Whats the difference between Active and Passive Speakers

[Loudandproud]

Why are there powered speakers? I grew up with hooking your speakers to a pre-amp and them an amp.

What are the benefits of hooking up a self-powered speaker?

Thanks.

LOUD&PROUD
Seattle, WA, USA

 

[Sheep]

Saves you money on amps, for starters.

Also, you can take solice in the fact that it has the power it needs (hopefully). Powered speakers sometimes have better bass output (from what I've seen)

Some Active speakers only have active subwoofers inside. So you still need to power mids and tweeters.

Most of the time, Active speakers are used in Pro-audio. With home theater, it's mostly active subs in towers.

SheepStar

 

[Seth=L]

specially designed active speakers can hold many advantages over other systems, at least in accuracy. If a speaker was designed and rigourisly tested and an amplifier was designed to power the speaker, then idealy the speaker should sound it's very best with that amplifier. This is increasingly evident with subwoofers because you can't just throw an amplifier and a variable crossover in a subwoofer and expect it to sound good, believe me I have tried this before with mostly poor results. Selecting an preamp and amp for passive speakers can be difficult and time consuming, a well designed active speaker saves you time, effort, space, and sometimes money depending on the situation. In most cases you will need a preamp anyway, so you can switch sources and attenuate much easier.

 

[Jack Hammer]

One other advantage of Active speakers is they don't share the amplifier with other speakers. It is similar to having a monoblock. The amp doesn't have to share power with any signals other than those being sent to its' speaker. Some active speakers also have more than one amp, one for the higher frequencies and another for the lower. The downside is that active speakers are generally pretty expensive. More so, I think, than buying a non-powered speaker and picking up a separate amp to drive it. Of course, that really depends on the equipment.

Jack