Active vs. Passive

  • Thread starter Thread starter pandamonk
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Which is better? (and why)

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pandamonk

pandamonk

Well-known member
I'm sorry if this has been done before, but i searched and couldn't it.

Right I'm on the lookout for the best monitors i can afford. I don't have a set budget, but i suppose i don't really wanna spend more than £250. But the lesser the better, obviously. Right I was planning on going active, but seeing that i could save £50, by going passive over active got me interested. I'm looking at the Behri Truths btw:

Behringer B2031A Truth - £225
Behringer B2031P Truth - £112 with amp - £64 = £176

I was involved in a thread about a month and a half ago which made me think about the passives again, but which also worried me about passives.

I'd like to get a little debate/poll going to figure out which is better. If you know much about it, and have the time, could you join this debate...

Cheers

Lee
 
Passive monitors don't have a power amp built-in. If you buy passive monitors, you will have to buy a separate power amp to amplify the line-level signal coming out of your console/interface.

Thus, saving 50 pounds will get you cheaper monitors, but then you'll also have to invest in a good power amp too :)

The advantage of using an external poweramp is that you can upgrade the speakers, and not have to waste extra cash on actives because they come with their own power amps built-in. I'd say the disadvantage then becomes the initial cost, as you have to make the investment in the speakers as well as a power amp.

I use actives simply because I didn't have the money to buy good passive monitors, as well as the power amp.
 
ummmm .....looks like, according to his post, that he can get the passives and the amp for less than the actives alone.
So it's actually cheaper for him to go passive according to the prices he spelled out.

Personally, I'd go passive pretty much always since I usually have a bunch 'o' power amps sitting around.
And if it's cheaper then that's definitely the way to go.
 
cusebassman said:
Passive monitors don't have a power amp built-in. If you buy passive monitors, you will have to buy a separate power amp to amplify the line-level signal coming out of your console/interface.

Thus, saving 50 pounds will get you cheaper monitors, but then you'll also have to invest in a good power amp too :)

The advantage of using an external poweramp is that you can upgrade the speakers, and not have to waste extra cash on actives because they come with their own power amps built-in. I'd say the disadvantage then becomes the initial cost, as you have to make the investment in the speakers as well as a power amp.

I use actives simply because I didn't have the money to buy good passive monitors, as well as the power amp.
Click to expand...
The £50 saving is with the amp.
 
Lt. Bob said:
ummmm .....looks like, according to his post, that he can get the passives and the amp for less than the actives alone.
So it's actually cheaper for him to go passive according to the prices he spelled out.

Personally, I'd go passive pretty much always since I usually have a bunch 'o' power amps sitting around.
And if it's cheaper then that's definitely the way to go.
Click to expand...
You're right about what i said. What about the argument spelled out in the thread i linked to?
willowhaus said:
The real matter with biamp vs. passive is efficiency. This manifests in a few different ways: first, passive crossovers waste power & generate heat. The raw power coming out has to be split between the drivers, which is basically done by splitting the signal in two, then shunting off the high or low frequencies before they go to the driver.

This means that your amp will have to work harder just to reach the driver's rated capacity - if you have a woofer & tweeter, each rated for 50 watts, a 100 watt amp will never deliver 50 watts to each component because of the filter network.

With an active crossover, however, you divide the low-voltage version of the signal, which then feeds 2 separate amps. These amps then power the speaker directly, and can give their full power output to the driver.

Another benefit of this comes from the fact that low frequencies use far more energy than high frequencies. Consequently - I'll cut to the chase here - if you're driving passive speakers really hard with a lot of bass-heavy music, your high frequency response (that is riding piggyback on the same amp) is going to suffer.

With active crossovers, bass energy goes to the bass amp (which is often a more powerful amp) and high frequency energy go to its own amp - so, no matter how hard you push the bass, it won't mess up the highs.
Click to expand...
 
well ..... in theory an active speaker might have an advantage. Speaker and amp interaction is a very real issue. Speakers behave differently at different freq's and because of the changes in inductance and resistance, they can affect different amplifiers very differently causing one to have say, rolled off highs or a different amp might have some other abberation ...... or no problems at all.
So the theory is, they can design the amps for that specific driver and they can avoid the very real problems that passive crossovers cause.
But I'm not sure that all active speakers use electronic crossovers but even if they do, IMO, at the price levels we're talking about, the theoretical performance advantage isn't actually achieved.
Personally I don't feel like the differences are very much in this price range so I prefer the flexibility of seperate amp and speakers.
 
Lt. Bob said:
well ..... in theory an active speaker might have an advantage. Speaker and amp interaction is a very real issue. Speakers behave differently at different freq's and because of the changes in inductance and resistance, they can affect different amplifiers very differently causing one to have say, rolled off highs or a different amp might have some other abberation ...... or no problems at all.
So the theory is, they can design the amps for that specific driver and they can avoid the very real problems that passive crossovers cause.
But I'm not sure that all active speakers use electronic crossovers but even if they do, IMO, at the price levels we're talking about, the theoretical performance advantage isn't actually achieved.
Personally I don't feel like the differences are very much in this price range so I prefer the flexibility of seperate amp and speakers.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your input. This is exactly the kind of stuff i want to talk debate about(or see a debate about).
 
