Active studio monitors for Home audio

I've never understood the rationale around actives now that I've heard several. Easily applicable in the domestic setting. You can still have the flexibility that separates give you too.

 

What eventually led me to buying the Mackie 824’s was hearing a pair of inexpensive Samson actives at a friends house. He paid maybe a couple of hundred for them. I couldn’t believe how great they sounded. A few weeks later I got the Mackies. My listening room is about the size of a one car garage. I’m about ten or so feet from the speakers. I couldn’t be happier.

 

Neumann KH120 is a GREAT (not merely good) speaker. Revealing but not fatiguing. Great soundstage imaging. They’re meant to be used near field... a 3’ triangle. But I did audition them as far back as 15’ and they still sounded really good. I believe a pair will set you back $1,500 street.

 

The Adams have ribbon tweeters, right? ...

Ribbons, planars, electrostats tend to be directional, 'sweet spot' drivers.

 

High frequencies tend to dissipate quickly over space, and tweeters, all kinds of tweeters, tend to be beamy. I don't know that small minimonitors made for the home market vs. small minimonitors made for the pro market on average are so different when it comes to dispersion. I mean, look at the Stereophile measurements of all the mag's recommended minimonitors, the off-axis HF response is almost always steeply rolled in the HFs. But some speakers, both for home and pro markets are designed with waveguide shaped for wider tweeter dispersion.

And if you read the documentation with the real pro monitors -- no so much the project studio and prosumer documentation which tends to be more like consumer documentation -- you'll see while the recommended listening distances are 3-foot-ish, it's not because the speakers can't produce SPLs to get listening levels at 7, 10, 15-foot distances -- according to Genelec's materials the 1032b (now discontinued, a larger speaker with an 10-inch woofer) would deliver 93-103 dB at 30 feet -- but because past those kinds of distances room response starts altering response -- with those montiors Genelec recommends distances of 3 to 6 feet. That's true too of all speakers, so that's why we treat rooms. Same thing is going to happen with your home speakers.

It's true though that some of these budget pro and prosumer monitors may be a little underpowered relative to more expensive, bigger pro monitors. Those Genelecs I loved had 180W for the bass driver and 120W for the tweeter. A speaker designed to deliver flat frequency response (albeit with very limited LF extension) at 3-feet, for on-axis monitoring, doesn't necessarily need a lot of power to produced high SPLs.

But the basic physics of two-way speakers with medium sized woofers and 1" tweeters in a small box are the same whether one is designing a speaker for the home market or for the studio market.

Sure, any one speaker might have it's design tweaked for a certain frequency response that departs from flat, or for wider tweeter dispersion, or whatever. One cabinet might be more dead than another. But on average the differences between home mini monitors and these active pro mini monitors we're talking about are -- a) active electronics; b) cosmetics; and c) features (a lot of pro mini monitors have tilt controls to eq response for a particular installation).

 

A lot of wisdom there. It made me think of another exchange having to do with redbook versus hi-res versions of the Fleetwood Mac Welch era catalog. My perspective, listening primarily on near-field monitors at about ~3' distance, is that the hi-res was noticeably more detailed and (for me and what I like) musical. Someone else posted that in their listening room, they felt the redbook was warmer and more to their liking. They felt the hi-res was overamped in the highs. It occurred to me after that exchange that the primary difference was the listening environment. Near field listening essentially strives to take the room out of the equation as much as possible, whereas a listening room strives to make the room acoustics support the listening experience.

No doubt a properly treated listening room with top-notch equipment (and decent source material) is likely a superior listening experience. But it may not be the most accurate listening experience. Therefore, someone like me who does not have the benefit of a dedicated listening room, may in fact do very well with active studio monitors (which is I think what the OP was asking). But someone constructing a listening room may have very poor results with active studio monitors. Context is everything.

 

I doubt someone in a well treated room will have "very poor results" with active studio monitors. I mean, such speakers at the pro level are typically used in heavily treated and spec'ed environments -- lots of absorption, plenty of diffusion, etc., like control rooms -- even when they're used in the near field. Prosumer and project studio use tend to run a little closer to home type environments. But, small mini-monitors are small mini-monitors. Some people may find them not to be "room filling" compared to towers and other kinds of full range systems even with subs, even if they're still cranking out similar average SPLs.

 

I thought one of your thesis statements was that treble diffusion becomes more pronounced as distance increases. I agree with that. When I say "listening room," I'm assuming 10x10 or larger, not the typical 3' triangle near field experience.

