Overall, I find Erik's comments to be right on. I did not see an easy answer to Inna's question of the difference between an active vs electronic vs passive. could be helpful to others... So, when a signal from your source comes from your amplifier, all frequencies hit your speaker.... for now, lets just say 20 to 20,000 hz. A passive crossover is a filter network... One filter will block low frequencies to a tweeter, another filter will block upper and lower frequencies so a midrange will only see the frequencies meant for the middle region and a low pass then blocks high frequencies and allows the low frequencies or bass only to go to the woofer.
On an active crossover, the Filter is put in Front of the amplifier... so you typically need more than one amp. The filter blocks the signal before the amp, so 1 amp will be fed only high frequencies, so that amp will be used to play a tweeter... on a 2 way speaker, another amp would only be sent mid and lower frequencies which would go to the woofer. So on an active crossover, the dividing network is in front of the amp, the amp channel plays highs mids or lows and you need 4 channels for a 2 way or 6 channels for a 3 way. I hope this helps... Erik mentioned a lot of the advantages of an external crossover... I really like having the room to lay out coils to keep electromagnetic field to a minimum. You can hear it. Erik and Bombaywalla both mentioned the advantages of a digital filter in front of the amps with variable slopes.... There is no substitute here. Electronic/active crossovers sound better, period.
