By eliminating these components from the signal path, system performance can be improved. This statement is less true today than in the past due to improvements in passive crossover design. In extremely high-powered systems, a passive crossover can become quite expensive, large, and heavy. Subwoofers are intended to handle very low frequencies - usually below 150Hz. Bi-amplification of subwoofers is usually a necessity.
Active crossovers can be less expensive in large systems consisting of many speaker boxes.
If these multi-box systems used passive networks, a separate network would be needed for every enclosure. A single active crossover can feed power amplifiers for many speaker enclosures. By precisely tailoring the parameters of these crossover networks to the speaker system, it's possible to get the best possible performance from the speakers. The clipping creates harmonics. In a passive system, the crossover simply sends these harmonics to the high-frequency driver, where they will be quite audible.