Hi @katman well, I do agree that in a perfect world, active crossovers are always better than passive crossovers. There are a few scenarios where they are not, I’ll give you one quick example.
When designing a speaker, I always use the crossover slopes that will achieve the best alignment more the given drivers that I am using.
I have taken drivers and used Linkwitz 12 or 24 and just could not get rid of a hump or a dip or maybe achieve a good phase response, Switch to Butterworth 6/12/18, same, switch to Bessel or Chebechev... yada yada. It can take alot of work to get the best out of a crossover design. I have yet to see a electronic that give the flexibility to change apc/cpc slope types and rolloff.
I believe that there are several threads here that tackle the subject. If you don't find them, you could easily start that thread.
Again, if all the stars fall into alignment, electronic crossovers are definitely better. I hope this helps. Tim