What are the differences in passive and active monitors?

[myhatbroke]

JUst that^^^

 

[bennychico11]

well, the number one difference is that active means powered and passive means non-powered.
In other words, you have to buy a separate amplifier for passive speakers.

 

[Massive Master]

I like to think of it as being able to use the amp of your choice with passives...

 

[xstatic]

I like to think of it as being able to use the amp of your choice with passives...

Well said. Exactly why I choose to use passive monitors. I guess with cheaper monitors it may make sense to go active, but for good ones I greatly prefer passive.

 

[Beck]

I like to think of it as being able to use the amp of your choice with passives...

Precisely! I agree… and what a difference various combinations can make.

I don’t mean to turn this into a passive vs. active thread, but I personally think the active monitor trend is an unfortunate development. Not that there aren’t good actives, but I see the trend making good passives and good amps less profitable for manufacturers to make and therefore less options in the future to those that prefer them.

I have reservations about the inevitable expansion and contraction due to the heating and cooling of an amp that is directly affixed to the speaker cabinet, and its effect over time (we'll see in a few years if this proves to be an issue, as these reletively new actives fair with the test of time). And for that matter even its effect in the short term, specifically small changes in the character of the monitors as they become warm. Some actives are better at heat dissipation than others, and that will be reflected in the price.

Another down side to actives is that the longer cables are now on the small signal side. If your monitors are far from the console, the line-level signal is making the journey rather than the big watts traditionally carried by speaker wires.

In addition, if there is a failure in any component of an active system, the whole system is down. With passives you can throw on a different set of speakers or a different amp, depending what has failed.

That being said, I think a well-designed active system is a good second reference if you already have a passive/amp combo. I would think twice about having actives as the only monitoring system in the studio. In a working studio you really have to buy two sets for redundancy in case one set fails.

I know people are using actives with great success, but there is something about having the freedom to mix and match… and when you find that happy combination of speaker and amp, life is good.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I have reservations about the inevitable expansion and contraction due to the heating and cooling of an amp that is directly affixed to the speaker cabinet, and its effect over time (we'll see in a few years if this proves to be an issue, as these reletively new actives fair with the teat of time). And for that matter even its effect in the short term, specifically small changes in the character of the monitors as they become warm.

I agree that choice is better; I have always been a fan of individual conponents over multi-tasking boxes, no question.

As far as the concerns you express above, I can only report my hands-on experinece with one particular model of powered nearfield, the HR824, and that after having used the same pair for seven years now, they still perform exactly as they did the day they shipped. Not only has the attached amp not caused any excess wear or corruption of the drivers in any way, the physical characteristics are still as tight as a baby's bottom.

Nor is there any noticable difference in performance as the amp heats up. I'm sure a test lab could find a performace curve proportional to circuit temperature, but that would be no different than the same effect found in any amplifier curcuit, physically attached or not.

And, as much of a fan as I traditionally am of choice in components, the option here of having each cab biamped (100/150 each) versus having 500w in a stack of 4 amps somewhere in my equipment racks is a real advantage in heat dissipation. Having the the amplifiers now split into two physical locations up and away from the rest of my gear keeps me from having a 4U miniumum stack of equivalent amplifiers taking up valuable rack space and heating up the rest of my gear. The amps on the back of the monitors are well away from everything else and also out in the open air of the room where the heat dissipates and circulates faster and more efficiently than being closed up in an equipment rack.

Additionally, heat has never been a noticable issue with the 824s beyond the sinks on the back; the wood cabinet, the (whatever it's made of) face, the drivers, basically everything in front of the amplifier, never betrays any heat to the touch whatsoever, even after a 6-hour session.

I can't speak for all active monitors, but I can say with these 824s I have been - and remain after 7 years - extremely happy with their performance and longevity. I wouldn't trade them for anything twice their price (3 times their price, maybe ).

G.

 

[myhatbroke]

Interesting.... So in other words passives need an amp and actives dont. And actives have shitty amps and passives you can choose a nice amp...right?

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Interesting.... So in other words passives need an amp and actives dont.

That is correct. "Active" means the amplifier(s) is/are built into the loudspeaker enclosure whereas "passive" means you need to supply your own amplifier(s).

And actives have shitty amps and passives you can choose a nice amp...right?

