active vs. passive

shortness

scott swatzell
ok...went to gc today and listen to several monitors...i'm more confused than ever i'm glad to say :confused:. i listenend to 4's, 5's, 6's, 8's AND active and passive...they only had one set of passives...i wanted to compare those w/the actives as well since i have a power amp that i could use for pumping some passives. the set of passive were krk sp6's (?)...directly comparing them to krk v6's was so odd...there was no comparison. the actives were much livelier (in the high, mids and lows) than the passives...i asked the sales guy why there was such a difference??? (he basically didn't know)...i asked him about jacking the amp for the passive up...well, it was all the way up. i don't know if they just weren't being pushed appropriately or what. question is, is this typical or were those monitors just not being pushed?....from what i've read by many here, passive seem to be a popular choice when that choice is available...so this was kind of confusing to me??
 
could have been anything.
could have been because they are different models of speakers, maybe one speaker has been on the showroom floor a lot longer than the other one or played at loud volumes more than the other....could be the passive wasn't properly matched with the amplifier
 
yeah, i figured the speaker thing (maybe xover, etc)...but the difference was so xtreme? much more than i would expect...
 
My understanding is that it really has a lot to do with budget. If you can afford a really nice amp to go with your high-end monitors, passive is the way to go. However, if you're going the budget monitor route, actives may be better, because a cheap amp coupled with cheap speakers is going to be worse than inexpensive speakers with custom made amps built in. Somewhere around here is a better explanation, but the gist is, for most home recorders, active is a good buy.
 
The advantage of active monitors is that the internal power amp is matched to the speaker, a big variable in the sound of a speaker is how well it matches the power amp and visa versa. Also with many you have the advantage of being bi-amplified so you have seperate amps driving the highs and lows.
 
The V6 and the Sp6 are very different monitors, regardless of whether they are passive or active. It's like comparing a JBL JRX speaker to an SRX speaker. Sure they are both JBL, and they both have an "RX" in their name, but after that all the similarities stop. One also costs more as well though:D

If I were buying cheap monitors ($600 and underish), I would certainly go active. Anything more than that though I want more flexibility and prefer passive. If you can spend at least $350 or so on a Hafler amp, that will often get you as good a quality of power as even a lot of your pretty spendy active monitors.
 
xstatic said:
The V6 and the Sp6 are very different monitors, regardless of whether they are passive or active. It's like comparing a JBL JRX speaker to an SRX speaker. Sure they are both JBL, and they both have an "RX" in their name, but after that all the similarities stop. One also costs more as well though:D

If I were buying cheap monitors ($600 and underish), I would certainly go active. Anything more than that though I want more flexibility and prefer passive. If you can spend at least $350 or so on a Hafler amp, that will often get you as good a quality of power as even a lot of your pretty spendy active monitors.


yeah, the difference in the speaker i assumed...but it was like night and day different...thanks.
 
i agree with xstatic 100%.

i might add:
passives can be about 50% cheaper, so if you have the quality amp, you can upgrade later much cheaper.
check out Adam passives vs. actives, Wharfedale 8.2 pass vs. active etc...
~50%.

Actives can go with you- portable, more table/rack space available, technically crossovers are better..maybe cheaper upfront.

its a really good topic.
Barefoot has threads and is a big time speaker HR gearhead...designer.may try a search.

something doesn't sound right with the volume issue your hearing?
I tried KRKRp and BX5 actives...and have Passives...and there wasn't a huge difference in volume or anything?
of course they each sounded a bit different.
good luck.
 
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