Outboard crossover? Why not?

erik_squires504 posts08-25-2016 11:14am@bombaywalla 
The Apogee's had no real speaker cabinet though, did they? :) I mean, it was one giant magnet frame.

yes, essentially correct. The cabinet was very wide & about 3 inches thick. And it was very easy to hide the xternal x-over behind that wide frame @  essentially no visual cost. A standard metal box which kept out RFI & EMI did the trick for holding the passive x-over components.

back then Apogee Diva ribbon speakers used to have an external passive x-over. I agree with erik_squires re. the adv of external passive (& active) x-overs.
i also agree that not all passive internal x-overs are bad or compromised. There are several speaker manuf that take a lot of trouble to get the correct & optimum internal passive x-over into their speaker cabinet. 

My preference is a fully digital crossover feeding reference grade DAC's and a multi-channel preamp, but I can't afford that at all. :) After that it's passive.

you know I doubt that you will need a preamp as you can find several DACs in the market that have built in digital volume control  that dont compromise sound quality (one such example is DEQX) OR several that have an analog volume control so that you can go straight into an amplifier.