The late J. Gordon Holt used to say that although active loudspeakers make perfect sense, they will never attain popularity among audiophiles, who want to do their own mix-and-matching of amplifier and speaker. That was some time ago. Today, active loudspeakers are ubiquitous in multi-room settings, and even well-established audiophile loudspeaker manufacturers like Dynaudio have entered the active loudspeaker market.
Coming from the pro market, where active loudspeakers have been the norm, ATC is a major advocate of the active approach. According to ATC, the advantages include more accurate crossovers, lower intermodulation distortion, improved frequency response and stereo matching, and better low-frequency control. The active speaker from ATC being demoed at CES was the SCM40A, ($12,999/pair; $6999/pair in the passive version). The source was the Callia DAC/preamp from Prism Sound.
The sound was truly excellent, with a neutral tonal balance and excellent transparency. At first, I thought the speakers sounded a bit "polite," but when the volume was turned up any trace of politeness was gone. The speaker is rather old-fashioned looking, but they're nothing old-fashioned about the sound. I wish I had the time to do a comparison between the active and passive versions.
