I have 2 questions

[Case1]

What is the difference betwwen a active and a passive monitor?

Also what is a good pair of powered monitor good for mixing down hiphop music for a real reasonable price?

 

[giaschel]

Active monitors have a built-in amp. With passive monitors, you need to get a separate amp.

I'm not too good at recommendations so i'll leave that to others but go check this thread.

 

[SPINSTERWUN]

Check out the Events series.

Good bang for the buck.

 

[ap]

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong,but,

I'm pretty sure, if you want to be precise, "active" refers to active crossovers so you can amplify high and low portions of the signal independently of each other, thus, these monitors have 2 seperate amps built in. It's possible to find "powered" monitors which are not active; however, I don't think anyone makes "actives" w/o the amps since this would require two external amps, lines coming back out of the cabinet to reach the amps, and finally, another set of inputs, this time post crossover, to reap the full benefit of the "active" crossover.