Active Speakers Better? No, per Michael Borresen

It depends on how much $$ you have and how good or crappy your amp is.  For a TV signal cheap actives are an upgrade to the TV speakers.  On the other hand if you have a decent receiver and not much $$ passives may work for you.  If you have tons of $$; like a lot of those on this site a really good receiver and great passive speakers are hard to beat ( w/ a good powered subwoofer).  FYI comments by NOT an AUDIOPHILE!!  

@dynamiclinearity, I agree, active speakers properly done is superior AND less expensive than a speaker/amp/speaker wire traditional route. Did you ever wonder that back in the day dealers found they could make more $$$ selling a sperate amp/speaker package so active speaker weren't given the time of day (except by the pros who used them in the studio)?

Speaker engineers, unlike audiophiles, are in no position to discount the advantages of active speakers. Andrew Jones tells us that in actives: 

Each amplifier is matched to the driver, and only has to operate over a limited frequency range. It’s operating into a simpler impedance, so it’s not going to have high-current demands. Also, the temporal characteristics of music change with frequency. High frequencies require very little average power, but have a lot of peaks. Bass requires much higher average power, but has far fewer peaks. You can match the amplifier to those characteristics as well. 

As a gesture to the audiophile penchant for experimentation, Jones’s ARB-5s forgo digital signal processing (DSP). He nevertheless acknowledges its advantages:

DSP is very versatile as a development tool. If I want to make a change to an analog crossover, I have to solder in new components. With DSP, I can push a few buttons, load in a new crossover profile, and a minute later, I can listen to it. In production, there are no tolerance issues with DSP the way there are with the parts in an analog crossover. With DSP, the crossover shape will be identical on every unit. I can provide a lot more equalization with a DSP, with very little degradation. With analog, every time I want to add another filter section, the signal has to go through another op-amp stage. 

Plus DSP can adjust to a room’s particular acoustics; here both Kii and Dutch & Dutch are in the vanguard. And in all active speakers the specific frequencies for each specific driver “crossover” before amplification, yet another enhancement of audio design. 

Other engineers echo these same points. Listen to Paul McGowan from PS Audio at 03:00, or Dynaudio’s Roland Hoffman at 03:20 and 13:06, or Meridian’s Bob Stuart. They all work for companies that sell passive speakers or equipment for them, but they all clearly favor the design opportunities found in actives.

ATC makes nice actives and passives.  I’ve only heard them at shows but preferred the actives.

The fun fact is that most studio monitors, i.e. the speakers the producers and sound engineers listen to while the music is being made, are active (near field) speakers.