Well, I think "shitty" is a bit strong, or at least it can be. It depends upon the make and model of active loudspeaker. The speakers that came with your PC are "active" loudspeakers in that they have their own built-in amplifiers, and yes, those amplifiers are indeed "shitty". But then again, so are the speakers to which they are connected. And the amplifiers on a mAudio BX5a, while far, far better than what's in your PC speakers, are not going to win any awards for best amplifier in class. But I wouldn't call the amps in my 824s "shitty" by a longsot, no more than I would call the amps in a Genelec 8050 or an Adam S2.5A "shitty". Most of those are better than at least half of the stand-alone amplifiers on the market.

The advantage to passives is that they allow the buyer to choose the exact amplifier/loudspeaker pairing they wish, they can choose the cream of the crop of both and custom match them up if they wish. On actives, that choice is taken away from you. For those with golden ears and a budget to match, that is a great advantage.

The flip side to that is if the buyers does not really do their homework, or is working on a comprimise budget, they may not necessarily choose the best amplifier(s) for the job. Pairing a couple of Event Studio Precision passive monitors with a QSC stereo 150 watt amplifier may not exactly be a match made in heaven.

It's a matter of how golden-ear you want or need to get with your equipment selection and/or how much you have to spend. In a perfect world we'd all have B&W passive loudspeakers with matching Truth Audio amplifiers. Then again, in a pefect world I'd look like George Clooney .

G.

 

[xstatic]

Definately the quality of the amp will change between different manufacturers, and often even different models within a single manufacturer. Active speakers have been out for a while so I would ne necessarily be worried about longevity, at least as active as an implementation goes. What will vary widely however is the longevity of the different brands.

Glen, I used to be a Mackie dealer. One thing I can tell you is that the Rack Mountable Mackie amps are pretty bad. They are durable enough, but they sound bad. The difference is sometimes hard to spot on amps until you do some direct comparisons. Having compared the Mackie amps with similar offerings from Crest, QSC, and Crown, the Mackies just do not sound so good. Now i do not know for certain what technology Mackie is using for their monitors, but knowing Mackie and the way they work, it is most likely the same technology as in their pro audio amps and quite possibly a scaled back version of that in order to be pratical for a small speaker. I don't want to make any accusations here or anything, but I am not the only one (there are LOTS of us) who feel like the Mackie monitors are kind of "mucky" in the low mid region, and "strident" on the highs. This is exactly what we noticed when comparing the pro audio amps. Granted the Mackie is cheaper than a Macrotech or a CA or power pro Crest, and definately than a Lab Gruppen, but the difference was enough that we did not feel right even putting them in our cheaper rentals and sold them all off. All the other amps provided a great deal more "ounch" and "clarity" to the low frequencies, and the highs seemed more extended, yet smoother and less abrasive at the same time. I know there are still a lot of people out there who do like the mackie studio monitors, but those numbers are rapidly decreasing with the influx of powered studio monitors on the market in the last few years. I would be very curious to see what the Mackie Studio monitors sounded like with a higher quality amp driving them. I never really thought about their power amps as possibly being the suspect here. Just some food for thought.....

 

[dementedchord]

$ .02

ok so i have powered reveals but im, not defending them specifically as much as the concept of actives.... the primary reason to go active in my opinion is the same as your reason not too.....LOL... too many bad choices..... actives have 2 advanatages....1 the amp is "matched to the speaker....and MORE importantly with the crossover before the amps you cut WAY down on the intermodulation distortion... and 2 "smaller" amps can acomplish more then one big one that you have to swamp the unused current.....

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Glen, I used to be a Mackie dealer. One thing I can tell you is that the Rack Mountable Mackie amps are pretty bad. They are durable enough, but they sound bad. The difference is sometimes hard to spot on amps until you do some direct comparisons. Having compared the Mackie amps with similar offerings from Crest, QSC, and Crown, the Mackies just do not sound so good. Now i do not know for certain what technology Mackie is using for their monitors, but knowing Mackie and the way they work, it is most likely the same technology as in their pro audio amps and quite possibly a scaled back version of that in order to be pratical for a small speaker. I don't want to make any accusations here or anything, but I am not the only one (there are LOTS of us) who feel like the Mackie monitors are kind of "mucky" in the low mid region, and "strident" on the highs.Just some food for thought.....

I can't comment on the Mackie amps themselves as I have no experience with them. And - as Im sure you have read me say in many, many other threads dealing with monitor selection - choosing loudspeakers is a highly subjective and personal decision.

