If you ever speak to twenty different home theater specialists you will most likely get twenty different answers as to which is better, active or passive design. Active home cinema speakers, like the majority of Canton speakers, all have the audio amplification included in the system so they’re usually heavy in design and will need a primary power connection in addition to the audio wire. On the other hand, passive home cinema loudspeakers need an outside amplifier to make them work and so they only have an audio cable connection and don’t need any sort of local power.
Without really getting too technical, when audio is sent it may be sent in a range of distinct methods and some are actually much better at keeping sound quality while others can be much less vulnerable to interference and typically you’ll find it is a real trade off between the two. For instance, active home cinema sound systems require a sound line level wire to make them work. However line level transmission can be prone to disturbance if it’s run alongside main cables for example. This may cause a low hum on top of whatever audio is being released from the speakers that may be very irritating and lowers the quality of your home theater. Passive home theater audio systems on the opposite require a loudspeaker level cable to make them work and are less vulnerable to disturbance. The trade off is that the line level transmission maintains a better sound quality than speaker level and so if the wires are running over a long distance, say over ten meters then you’ll get a lower quality audio reproduction.
To go a little further you can also look into digital or analogue home theater speakers which both function on line level transmission but one is digital and the other is analogue so let’s talk about the difference. Digital transmission transmits all the sound signals in zeros and ones while analogue sends the signals in waves. In essence you’ll find that digital loudspeakers will probably be less vulnerable to disturbance but will drop some of the sound quality as they have to round everything to either a zero or a one.
Home cinema loudspeakers are made up of various audio drivers which are basically just cone formed bits of paper that push air out from the loudspeaker. They are various sizes based on the type of audio to be produced and generate the sound for your home theater. In essence you’ll find only three distinct varieties of drivers and every single one deals with a different audio wave length or to be less technical, a distinct audio pitch. One deals with the high end, referred to as the tweeter, another one deals using the middle range, the mid range, and finally the third deals with the low end, the woofer. You will want to look for a speaker that has one of each of these drivers and even ideally two or even more to obtain the finest audio reproduction. Make sure you look into the Boston Acoustics speakers collection. They offer a few great models like this.
Now there are lots of other considerations which will need to be factored in when deciding on home cinema loudspeakers like the quality of the audio cable used to link them and the build quality of the loudspeakers themselves as you really want to reduce inner resonance which may affect sound quality.