A home entertainment setup is all about the sound source. Arguably, speakers are the most important component of any home theater. Many audiophiles spend years—and a lot of money—fortifying top-notch home entertainment systems capable of redefining the listener’s experience.
When picking your speakers, you might find yourself stuck between two choices: active and passive speakers. Not all experts agree upon each type’s benefits, making things harder. We’re here to discuss the strengths of each, matching your lifestyle with its best options.
The Active Speaker
Active speakers contain a variety of crossover components. These components split the system’s frequency audio signal band across lower parts—into low, mid and high-range noises. These noises are sent into individual speaker drivers, each designed to handle them. Active speakers are powered via an amplifier. Typically, a separate power source is needed to ensure top quality.
Often, active speakers which’re suitable for a home entertainment system have additional amplifiers within the speaker enclosures. An active speaker system can pack an active crossover and several amplifiers backing different drivers.
Active Speaker Advantages
Active speakers benefit from high convenience. You won’t need to carry around additional amplifier racks to get them working. Active speakers are great for live events, parties and backyard celebrations. When combined, several active mains, a monitor and subwoofers can create a high-powered musical experience. Active speakers can adequately fulfill a home theater’s needs, too, without requiring too much effort.
Active speakers additionally provide incredible sound quality. High-end active speakers, in fact, have high-quality presets to optimize all sounds. Users can get consistent sounds, and they often choose active speakers for such performance perfection.
Active Speaker Disadvantages
Active speakers, while relatively easy to install, have several cording requirements. You’ll need to run a power cord to each speaker, maintaining a direct line of contact. This can result in having many active speakers chained together. While microphone cables can reduce feedback noise—due to their quad-cable design—many cords can reduce overall sound quality.
If one of your amplifier modules stops working, you might lose an entire speaker. Because an active speaker system requires intensive wiring, you’ll need to pay attention to each component.
The Passive Speaker
A passive speaker system contains several passive crossover components. These components split the system’s audio signal, sending each wave into the system’s loudspeaker drivers. All audio signals are driven by individual amplifiers, and the system’s components consist of capacitors, resistors and inductors. Each splits the signal, sending frequency parts into the system’s drivers.
Today, most speakers are passive. A passive speaker doesn’t contain a built-in amplifier, and it needs to be directly connected to one via a normal speaker wire. Its speaker level signal must be amplified to deliver sufficient noise.
Passive Speaker Advantages
Firstly, passive speakers are favored for their signal and power distribution. You won’t need to run power cables across multiple speakers—just one speaker cable. This time-saving quality qualifies passive speakers as top-quality home theater options. Passive speakers have about half as many cables as alternative sound systems. You only need to connect power to your system’s amplifier racks.
Passive speakers also offer incredible processing control. By using modern amplifiers with fully integrated loudspeaker controllers, you can modify presets, optimize sounds and maximize factory preset qualities.
Passive Speaker Disadvantages
Passive speakers, while accessible, require external amplifiers. Typically, a small sound system is connected to two subwoofers and two main speakers. Because this is a high number of amplifiers, home theaters can get cluttered quickly.
Which is Right for You?
Any speaker system which features its own power amplifier can be connected directly into a digital source. For this reason, active speakers are popularly used alongside mp3 players, mixers and simple theater designs. They can also be hooked into electronic turntables. Passive speakers, meanwhile, may be a better choice if you want more control over your sound power distribution.
Your overall sound is determined by the speakers themselves, external power amps and their combination. Even if you’re establishing a sound system to amplify musical instruments, your home theater’s overall layout matters. Both active and passive speakers are useful. Your personal preference, at the end of the day, will determine whether they’re used appropriately.
If you want a simple solution for your home entertainment setup that offers great sound with a built in amplifier and speakers, the all-in-one Fluance AB40 Soundbase makes for a great option. It fits conveniently under your TV while also giving you Bluetooth and aux-in connectivity.
If you want complete control over your sound to achieve a perfect surround sound experience you can look at a Fluance Signature Series Home Theater System.
Signature Series Hi-Fi 5.0 Home Theater Speaker System With Bookshelf Speakers
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I am frequently asked “which are better, active or passive speakers?” The short answer is “Neither.” The real answer is dependent on many variables. My production company currently has inventory of both active and passive speakers. We use both very frequently and often at the same events. Here are a few ideas that you might consider when choosing between active and passive speakers.
We frequently use both active and passive speakers at the same events such as the active line array and passive subwoofers and monitors shown here.
Passive Speakers: Advantages
Let’s first take a look at some of the benefits of passive speakers. The number one, biggest advantage of passive speakers is power and signal distribution. You do not need to run power cables to each of the speakers, just a speaker cable. This is very handy as it saves you time and labor while running your cables. There are about half as many cables to run for a basic sound system. Generally you only need run power to your amplifier racks.