I used to sell loudspeakers for several years myself (back about the time the original NS10 came out and forever changed the definition of "studio monitor" for the worst.) For several years I sold everything from $79ea bookshelves to $4000ea audiophile towers, along with amplifiers from crapola Sonys and Marantzes to top-end Crown, Macintosh and SAE, and eveything in between.
No, that's not "studio gear", but the principles and lessons are the same. And frankly the top thrid or so of the consumer stuff that we sold would beat the pants off of half the crap that they sell as "studio gear" these days. At least half of the loudspeakers marketed as "studio monitors" these days, be they passive or active, I wouldn't give you fifty bucks a pair for, let along the few hundred each they charge for some of them.

Anyway, the lesson one learns real quick is that now two people have the same idea as to what sounds right or what sounds good. This is true from the average neophyte on up to the golden eared audiophile or engineer. Nobody agreed on anything in the showroom. We had a typical sales staff of eight people at any given time, all fairly well trained and experienced, and if you polled us on which louspeaker was "the most accurate", "the best sounding" and "their favorite", you'd get 24 different responses.

So I'm not going to argue that what your people say about how they feel about the 824s is wrong. Nor will I ask what the roots of your anti-Mackie bias out there in Utah are all about. All I can say is that your description of the "Mackie sound" as being muddy and shrill at the same time is 180° different from my experience here with the 824s.

Now I will say that I don't much care for the 624s, but my 824 aren't the least bit soft on the low end to my ears. In fact one of the things that attracted me to them from the outset was how tight their bottom end sounded to me and the fact that they were the only monitors I tested where I could "hear where the bass ended"; i.e. where I could discriminate between signal and mud as being discrete sources and where the mud was from the source and not an artifact of the loudspeaker.

It's all in the ears. I'll swear by my 824s until they wear out or change in characteristics. You may swear at them instead . That's your perrogative. You're not wrong, and neither am I, as long as we are both being honest and objective in our analysis and true to our own ears.

I'll tell you I'm certainly not sticking by my 824s for reasons of status. It has become fashonable to trash Mackie these days and I certainly don't get any extra clients by saying I use Mackie because that is just soooo 1999. That's just too bad; I don't choose gear for status or by profit margin.

I say that if they think that I can't wipe the floor with their mixes without even breaking a sweat just because I use a particular brand of gear, then they are just showing themselves to be fucking idiots who have no idea of what it's all about. I hate NS10s myself, but I also know engineers who make great mixes with them and them alone. So when someone tells me they are using NS10s, I don't judge based on that any more than I judge based upon whatever other gear they use. I also don't judge a carpenter by what brand of tools he uses, a guitarist by what brand of amp he uses or a woman by what brand of underwear she wears.

I also have an extreme distrust of people who have a vested financial interest in talking up one brand or talking down another. I've been there. I know how that works. Which is why I removed myself from that conflict of interest years ago.

The only reason I even brought up the 824s was not to sell Mackie, but only to respond to the points brought up that were concerned about how heat from the amp over time - short and long term - could cause problems in active monitors, and that I have not seen that issue raise it's head here. Also that while the amps in the 824s may not be the top of the line, they are one hell of a lot better than half of the crap econo stuff sold as "studio gear" these days. That's all I was saying.

G.

 

[xstatic]

Believe it or not, I am not anti mackie. I am anti stuff that just doesn't work well. For me, being used to working on Midas desks, Soundcraft series 5's, Allen Heath ML's, Yamaha PM's etc.... it is very hard to work on a mackie console. It just does not do what you tell it to, and does things it shouldn't, but thats another story. I actually like and have recommended on occasion the newer Mackie onyx stuff. I think the Mackie 450's make decent portable powered speakers. I actually like the whole mackie industrial line up, but they figured out what happened and renamed it EAW Commercial. I really do not make judgements on people just because they use something. The truth though is that we do not know that the Mackie amp is any better than an American DJ amp. Have you ever heard the 824's powered by anything else besides the Mackie amp? I believe it probably is a middle of the road amp and that you get just about what you pay for in the mackie's. My own Mackie amp experience however has lead me to question whether or not the amp in the 824's is what causes so many people to feel the way I do. I truly wonder what they would sound like powered by Bryston or Pass Labs or Parasound. In a nutshell, no, I do not care for the Mackie's. I like the 626's much better. I also hate the VLZ"x" line of stuff. Its durable as all hell (some of it at least) but in my opinion is a sonic pile. Some of the speakers for pro audio sound great, the rest sound awful. In the end though, i am not anti mackie. I just like stuff that is built well and sounds good. Maybe there is a small part of me that resents it when I hear on kid talking to another about how awesome their new Mackie is. Sometimes those same people underbid us and in the end it is the good company and the client who suffers. I do not however pass judgement on someone for the type of gear they choose to use, even if it is *gasp* that B company. Well, maybe i do then