Boty there are some weird responses in this thread.
1) First of all active does not mean a reduction in quality or any kind of compromise, When implemented properly, it means an increase in performance through control of driver phase. You literally cannot do that with a passive system. Most people will just gloss over this and ignore this point, but it IS one of the most important contributors to sound quality. Way more important than vibration or cabinet materials. Everyone can hear a phase linear system, its not some exotic thing only 1 in 10 can hear.
2) Active means that the amplifers "see" the drivers directly instead of having a ton of wire stuffed between amp and driver (passive crossover inductors). This can be 500+ feet of wire added! This greatly affects dampening factor, power loses, driver control etc. The idea that hundreds and hundreds feet of wire AFTER the amplifier is "better" is not logical or supported by the well esablished science. If you think that last 6 feet of wire you can see must be important because it makes a difference sonically, you’d be 100% right. Any wire added makes a difference. Imagine the other 500 feet you cannot change in a bass air core inductor which nearly all passive crossovers of quality have.
3) Amp reliability is the same regardless of where it is. If your amp fails whether its sitting on the floor or in a speaker you still have to send it in for reapir. Of course you dont have to send the entire speaker in! Would you do that with an outboard amp? Amps inside the speaker makes zero difference to reliability and we rarely service these amps. The post about 20 years is true. We just had a user send in his 30 year old speakers for a complete upgrade .
4) The idea of changing your amp out "to try something different" is more important than the sonic cloud a passive puts between speaker and amplifier is a bit of misdirection. Amps DO make a difference-everything does! That is not a reason to abandon logic and science. That amps sounding different is somehow proof of "passive", that all this wire hung on the back of your amp blocking the amp from seeing the driver directly is an improvement over a foot of wire between amp and driver is not logical.
5) Class D or DSP arguments have nothing to do with active. You can have a pure analog active system or a pure DSP active or a hybrid active. ATC is pure analog throughout. We know converters sound different.
6) An active greatly impacts the "change" heard in other components upstream: preamps sound far more different from each other, cables, CD’s, streamers, everything is more audible. By removing the passive crossover you are removing distortion so everything sounds clearer.
7) Swapping parts out with active is even more possible than passive.since you can adjsut an electronic crossover vs the non adjustable passive. You have to build a system like phusis did, with everyhing outboard, but still active.
8)The room makes far more difference into how a system sounds than wire and an amplifier. Make your room sound good, most modern speakers sound good. Amplifiers arent even close to equalling the amount of sonic change a room makes. This is why hi fi shows are a mixed bag- many manufacturers dont understand rooms either and do a poor job of set up, locating speakers next to large reflecting hard walls.
9) Specifically about ATC now, it was NOT born of the studio but it is popular there. They began in pro and hi fi simultaneously but dominate in studio due to the low distortion driver feature that enables users to hear more details. (I thought hi fi users like details too?) These low distortion drivers are too expensive to buy/sell OEM but ATC makes their own in house so they can build this in to the cost of the system. Many of their drivers would sell for $1500 OEM and almost no speaker manufacturer would pay this much. Most OEM drivers cost under $100@ and there is a limit to what $100 can buy you.
Brad