Whoops, sorry I missed that. As Bob said, at this price point, you probably aren't getting a product so amazingly flat and clear that you will notice a difference between passive and active. As far as upgradability is concerned, once again coming back to price range - if you eventually find yourself upgrading to monitors that are higher enough in quality to actually notice a difference, you will probablt end up upgrading the power amp anyway.

For the time being, I'd go with active monitors, and did - simply because I didn't want another piece of external gear with wires running everywhere. But that in itself isn't a good reason to choose one over the other I suppose :) At the same time, if you want to be able to use the power amp with other gear, then go for passive w/ an amp. It just so happens that I have power amps I use for live applications that I know wouldn't even cut it for low-end studio monitors.
 
All I have to say is . . . if you ever run 50W in your tweeter, your ears will bleed as you run screaming from your room :eek: We are talking about a component that typically runs >90dBSPL @ 1W @ 1m . . . 4kHz @ 112dBSPL is a VERY unpleasant sound.

The idea of a crossover is it presents very high impedance to frequencies that aren't supposed to pass to that component It is NOT simply a shunt to ground. Thus, you don't lose 50W in the tweeter side of the crossover if you are driving the woofer at 50W. Most crossover designs will present a constant impedance to the amp, and the power loss in the crossover is minimal.

It's enough to be a concern for live sound, but for a studio where you are unlikely to drive your monitors much above 10W, it doesn't really matter. As with most things, it comes down to the quality of the components and design in the power amp/crossover, as Lt. Bob said.
 
Lt. Bob said:
ummmm .....looks like, according to his post, that he can get the passives and the amp for less than the actives alone.
So it's actually cheaper for him to go passive according to the prices he spelled out.

Personally, I'd go passive pretty much always since I usually have a bunch 'o' power amps sitting around.
And if it's cheaper then that's definitely the way to go.
Click to expand...

Cheaper, yes. But if I'm reading the original post correctly, he's considering one pair of passive monitors and one two channel amp to power them.

With the active monitors, he'd be getting two tweeters with two amps to power them, and two woofers with two amps to power them, meaning a total of four amps.

I'd vote for the active monitors to simplify matters, and to get (in theory) a perfectly matched driver/amp combination with plenty of headroom for the tweeter amps.
 
i dont think it'll make much difference for you on those monitors... (being a die hard behr basher)... but the advantage is deffinately to the actives... the manufacturer can optimize the crossover to the amps and drivers used... way better... im useing tannoys and they rock...
 
I know someone who has the B actives and I have heard the mixes and their fine..never a problem yet build wise either.
Personally never owned them, but reading articles the B actives are maybe the best thing they've copied off someone else.:p
there is a positive article on the net that talks about a monitor shoot out and the person chose the B actives over the Mackie 824 only because it was much much cheaper and the Mackies weren't (at the time) $1,000 of better sound.

now years later, we don't know if the shootout article behringer's lasted? we don't really know long term?
I've bought many an item that had me blown away for a week or so and then the poor workmanship starts showing up, over time...or it sizzles.

I'll vote actives...for the less cables, designed physics and all that amp-speaker matching stuff the physics designers do..or in Behringers case someone else designed..ahahah..jus kiddin'. its a running joke.

but the passive method allows you to add a second pair easily, speaker selector. So you could have a mini-pair and the 8". and upgrading is cheaper.
but you know all this.

imo, i never heard a bit of difference between passive and active really...the monitors either "work" for you on or they don't. My hifi is passive and it sound frkn great too.

I wonder if some long time owners fo the B-actives can post, I wonder about the build quality over a year or two?
 
Active for me.

Didn't have to faff around matching up an amp for them - just easier. As for sound quality, I have no complaints about my Event TR8s. They seem to give me everything I need to hear, plus I can crank em up to annoy the neighbours if need be.
 
I have actives in my studio for reference monitoring and passives for room playback...the active monitors afford alot of features all built-in that a simple pair of passive monitors don't have, plus running a seperate cross over for hi-lo frequency attenuation. Mostly at a conservative amount of money its all about what works for you, and what sounds best (to you). Now to debate over whether a pair of Berry Truth passives are no less better than a pair of Tannoy or Event passives...not on my agenda. If you want approval, go ahead and buy them, the worst that can happen is "returning them" to the store. Everyone is still searching for that Crown/NS10 combo. My money goes to active and spec'd out reference monitors. jmho
 
Re: passive vs. active crossovers, at the low end they may still be passive - however, it's better to split freqs. at the line stage rather than the power stage, mainly because a) it wastes far less energy removing it at line level, and b) the components required do not have to handle as much current, which makes it possible to use higher-quality components (theoretically, at least) and still maintain a cheaper price point.
 
Dunno which is better generally, but I'm loving my new KRK V6 active monitors here.
 
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