I Was Considering Active, Then I Watched This ...

I can't speak for other active speakers but know that ATC designs the internal amplifiers for their active speakers. Each amp is designed specifically for each driver.

I use a pair of ATC SCM20ASL active monitors in my studio and would not describe them as "dry".

@lonemountain wrote:

... I cannot believe there is this much misinformation about active.

Indeed there is. 

As some may know, I’m an avid DIYer when it comes to speakers. I’ve built both passive and active and worked with pro sound speakers in theaters. I am ambivalent. That is, I have two strong opinions about each being a good choice.

Without getting too much into the alleged technical merits of each design, the thing that passive speakers give me is the ability to chose a very colorful amplifier. Consider my favorite amps of all time are CJ Premiere 12s. I don’t consider them neutral, but rather juicy, colorful liars. Heaven.

I just built a fully active, DSP driven center channel. What did I get? Excellent off-axis frequency response and massive dynamic range (comparable to ATC’s claimed figures) in a compact package along with objectively neutral frequency response which doesn’t mind being on a shelf while avoiding the need for yet another amplifier in my rack. Much as I love my Luxman integrated, I keep asking myself if I wouldn’t rather make 2 more active speakers and reduce my combined HT/stereo setup to 1 processor instead.

If you really want to pick your amp, go with passive. If you want to pick a speaker and not have to worry about your amp, go with active, but in no case should you pick speaker A over speaker B based on which of these types they are.

In the consumer world there are a lot of benefits to active speakers we may not care about. Dynamic range and power loss for instance. In the pro world we need every watt, and active crossovers deliver that. In the home world we are fine losing many DB’s of output due to massively overbought amps. 😀 That is, I can point to some technical benefits of active crossovers/speakers which are true, but perhaps irrelevant?

As a consumer, do you really care that building a DSP crossover is much easier (not easy!) than passive, since we aren't swapping parts in and out during the prototype phase?  Not really.  Does the digital time delay and off-axis frequency response matter to you?  Most passive speakers do an excellent job with horizontal dispersion.  The center I built though needed excellent vertical as well as horizontal dispersion, and that's a feature I could only really consider in active/DSP configuration.  Point is, a lot of the technical differences vanish for most of us.

I read somewhat of a misconception.

Having an active speaker which uses DSP doesn’t necessarily mean it allows for room correction.

A manufacturer may take advantage of DSP for the crossover, like you would an active speaker, replacing the caps and coils, but not necessarily allow for end user adjustments.

Even before DSP however, pro speakers often had bass level adjustments to let you move a speaker from free field to desktop, or near-wall.

@erik_squires

You make perhaps the single most powerful point in the active vs passive argument: does anyone care? For many, flying blind, going by other peoples opinions and the power of brand marketing is too powerful a set of conditions to overcome. If you haven’t stood in a studio and heard what’s on the other side of the glass and then how that sounds in the control room (through a given set of monitors) how would you know? If you don’t understand the science behind active, how would you know? If you are used to an odd sound and that becomes your reference [confirmation bias] how would you know?

While active makes all the sense in the world from a science point of view, I guess it’s like people who buy terrible cars: you cannot talk them out of it no matter what you do! A lot of people bought Cadillac Cimarrons, Chevy Vegas and Ford Pintos! And if you ask someone why, they will defend it with gusto!

Brad