An active monitor has one, two, or more amplifiers built into the speaker cabinet.   These cabinets require a power cable, 120 or 240 volts, to power the amplifiers.   These speaker cabinets are activated by a frequency signal, which has no watts.   Watts delivered to watts will destroy amplifier units.   This is one of the great things about Bluetooth, it only provides frequency signals.

Besides having built in amplifiers, the speaker cabinets typically have one or more built in active crossovers, or digital signal processors (DSP’s).  Some amplifiers have a separate, more controllable DSP unit.  Active here, simply means, it has a powered, digital signal.  In turn, each feeds a different/ specific signal to each amp, resulting in different sounds (octaves).  Whether it’s nearfield, midfield, of farfield speaker cabinets, they are all tuned to have specific sounds.   Now we can control the different sounds, and or in equal equivalence, we can control their volumes.   This gives each individual speaker a specific frequency, and specific volume, generating a specific sound… a great sound or beautiful noise.

Using an active monitor is important in a live or studio, producing specific sounds for that theater feel, or recordings.   Active monitors allow us to single out certain sounds, fine tuning them, and adjusting volumes appropriately.   We can sort of do, close to the same thing with Passive Speakers, but they are not controlled as much.   This is the way they mix the sounds from music, movies, pod casts, and many other things we use in life.   Typically these sounds are run through a mixer (control board), allowing us to adjust a small amount of these sound frequencies and volumes.      

In my opinion, that is a very hard question to answer.   There are people who listen to music, and there are people who love the specific sounds of instruments(they love music also).   That’s a hard one to explain, but that is how it will end up.   To me, the ideal stereo system would involve a combination of both of them, with every speaker being crossed over.   Don’t get me wrong, they all have to be insulated, have their own tuned air space, and a specific amount of wattage delivered to each individual speaker.    That, in my opinion we be the ultimate speaker system.    You would have to have an amplifier producing wattage to crossed over speakers (passive system), and different speaker cabinets producing specific sounds at specific volumes (active system), all placed in specific areas.

hahaha, well that’s not an easy fix, being there are so many factors, and acoustical applications, when it comes to prime optimal sounds.   Sounds are different when it comes to playing music and theater sounds (for movies).   But we can get by with producing one, or both of the sounds together, and still receive that beautiful sound we all yearn for.   

As for my opinion… I would want a combination of both types of speakers.   You get the sharp punch of the DSP(digital crossed over speakers), and the combination of the passive crossover units(allowing more frequencies to slip through).   Together, they would allow you to hear all the dynamic sounds; the combination the speaker units are capable of.