Nothing much to add to the excellent comments above. It is really such a no-brainer from a technical perspective (cheaper and better) that the only drawback is less flexibility to add distortion to create a desired sound. Some active designs include momentary gain reduction if output gets too high and the amp gets close to clipping - so you can't even add distortion if you try your hardest. A very different animal from a passive speaker - in active you get what you get (manufacturer's design) with very little options apart from the usual placement and room treatments. Not a suitable design for those who like to fiddle with their system and change the sound regularly to make their own unique recipe. For example, speaker cables are not just a minor tweak thay actually become totally irrelevant.
In laymans terms I'll add an analogy to Drew's statement: A tweeter is like Tinkerbell flapping her pixie wings - very delicate and requires almost no power. A bass woofer is like dumbo the elephant - huge power is almost always required - it is the reason that audiophiles prefer massive monoblocks. Now hook Dumbo and Tinkerbell together (please no rude Peter Pan jokes) in a passive system and turn up the volume: it is really no suprise that dumbo's flapping and stomping around disturbs Tinkerbell (IMD distortion). Another analogy is to imagine trying to get Tinkerbell to perfectly choreograph with Dumbo (in phase with a close to ideal transient response) - obviously much harder to do if Tinkerbell has to balance on the elephants back.
In laymans terms I'll add an analogy to Drew's statement: A tweeter is like Tinkerbell flapping her pixie wings - very delicate and requires almost no power. A bass woofer is like dumbo the elephant - huge power is almost always required - it is the reason that audiophiles prefer massive monoblocks. Now hook Dumbo and Tinkerbell together (please no rude Peter Pan jokes) in a passive system and turn up the volume: it is really no suprise that dumbo's flapping and stomping around disturbs Tinkerbell (IMD distortion). Another analogy is to imagine trying to get Tinkerbell to perfectly choreograph with Dumbo (in phase with a close to ideal transient response) - obviously much harder to do if Tinkerbell has to balance on the elephants back.