The second advantage with passive speakers is the processing control the user can implement with them. Using modern amplifiers with integrated loudspeaker controllers such as the Carvin Audio DCM3800LX, the user can use factory presets, modify these presets or create new presets for their speakers, and optimize them for a particular room or stage.
Passive Speakers: Disadvantages
Along with these advantages, passive speakers have one big drawback - the need to carry amplifiers to power them. A typical small sound system may consist of two subwoofers, two main speakers and four monitors. This requires a lot of amplifiers to properly power them. At minimum you need one amplifier for the two main speakers, one amplifier for each subwoofer and several amplifiers for the monitors. A typical amplifier rack with five amplifiers can weight close to 200 lbs (tour grade road cases with light amps are still heavy) and take up approximately four square feet of truck space.
The second disadvantage comes when we need to daisy chain passive speakers together. Most modern amplifiers will run down to minimum loads of 2 ohms per channel. Under a best case scenario we can run up to four typical 8 ohm speakers per channel on a 2 ohm per channel amplifier. As you add speakers, speaker cables, and connections to this chain of speakers, the resistance begins to build up and we get less output from each of the speakers. It is important that you don’t turn up too loud to compensate for these losses as you risk distorting the signal and deteriorating your audio quality. None the less, the amplifier may be able to put out 1800 watts, but the last speaker of the four is not getting its full 450 watt share.
This concert system of passive speakers uses 10 amplifiers split between two amplifier racks
Active Speakers: Advantages
Looking at the benefits of active speakers you begin to see that they are very useful. The biggest benefit that my company gets from active speakers is the convenience of not having to carry additional amplifier racks. We implement active mains, subwoofers and monitors to fill a wide range of events. For our company, a typical event with passive speakers will use two to four amplifier racks, each weighting close to 300 lbs. We can save close to 900 lbs from our load (and backs) by leaving three amp racks in the shop, and using active mains and monitors. For smaller events where our inventory of active subwoofers will fulfill the event’s needs, we do not bring any amp racks to the event.
Another big advantage of active speakers is their ability to daisy chain together for wide area coverage such as 10K runs, car shows, air shows and parade routes. We can run signal cable to each of the speakers or even send the signal wirelessly with the use of an in-ear monitor system or other wireless system. Due to the low current draw of most active speakers, you can easily run several of them from a single 20 Amp circuit. This makes since, because the amp that would run several passive speakers would be run from one 20 Amp circuit also.
This is our typical speaker setup for parade routes and air shows. Holds two active speakers and covers 180° of area.
Lastly, another great advantage of active speakers is the sound quality. High end active speaker systems have presets the speaker designer creates to optimize the sound quality and performance of the individual components in the speaker. The user gets more consistent sound from gig to gig, because the tough work of optimizing the system has already been done by the manufacturer. This is an incredible advantage!
Active Speakers: Disadvantages
There are three major disadvantages to active speaker systems. The first is with regards to power distribution. We need to run power to each of the speakers. This means running a power cord to each location in addition to the signal cable, so in effect we are running twice the number of cables. While we save space and weight in the truck with the use of the active speakers, we still need to carry the extra cables which generally take up a couple square feet in the truck.
We use 20 active speakers and active subwoofers to cover over 30 Acres.
The second disadvantage of active speakers is when running lots of them daisy chained together. With the use of some microphone cables marketed as being “better” at rejecting noise due to having quad cables twisted inside of them, there is a higher capacitance inherent in the cable. Adding too many of these together increases the capacitance and the linked cables become a low pass filter, cutting the high frequencies from the signal. When running several active speakers together, it is important to use microphone cables that are not of the quad twist variety to lower this phenomenon.
Due to the high quality of active loudspeakers and amplifier modules such as those used in the Carvin Audio TRX3210A and TRC column systems the last disadvantage is much less likely to affect the user. If for some reason you have an amplifier module stop working (a performer dumps their drink in the module), you essentially lose a speaker completely, unless you have a spare amplifier module. With a passive speaker system you can daisy chain off another passive speaker, if you lose an amp channel, and limp through the gig.
So which is better, active or passive? I continue to think of both as tools that we use to do our job, and both work well within their design parameters. My company continues to add active speaker systems to our inventory as I feel the advantages of active speakers far outweigh the disadvantages for our business model, and they provide a much higher return on our investment than passive speaker.
About the Author:
Ryan Jenkins started providing audio services in 1989. His production company, Concert Sound Solutions, provides productions for events throughout the Southwest United States. They currently have many Carvin Audio speakers in their inventory in addition to passive and active speakers from other top manufacturers.