I've used both fully active biamped (Snell Type A II Imp), passive biamped (Martin Logan Prodigy, with level adjustment for woofers), and regular passive systems. In reality, every system with a subwoofer is a passive biamped system.
In general, if you have the ability to do the setup, I think a full active system will be superior. I knew a guy in the 80s with a full Levinson HQD setup: 3 way active biamp setup of Hartley woofers, stacked quads, Decca ribbon tweeters, 6 ML2 amps, 2 LNC2 xovers, 2 ML6 mono preamps. He was very capable and the sound was excellent.
That said, I will always observe the speaker maker's recommendations for slopes and use an RTA with pink noise for initial setup, tweaking afterwards for taste.
One aesthetic issue is the quality of the crossover. Would you want to put in line, between the exotic amps and preamp, a $200 cheapo xover? Probably not.
The new DSP based xover systems, assuming excellent DACs, would be a great solution. You'll need a speaker system with access to the driver terminals and the ability to eliminate the passive elements from the signal path. The DEQx, while limited to PCM at 96K output, has SPDIF digital outs for each of the 3 xover output bands. This means you can create as elaborate a digital system as you like: Streamer->DEQx->3 MSB select->6 MSB mono amps. Wow!
In general, if you have the ability to do the setup, I think a full active system will be superior. I knew a guy in the 80s with a full Levinson HQD setup: 3 way active biamp setup of Hartley woofers, stacked quads, Decca ribbon tweeters, 6 ML2 amps, 2 LNC2 xovers, 2 ML6 mono preamps. He was very capable and the sound was excellent.
That said, I will always observe the speaker maker's recommendations for slopes and use an RTA with pink noise for initial setup, tweaking afterwards for taste.
One aesthetic issue is the quality of the crossover. Would you want to put in line, between the exotic amps and preamp, a $200 cheapo xover? Probably not.
The new DSP based xover systems, assuming excellent DACs, would be a great solution. You'll need a speaker system with access to the driver terminals and the ability to eliminate the passive elements from the signal path. The DEQx, while limited to PCM at 96K output, has SPDIF digital outs for each of the 3 xover output bands. This means you can create as elaborate a digital system as you like: Streamer->DEQx->3 MSB select->6 MSB mono amps. Wow!