slightly off-topic.
+1
Hi
For many enthusiasts, electrical power consumption of audio gears was not a concern, even during the 80's when the Class A space heater monsters became the (almost) norm, What with the Krell, Threshold and others who would routinely trip a breaker at power up, to the glee of their owner and/or their audiophile visitors ... I believe the Krell KSA-250 consumed at idle 700 watts... Some Class A tube amplifers did worse...
My case is a bit exceptional: I am off-grid, not by choice; with less than 2 hours of grid electricity per day... at most, solar panels + Batteries, are how we run things here
... Actually seems to me it is the better way to do things almost.. anywhere.. Serious, a matter for another discussion...
Back to the topic.
Power consumption of active speakers is a real issue. Many Class AB-based active speakers consume 20 to 40 watts at idle, as an example, I'll take the Neumann KH 310, it consumes at idle 60 watts as per the specs... If you have 3 in a LCR system, you are consuming 180 watts, doing nothing, plus the subs and the other speakers plus the AVR or processor .. Not playing music, you may find yourself consuming 400 watts... That is no joke. Unless you find ways to turn off your entire system. Not trivial as it would seem, unless you do not mind some popping sound and the manual labor involved, you will be wasting a few cents or dollars... per hour... People in wealthy countries did not care until recently but these watts add up.. fast... and electrical bills become less and less palatable.
One more thing to tack on this reply , is that many active speaker have a poor-piss standby and wake-up protocols implementation. These seem to be an afterthought, if present at all. At first not an issue , until you find your system on for hours while you were out, and the now worthy-of-attention electric bill.
There is the issue of "repair-ability" too, not inconsequential as many, myself included would think. Passive speaker fault determination is relatively straightforward. Not so with an active speaker. In case of issue, one may have to send an entire speaker back for repair, or if lucky, and technically proficient, perform some surgery to extract the responsible faulty component. This , again depends of the degree of modularity and/or integration, IOW, it could be very difficult. I am not sure for example that one can easily remove an amplifier from a Genelec "The One" speaker. It is definitely doable but...
My knee-jerk reaction was for a long time: Active speakers or bust. No longer... I am finding out that... it depends. My next move would likely be toward passive speakers, and Class D amplifiers to drive these. Of course Subwoofers shall be active and Class D.
Peace.