Opinions and recommendations on active loudspeakers

I know that this isn’t a speaker building forum....  But my last set of speakers were built entirely by me.  I used an electronically crossed 3 way line array.  I had 16 3.5 inch mid ranges, 32 dome tweeters, and one 12 inch sub woofer per channel.  I used an analog Rane crossover between the preamp and the power amps.  The tweeter array had a 20 watt RMS/ch power amp, the mid range array had a 100 amp RMS/ch, and the woofers had a 375 watt RMS/ch.  There are many reason why active crossovers can be better than passive ones.  Let me list some(they are easier to do if you have a multiple speaker line array, btw):

1.   Effectively (up to) twice the 'real' power of the amplifiers themselves,  as nothing is lost in the crossover components

2.   Reduced intermodulation distortion

3.   Elimination of the low frequency passive crossover, its inherent losses, potentially poor linearity and crossover point inaccuracy

4.  Reduction of the difficulty of the load presented to the power amplifier

5.   No padding is required to align the driver sensitivities, so we are not simply wasting power, and we can choose the speakers based on what we need

6.   The damping factor is greatly improved for both the low and midrange loudspeakers

7.  Complete freedom from any interaction between the loudspeaker driver (and its environment) and the crossover network

8.   Cost savings, since complex passive crossover networks are not needed.  And with a line array they are very complex.

9.  Tri-wiring is included free!

10.  The flexibility to choose amplifiers which are at their best within a defined frequency range--as I did for each section of the array

11.  Ability to match amplifier power to the exact requirements of the drivers for maximum overall efficiency