Active vs passive crossover

I think it mostly comes down to how much more it would be to make them active and would the normal audiophile be prepared to pay for it.

Money and the ability to blow up their drivers, with our screw ups. The tech support lines would never shut up.. I could see the warrantee lines, behind, OOPS! and expect the manufacture to pay for their messing around. I could hear the conversation. I don't know, it just started smoking and quit working.. :-)

Regards

Grrr, "best sounding is not how I would universally classify ACTIVE crossovers."

@erik_squires 

"best sounding is not how I would universally classify ACTIVE crossovers." I got this part.  Maybe you had experience (A/B comparison) with it and I am not going to dispute that.  But why the complexity and the desire to avoid an extra A/D, D/A conversion step are important "negatives?"  Why does that become "negatives"? I thought being able to avoid A-D-A in the passive crossover greatly helps preserve the quality of signal.  Maybe you know something that I don't...

Of course, active crossover systems, because they utilize two or more amplifiers are much more complex, and require more careful engineering and component matching to pull off properly.  When done right, they can be quite good.  These days, one is tempted to go fully digital-- use DSP to not only accomplish driver crossover, but to also apply room correction, driver correction, etc., all in one step.  I have heard such systems, but none that really bowled me over (that is not to say that the DSP was the cause of any sonic issues).

The closest I heard to an apples to apples comparison occurred MANY years ago.  I head the Advent Loudspeaker and the powered version of the same speaker (same drivers, same internal volume cabinet, but one with active crossover and built in amps) in a direct comparison.  I could not believe that these were similar systems-- the powered version was so much more alive and engaging.