>Another similar speaker design is powered speakers. Here the crossover still operates on speaker level signals and there's a single amp shared by all the drivers.
There's no good reason to make a powered speaker which uses a passive speaker level cross-over unless you don't care about how loud it plays and have a very simple electrical cross-over function implemented with cheap components.
Now that silicon is cheap even portable stereos are being built with active cross-overs (boom boxes which have 3 or 4 conductor cables connecting the speakers).
The reason is that you get the same output level with a lot less heat sink and power transformer (which are the expensive parts of an amplifer) with an active combination and spend less on high-quality cross over components because you can use low power resistors in place of inductors and much smaller capacitors. It's a consequence of power dissipation being V^2/R. If you're going to end up with 30 and 26V peak signals you need a 56V peak (200W into 8 Ohms) power amp with a passive cross-over while 30 and 26V (60 and 40W) or a pair of 30V amps work with a line level cross-over.
The approach is better too. The cross-overs don't change with output level (due to inductance change with voice coil position and resistance which goes up with temperature) and you can do things that just aren't possible with conventional amplifiers and passive cross-overs (the ability to boost output means you can have a reasonable sized speaker which is 90+ dB sensitive at high frequencies but still plays flat to 20Hz where it's less sensitive but that doesn't matter because there's limited musical content in the last octave).
There's no good reason to make a powered speaker which uses a passive speaker level cross-over unless you don't care about how loud it plays and have a very simple electrical cross-over function implemented with cheap components.
Now that silicon is cheap even portable stereos are being built with active cross-overs (boom boxes which have 3 or 4 conductor cables connecting the speakers).
The reason is that you get the same output level with a lot less heat sink and power transformer (which are the expensive parts of an amplifer) with an active combination and spend less on high-quality cross over components because you can use low power resistors in place of inductors and much smaller capacitors. It's a consequence of power dissipation being V^2/R. If you're going to end up with 30 and 26V peak signals you need a 56V peak (200W into 8 Ohms) power amp with a passive cross-over while 30 and 26V (60 and 40W) or a pair of 30V amps work with a line level cross-over.
The approach is better too. The cross-overs don't change with output level (due to inductance change with voice coil position and resistance which goes up with temperature) and you can do things that just aren't possible with conventional amplifiers and passive cross-overs (the ability to boost output means you can have a reasonable sized speaker which is 90+ dB sensitive at high frequencies but still plays flat to 20Hz where it's less sensitive but that doesn't matter because there's limited musical content in the last octave).