An active crossover is an excellent idea for a line array. You'll have to account for the extra amplifiers you'll need and cabling as you realize. The benefit is that you can optimize each band some better and get better results than from a passive crossover. You'll save much time and hair with an active crossover. You will likely need a measurement system to get decent results.

Each active crossover--Behringer, Ashly, BSS, DBX, Rane, etc.--have advantages and disadvantages so it is worth reviewing just which crossover would work best for you. Read some or message boards and hear about just how much efforts the users need to get good results. For what it is worth, I'm using a DEQX crossover and it is very slick but not cheap.

Let us hear how you progress.

Jim

For example here some pretty resonable models:
Behringer Ultra Drive Pro DCX2496 for $250
DBX Drive Rack PA for around $400
DBX Drive Rack 260 for around $750
Shop around and you can find some deals.

HTH
Bill W.

I suspect that the sound quality of most all of the digital crossover candidates that I mentioned would be between acceptable to excellent so you'll need to do homework to ascertain which one sounds best to you. You might find some help from prosound guys who use the various units for the Ashly, BSS, DBX, and such. I haven't used enough of the other digital active crossovers to be able to judge all of the merits or demerits of each one. I would suggest that you spend time to understand how the various candidates work and what kind of care and feeding they take to be implemented. For example, the Behringer DCX 2496 has an Achilles heel in that it does not have volume control of the 6 channels after digital processing. Why some others have had success working around that issue with the Behringer, this alone was a killer for my work.

Jim

You can always vary the volume via your preamp but you would be changing the analog signal level into the Behringer DCX 2496 crossover so you could lose bits in the process as this is done before the analog to digital conversion in the unit.

The better way to go is to have digital volume control on the 6 outputs from the digital crossover. Second best would be to vary the 6 outputs after the DAC within the processor. In either of these cases you would have full line level inputs to the digital crossover and you process the digital info without losing digital data. For example, the DEQX has its volume control after it does its digital magic. Some of the other digital crossovers may have this capability but I know that the Behringer does not. The other part of this issue is what happens with sources with digital inputs into the crossover? Having volume control in the digital world or post digital processing is a good thing.

Jim

I'm also using a Roland M1000 for testing.

CD player -> Roland -> DCX2496

I've setup a simple test to see if people can hear five a/d .. d/a conversions vs. the digital path with only one conversion, so far
nobody can identify either pathway.. /lol