I've been active for every system I've built in the last ten years.
Cost is a factor. Ease of changing a design is a factor. If I need to change a low or mid crossover component, I REALLY don't want to have to buy (or have on hand) another $$$ inductor. Has anyone priced the cost of low DCR coils appropriate for a woofer low pass recently? Just the coils alone for a pair of 3-way (or worse, 4-way!) can cost more than a DCX.
For those who say soldering isn't that hard, why bother learning active's user interface, blah blah...
Have you ever really worked with a full active setup? One cable. Speakon 8 pole connectors. No external boxes or breadboards laying around. Switching to a different speaker design USING THE SAME CROSSOVER AND AMPS is as simple as reconnecting the ONE connector per speaker cabinet (with ZERO chance of mis-wiring the tweeter to the mid or woofer amp channel) and pressing a couple of buttons on the DCX to call up the appropriate saved crossover settings. Changing the settings for a speaker is just a few button presses away.
How many systems can I listen to at once? One. Why would I have more than one set of amps and crossover in a room then? So after buying enough amp channels of sufficient power, and enough active crossover channels, another speaker is MUCH less expensive with an active setup than passive. If you like DESIGNING and BUILDING speakers, you're not going to stop DESIGNING and BUILDING after one set. You're going to keep doing it. It's fun.
Contrast that with a passive system.
Multiple breadboards/external crossover boxes. Soldering iron to warm up. Work surface to solder on. Pile/boxes of different value components. Maybe Speakons, maybe bananas. I doubt anyone working with components and breadboards is going to use an 8 pole Speakon. Reference the "alligator clip" comments in this thread. You do this because it's FUN and it's WHAT YOU WANT TO DO! That's all the justification you need. Don't try to tell me it's any easier than an active setup.
Personally, I like the flexibility and future utility of my active setup. I know that within a wide range of intended applications my setup will drive almost any speaker design I care to attempt. All I need is the drivers and a few dollars of MDF and I have a new system.
My speaker building journey started when I got unhappy with anyone putting drinks on the flat tops of my B&W speakers. Sticky rings are bad enough, spilled pop and beer down my speakers is unacceptable. So I built tall skinny pyramids, with 1.5" square tops. Put a drink on that! So from the beginning, my intent was to make MY speakers MINE and keep other people away from them. It's only a short couple of steps to having a system that no one else in the house can operate. Not a problem. I want it that way. After having to check the knob settings of all my Carver amps every time I wanted to listen to anything because someone tuned one to 11, I have no problem using the DCX as the preamp, and having to work within the +-15dB limit of the input gains. Listening, for me, is a personal experience. I can count on the toes of one camel's foot how many people I've shown my system to at home. I'm not secretive, I post on several forums. I just don't have people over. It's not about showing off, I do this for myself.
There's a mediocre in-wall system installed by a whole-house outfit that runs the HT in the great room, eventually I'll get that system upgraded to something more my style and also functionally equivalent to what's there now. But it's going to wait until the receiver gets replaced, which is going to wait until the ancient rptv dies. In the meantime, it's functioning as well as the day it was installed.
