If Thiel, Wilson, Sonus, made active speakers?????

A lot of these speaker manufacturers don't already have or wouldn't want the extra burden of developing an amplification system for their speakers.

Also, the issue of which amplifier manufacturer's technology to use comes under consideration. Some amp makers might not want to reconfigure or in their minds compromise their designs in order to work with a speaker, and vice versa. Using another maker's amp technology or tuner section in a receiver is a lot easier than incorporating speakers and amps. Then, there's the decision as to which active crossover design to incorporate. The speaker builder and the amp maker may have different ideas on this as well. My guess is these might be some of the main reasons we don't see more active arrangements of this type.

I'd love to see what might be if certain players could get together, but I'm sure there are some big obstacles preventing it.

Some players are already "together." Levinson and Revel are "together" under the Madrigal/Harmon unbrella. Paradigm and Anthem are "together" -- I forget the name of the umbrella company. The problem is -- when someone designs an amplifier, they must design it for general use so it will sound good in lots of different applications. The designer is "shooting in the dark." If the amplifier designer knew exactly which speaker he was designing his amp for and could bi-or-tri-amp the speakers with different spec'd amps for each driver, I think you'd see more synergy -- and the elimination of speaker cables would reduce the signal path considerably ensuring the integrity of the signal. There's no doubt in my mind that this approach would produce incredible results. Imagine your favorite speaker spec'd and tri-amped connected directly to your favorite amplifers! Now, whether the audiophile community would embrace this, making it commercially viable -- that's another question.

Not sure about B & W

Two blokes - Bowers and Wilkins.

Regards,

I also see no reason(not fully understanding driver matching/integration/mating with amps or whatever) why speaker makers couldn't produce active speakers, find or develop a perfectly matching electronic external crossover box, and then either simply recommend matching amp's or let you chose your own!!!
Avalar makes this, and they're like $12k to $30k/pr depending on models. They happend to be using the Krell crossover ($5k) and amps(forgot which) on their speakers, and it sounded glorious from what I breifly heard!
Not sure, but I presume you could chose, say, a Bryston 10b and your own amp choices if you chose, or any other combo! To me, this makes more sense for "high end" applications.
I'd much rather go that route, and take advantage of the active thing. This would allow you to use potentially tubes on top if you chose, or just SS all the way through. You could also fine tune the sound to taste, as normal.
Now unless there's A LOT MORE TOO IT THAT THAT, I see know reason other more established high end companies couldn't or wouldn't follow suit!...and maybe make some smaller monitor versions, and offer options for crossover or amps, whatever if they so wished.
Heck with this route, all the speaker maker would be doign is doing all their tweaking in the electronic crossover! OTherwise, they wouldn't do that at all, and they'd let someone else make the cross or amps for them. Or they could just do the cross and not the amps, etc, etc.
Either way, I'm sure it's not that big of a deal.
I remember years back when I first was exposed to high end audio, and my Mom's friend's boyfriend was a high end audio store owner and tweek. I remember going to his house and hearing his system, which was comprised of some custom active speakers, with some weird amps and pre, with a cool turn table setup. MAN THIS GUY'S SYSTEM ROCKED! it not only sounded so increadibly real, but the dynamics were so viserally powerful it actually hurt! Now that was some power and dynamic ability!
I think I was affraid of the system If I remember correcctly. Not really, but I remember how awesome it was...just can't remember any of his gear brands, as I was too young at the time. Oh well.

Pass Labs new speaker is active and they obviously designed the amplification for that model.

One of the nice things about a design like that is that the builder knows exactly what is going into the cabinet, and therefore does not have to design for eventualities that can never take place. The money can be spent where needed rather than to cover any bases.

I don't know if speaker design is that difficult. There are so many studies and papers out there already for a person to use as a reference, that a builder does not ahve to redesign the wheel, so to speak. It would be interesting to hear this setup, but where I live that ain't gonna happen!

If anyone has the chance to hear the Pass Labs or the newer Meridian active speakers, let the rest of us know how they sounded.