Active or Passive or Powered - what's in a name?

Active or Passive or Powered – what’s in a name?… some choices are easy: Do you want your speakers in black or white? Do you want big or small ones? Do you want expensive ones or cheap ones? Do you want to buy them from Rapallo? (That’s a no-brainer…)

But when it comes to what type of speakers you want, lately it can get a bit complicated. Most speakers are passive, but recently more and more active speakers seem to pop up. But what’s the difference? Why would you choose one over the other and what’s best for you?

Nobody will argue about the importance of speakers in your home entertainment system. As a matter of fact, many will consider this the most important decision made when putting together your AV system. It is certainly one of the first features shown off when fellow audiophiles drop in for some aural sampling.

Both the Audioengine and Kef LS50 wireless powered speakers are a pretty popular speaker choices with our customers. And at the start of this year, both ELAC and SVS announced a new set of powered speakers.

When in most traditional speaker set-ups it is only the subwoofer that is usually powered, so why this recent interest in powered speakers?

But let’s talk some semantics first.

When you talk about a ‘powered speaker’, you refer to the internal amplification inside the speaker (as opposed to ‘unpowered’, meaning amplification outside the speaker). An ‘active’ or ‘passive speaker’ on the other actually refers to the cross-over that is either active or passive.

Passive crossovers don’t need power to filter the signal as desired. Active crossovers require power and ground connections, but give you much more flexibility and fine-tuning control over your music.

The crossover components in an active speaker split the frequency band of the audio signal into smaller parts (low, high, and sometimes mid-range), which are then sent to individual speaker drivers designed to handle those frequencies. This, in most home entertainment systems, also means internal amplifiers for each band, which is why active speaker and powered speaker are often used synonymously. BUT this isn’t always the case. Some powered speakers actually use passive crossovers.

For the sake of keeping things easy, we won’t differentiate. The important thing to remember is that on top of some differences in amplification, there are also differences in cross-overs.

What are passive speakers?

Chances are you already own a pair; they’re the conventional hi-fi speakers. You use them with speaker cables and an amplifier of some sort.

Passive speakers need an amplified signal. If the speaker has more than one driver (such as a mid/bass unit and a tweeter), the signal gets split into those low and high frequencies in a circuit called a passive crossover.

Although high-end passive speakers can contain high-end crossover components, Passive crossover systems dissipate heat, and can lose as much as 30-percent of the amplifier’s power.

Passive speakers: pros and cons

Flexibility is the biggest draw for passive speakers. Audiophiles like to choose their amplifier and their cables, the mixing and matching. With a passive speaker set-up you might spend years tweaking the combination of amplifier, source, DAC (digital-to-analogue converter), speaker cables, interconnects and more, which for most audiophiles is part of the fun.
It also keeps the path clear for upgrades as you go.
Passive speakers also tend to be less expensive than their equivalent active versions
However, because you need a separate amplifier, it means the system will take up more space. Also, you will be restricted by the cables that run between your kit-rack and your speakers.

Fair to say you need to have some idea of what you are doing.

What are active speakers?

Unlike passive speakers, actives don’t need an external amplifier; amplification is built into the speakerbox. In fact, true active speakers like the ELAC and SVS active speakers have a dedicated amplifier for each speaker driver.

All you need is a source, a way of getting the output signal into the speakers (this can be analogue, digital or even wireless), and mains power to each speaker.

Most speaker systems designed for desktop home computers, laptops, single-room application, wireless multi-room application and easy all-in-one iPod-docking-and-speaker-solution fall into this speaker category.

How about the pros and cons of active speakers?

There is none of this component matching issue with active speakers. All the work has been done for you by the engineers. No tweaking needed on your part. Especially for somebody who is new to AV this might be a very awesome thing.

Active speaker proponents believe that an active speaker system has an advantage over a passive system because the crossover components, amps, drivers, and speaker enclosures are all manufactured with one another in mind. Its a marriage made in heaven, so to speak. That is… if it’s done well.
Because the amps and drivers are so close together, there’s less internal wiring. Less internal wiring also means less possibility of interference – and, because of the advanced on-board digital signal processing, more possibility of compensating for what does get through. It also means the signal can stay in digital form for longer – only being converted to analogue at the last possible moment, before it’s output as physical sound. This means –at least in theory- clearer, cleaner audio.
However, what you get is what you get; you can’t upgrade or tweak the amplification like you can with passive speakers. Active speakers are also heavier than their passive cousins due to the extra components inside.
Because of the extra components and heavy engineering involved, active speakers are typically more expensive.

But the reasons why active speakers are gaining in popularity is because you just need two mains cables, making them a good option for wireless speakers. And we all know these are gaining in popularity.

So which one?

So is one better than the other? Absolutely not! It just depends on your requirements. Both Active and Passive speakers as well as powered and unpowered speakers for that matter, range from absolutely terrible to flippin’ amazing. There are pros and cons to each system as we pointed out earlier. So which one is for you?