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Anyone who buys an active speaker should expect it to die within a decade.

That's why I will never buy another active speaker again.

Simple.

You can wax all day long how actives are better than passives, but who cares.

Unless you are willing to kiss the speaker good-bye after a decade.

I'm not willing to do that.

@fred60 , if an amp goes out on an active speaker please don't chuck it. Unscrew the plate amp from the back, carefully disconnect the connector wires, and take it/send it to the dealer/mfg for repairs.

@lonemountain , how does ATC service amps from active speakers?

Most active speakers have Class D amps inside them.

Class D amps are basically unrepairable.

The dealer will not repair nor will any manufacturer.

Again, that's why I will never buy an active speaker.

If anyone has a different experience, I'd love to hear it.

@fred60 

per @lonemountain (Brad)

I agree with you I wish more people understood what they were buying.

At ATC, we build both active and passive of nearly every model from 2 way to big high power three ways. Understanding the advantages of an active system is not well understood out there in the market but should be. Reasons to NOT like it are usually baseless, such as "you can’t service the amps if they are installed inside a speaker" (silly as ATC amp packs bolt on and off and are can be sent to us for service without the entire speaker coming along- its usually easier to send us a amp pack then a standard 3-5Ru rack mount amp). Or other reasons like "plate amps don’t last that long" which is also completely untrue, I have so many active ATC speakers on for 15- 20 years for 18 hours a day its crazy. If they all broke I would be buried in service. Reliability doesn’t really enter into it as I think most well built gear lasts a lifetime now. Unless you are talking about cheap active, thrown together low cost contract speakers with amps inside that are built for price. That’s a different story but it has nothing to do with being active.

Again, being in the studio business as well as home audio in active and passive I see both. Studios have issues with passives and outboard amps more often than issues with actives because of the constant connections and unconnecting and the additional part and pieces that need adjusting. Connectors are a huge issue in reliability. Users at home have issues with outboard amps ( of various brands) than active set ups (of various brands) from my direct experience

I think its marketing that has convinced everyone they need to buy amplifiers and if they don’t all hell will break loose. Somehow something is being taken away or somehow something is lost when its really the reverse. Wire and caps and inductors are added between amp and speakers that doesn’t need to be there. I think what’s taken away with passives is imaging and a significant amount of your money.

When I see someone saying they like the ability to change the sound of their system, that’s totally fair and okay. That IS the single best reason to stay passive, not performance or reliability.

Some people want it to sound like it’s supposed to, the way Fleetwood Mac decided or Tom Petty or Lenny Kravitz. ATC enables you to get that, and you cannot get that with passives. You can get close, but not "there". Realism is what drives Billy Woodman- or should I say "low distortion", the doorway to realism.

Brad

@thespeakerdude wrote:

One issue is that all speakers (that I am aware of) designed to be driven with an off the shelf amplifier have a cross over that cannot be bypassed to directly connect to the driver. Hence any external amplifier is handicapped by the crossover.

My context above is active configuration. Active isn’t defined per se from being a bundled speaker package with build-in amps, electronic cross-over/DSP and, potentially, DAC’s, but that the filtration occurs prior to amplification on signal level (typically sans intervening passive cross-over parts between the amps and drivers that would act as a protection means here), which can as well be attained with outboard components as it could an inboard ditto. Outboard is only outboard; it needn’t say anything about the configuration. You could have a bundled speaker package with build-in amps and passive cross-over, and yet that’s what’s called a powered speaker - passively configured at that. My 3 outboard power amps are all connected to their respective driver sections without any intervening cross-over parts between them and the drivers, with each amp being fed with a different line level signal from the digital Xilica XO/DSP telling it which frequency span to deliver to its driver section. That’s fully active configuration for you and any other around here, and it means controlling each driver section much more effectively instead of looking into a passive cross-over first.

In your reply to poster @mijostyn:

"Activeness" can be applied to any system just by the addition of the right processor like the new DEQX units or the Trinnov Amethyst. Then you have the ultimate control over what your system is doing.

"You have full control over your system, but not over the drivers in the speaker."

Yes, you do have full control over the drivers - if the context implies the omission of a passive cross-over with dedicated amp channels looking directly into each driver section. Any "next level direct driver control"-claim (my own wording) essentially put forth by the bundled active speaker manufacturers, if it were to distance themselves from a claimed inferior outboard solution, actively configured as well, would seem dubious to me, whereas they would be right to do so with a passively configured speaker by comparison.