Timf - To go along with a dose of subjectivity, I believe there is science to support the theory that a sealed enclosure will produce a more accurate bass response than a ported design.
Zoya - An active speaker is one that is not passive. Just kidding! ;-) An active speaker design is one that contains its own onboard amp, similiar to powered subwoofer. Each driver is supplied with a predetermined amount of power (i.e. 50 watts for the tweeter, 100 watts for the midrange and 150 watts for the woofer). This design eliminates the need for XO's and thereby fixes many of the issues surrounding bad XO design, which introduce distortion and other undesirable effects. By supplying each driver with its own dedicated amp, speakers that are active tend to have a less colored more accurate sound. Think of it as a properly aged wine - richer, fuller, smoother etc. Many believe this type of design would be more popular if it wasn't for the penchant of most audiophiles to continuously tweak their upstream components.
