Over many decades, I have listened and owned many, many speakers, trying to replicate the kind of live sound I was hearing in the mixing room of a friend's recording studio. My hunch is that crossovers are very damaging devices. After all, their goal is to kill music. I think they introduce some form of distortion that I don't like. Phase ? I don't know, but electrostatics sound clean to me, as well as the Dali Callisto 6C active I had. Last year I listented to ove half a milllion $ of speakers for my new home. In the end I chose Borrenses's Raidho X3. In this 2.5 speaker, there are two pairs of mid bass drivers. The designer MB explains that at the crossover points, there are distortions which attract the attention of the ears. Thus he did two things: make sure that at that point the measured SPL response is reduced, and that the volume of the other pair of drivers is louder than the pair which are crossing over . So to me these speakers sound clean, like if they were electrostatics, but with the focus and punch of dynamic drivers.
Active speakers, bi-amping and biwire are ways to avoind crossover distortion. Active speakers can be considerably more economical than their equivalent in separates for a given SQ.
But still it is possible and fun to tweak the sound with separates and wires of all kinds. My wires alone (Transparent Ultra with The Q concept 500 and Luna Red with Raidhos X3) are worth much more than the actve Dalis and Triangles I had.
The members of this Forum are probably inclined to follow this latter route. But in some applications, active speakers are certainly a good solution.