Active or passive?

Ive done this demo (passive vs active) many times.  

Active properly executed will outperform passive.   The reasons are many: 1) losses through all those copper coils in the passive crossover 2) losses of power, dampening factor, etc though all that speaker cable at speaker level 3) lack of phase control in passives 4) ability to control phase in active 5) passives requiring one big power amp vs active needing the exact right power for each driver element.

The differences will be mainly heard in improvements in imaging, details, bass definition, and dynamics.

Brad
ATC Consumer/Lone Mountain Audio    

Honestly I have not tried a direct AB with passive and active of another brand the same model using the same amps right next to each other. The leaders in active from the pro side are ATC and Genelec, both jumped into active back in the early 80s around the same time so they have a lot of experience. While many view "active" benefits are focused on better/cheaper/matched to the driver amplifiers, I really think it’s the linear phase issue and making sure amps don’t clip for proper dynamics are the key advantages.

I can’t imagine it would not help any manufacturer who adopts the technique. There is nothing magical in the idea of active and no patents in the core idea. I believe everything will be active in the future.
Brad

Actually one of the benefits of active is it makes all the gear in front of it much easier to hear.  I have never heard as much difference in cables, preamps, DAC's, turntables as with actives.  With Passives the finer details of different preamps and cables are often obscured as many of these changes are subtle-  image, resolution, reverb tails, [original recording] room sound, etc.  The very things that become easier to hear from passive to [properly executed] active.

I think active will cause one to change the front end much more than before and make discussions and evals of DAC's and cables much deeper.  
Brad