I apologize I just saw this and realize I never responded.
The main benefits of DSP vs passive designs are that there is no cost to adding more response shaping and correction and the mechanisms to do so are far more precise. Further, inductors distort and so getting rid of them reduces distortion. Caps, Inductors, and resistors are all prone to failure and restrict the power handling, so the parts must be of decent quality and large in size. The inductors also reduce sensitivity of the woofers they are in-line with. It can be significant enough. So an active design in theory could have a smoother response, higher power handling, and lower distortion. They may even play a little louder and be a little more sensitive.
Further, in the most advanced DSP systems, the speaker could be made totally time coherent, accurately pass a square wave, and so be both a frequency and time perfect speaker. At least for one point in space and close enough around that area.
What Dan was sharing was simply that going active for them wouldn't have changed things that much. The desired results were largely achieved using passive means. What would be gained would be a slightly smoother response and slightly lower distortion. Not much else, from what I understand. When i asked about the loss of sensitivity, he felt we would be talking no more than a dB.
As for the mention of enhanced bass extension, well yes. But keep in mind that DSP used to extend bass doesn't make a speaker play any louder at deep bass or actually extend any lower. It simply forces the speaker to reach its LF limits sooner. So the S7T, as an example, cannot achieve its 120dB maximum output at 25hz, that was the max output from 100hz on up. Adding DSP to boost and extend the bass would simply cause the bass to hit its limit sooner, giving you more bass at lower relative volume levels, but potentially limiting the output. Further, they intentionally chose a QB3 like roll-off on the ported design. It wasn't intended to have any more bass. So yes, you can get an F3 of a lower frequency with DSP when you choose an arbitrary linear level, like 75dB and for small bookshelves this is a great idea. However for a speaker that is intended for high output in a theater, used with subwoofers typically, that DSP could actually be a detriment without addressing those issues.
of course, you could go active on the low end, build in dynamic EQ and dynamic limiters, add more bass headroom to account for that problem, and get the best of both worlds. Who knows, maybe that will come to be here.