 the founder was introduced.

Most, if not all active speakers have active crossovers...what does that mean? It means the signal passes through the crossover, followed by the power amp and then reaches the speaker. Passive goes power amp -> crossover -> speaker. The main difference is that an active crossover can work at 'low' voltage where heat and power dissipation are vastly easier to manage and there's a lot more flexibility in what you can achieve. It's a bit like the difference between a scalpel and a meat cleaver. A significant disadvantage is that you need a separate power amp for each driver. It's probably also worth saying that an active crossover can be analogue.
Just because something is active doesn't mean it's better, the manufacturer needs to have used those tools to the best of their advantage for the result to be worthwhile.
I'm currently working my way through 'The Design of Active Crossovers' by Doug Self, which I think is the same book Siegfried Linkwitz gave to Nelson Pass when he asked him to design the analogue active crossovers for his LXminis. There's a great section in chapter 1 which covers the pros and cons for active crossovers.

The first speakers I owned that I was truly happy with were active Genelecs, the second were Seas A26 passives - both sound great to me.