@erik_squires --
Kudos on your active center channel speaker achievement.
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.
You can do that actively as well, any amp you want. I mean, if you’re going to go active and do the filter settings yourself anyway, I’d say the more compelling route - unless your main objective is to minimize the component count, and insofar you intend to go more all-out with an active approach - is to go outboard active and that way get to choose any of the components as you see fit; power amps, DSP, DAC - that is, any separate outboard component here. No different compared to a passive setup except more amps to the separate driver sections, and a DSP (instead of a passive ditto) to handle filter settings. It’s still, per definition, active configuration, certainly if the filtration is done prior to amplification on signal level.
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.
Your premise rests on the notion of limiting active configuration to a bundled solution with plate amps vs. the free choice of any amp passively. As such your "strong opinions" only cover so much of the actual potential of active to make it a worthwhile, more nuanced take comparing it to passive iterations. And that’s just with a center speaker. Imagine taking the next step to the main speakers.
From a certain perspective there’s some merit to your boldfaced part, in that actively the choice amp is less of a deal since the exclusion of a passive filter between amp and speaker frees up the workload of the amp considerably, and thereby maximizes its potential. This shaves off power requirement and harnesses better overall sound quality.
The choice of amp still makes a difference though, and although less so to my ears (compared to passive) it’s still a vital tweaking parameter with outboard active, that actually offers you this opportunity, instead of being stuck with a limited range of plate amps in a bundled solution.
In relation to pre-assembled active speakers the compelling reasons for a manufacturer to go bundled shouldn’t, and couldn’t necessarily apply similarly to the DIY segment. Coming down to it I’ll maintain DIY’ers and manufacturers are limiting themselves with a bundled approach only.
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?
Depends on your benchmark. You want more headroom freeing up the amps (with less distortion to boot) and controlling the drivers more effectively, active makes a significant difference - not only in a pro environment, and not only providing more decibels; sonically, at all levels, the takeaway is there to savor as well.
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.
Apart from the advantages I’ve mentioned earlier, DSP filter parameters with active config. matter a lot to me, also integrating subs. Actually integrating subs without the intricacy of parameters offered by a separate, quality DSP is severely hampered, from my point of view.
Having an active speaker with DSP doesn’t necessarily mean they let you adjust it for your room. You can use the DSP just for the crossover, like you would an active speaker.
This is an important point that I’ve raised quite a few times myself.