 

It does happen, especially over long distances in a concert hall. It's always worth measuring at one's listening position. But I don't know if home speakers are made with a topped up treble in the hopes that it'll be flat at a given distance. However, often studio monitors have levels of switchable treble eq, so there's the possibility that they may be easier to site at longer listening distance while maintaining treble response at a certain listening distance.

 

Sorry to harp on this, but near field means only at close position are the highs balanced, so this is where you need to be to mix and monitor. Yes? General music enjoyment is another matter and listening position can be variable, at least with monitors with a wider sweet spot -- newer Mackies and others. I am still trying to understand the Pro and General listening divide.

 

The Adams have ribbon tweeters, yes. Good point. Sweet spot is wider than with electrostats, but still.

 

Not just highs, no. With near field, on-axis listening, the direct sound is reaching your ears very quickly, much more quickly than most reflected sound does (athough in a mixing context, the console is problematic), so you're minimizing the impact of room reverberation and decay times, and even to an extent potentially, speaker-boundary interference problems at low frequencies (depending again on the speaker positioning relative to sidewalls, and listener positing relative to all the walls, resuming speaker placement close to the wall behind the speakers). With listening at longer lengths, room reverberation and the arrival of reflect sound at your ears at the same time as direct sound, creates problems that require room fixes if you want accurate response at the listening position, but in the far field you tend to get bigger, wider, deeper soundstages and a somewhat more realistic sense of the scale of instruments.

 

Great explanation. I think with the wording "near field monitor", some worry that the sound somehow changes after it gets 3 feet from the speaker. How would any speaker do that, exactly? The sound you get at 10' has the same frequency balance, just with more room reflections altering what you hear. In a treated room, those reflections can be dampened substantially. I think near field speakers just have generally smaller cones, so at 3' you can hear each frequency clearly. Engineers aren't sitting 3 feet from 12" woofers. Please feel free to correct me if I'm off base with this line of thought!

 

Well, the frequency balance WILL be different at different distances from the speakers and definitely at different listener relationships to the tweeter axis but horizontally and vertically. Measure a speaker at 1 meter for a given voltage input and at 12 meters for a given voltage input, and on and off axis, both side to side and up and down, and you will see different FR curves.

Maybe. The Yamaha NS1000 which became a popular studio monitor, had an 11" woofer I think, but it's a three-way so I assume you had to be relatively far away from them to get the drivers to blend. A lot of the larger woofer studio monitors, as someone mentioned, are soffit-mounted in studio control rooms for mid field monitoring, so no one is 3 feet from those.

 

I prefer passive studio monitors at home so I can choose my own amp and I feel better about repairability if there's a problem. Also prefer to not need subs to get acceptable bass. Using passive Dynaudio BM15 monitors on 4-post Skylan stands and 450wpc power amp. Listen midfield.

 

I'd love to hear a pair of these. Only about $8k a pair at Sweetwater.

"surprisingly strong, extended and confident bass. The mid-range is nothing short of astonishing — superbly accurate, honest and dynamic — but then the ATC soft-dome mid-range driver has always been a major strength of the marque. The high end is detailed, open and airy, but not hyped or exaggerated in any way, and all three drive units integrate smoothly to deliver an impressive ensemble."

"Distortion is extremely low — never higher than 0.2 percent and well under one percent for all frequencies above 60Hz — and that provides a level of transparency that only the best can come close to matching. What this means, in practice, is that small changes to EQ or compression are very easily audible, and that weaknesses in source recordings (and equipment) stand out very clearly."

"I auditioned a very wide range of material on the SCM25As, including commercial recordings of complex orchestral, choral and chamber works, simple instrumental and vocal quartets and duos, large and small-scale jazz, rock, R&B and pop recordings, and a wide range of material I've recorded myself. In every case, these monitors told the story exactly the way it was, revealing technical flaws and performance imperfections effortlessly and with perfect balance. Some 'monitors' seem to work well on rock music but are lifeless on classical, and others favour the opposite, but a real monitor should work properly and reliably with everything, and the SCM25s do."

"However, the lack of LF distortion can catch out the unwary when mixing, as it tempts you into producing bass-heavy balances to generate the same kind of punch and grunt that typical two-way ported speakers produce."

 

The rationale is that it allows biamping inside the monitor, with amplifiers independently sized for the individual drivers. Active crossovers can have steeper slopes to minimize the comb filtering effect and directionality around the crossover frequency, are not lossy like passive components, and do not rely on accuracy of driver specs like impedance curves to crossover at the correct frequency. It also allows corrections to be incorporated into the amplification stage further smoothing the frequency response and matching the driver outputs, while adding custom room correction and placement tuning features.

The counter argument is that it allows monitor manufacturers to hide that they are using the cheapest amps they can find, if not a Chinese-engineered class D amp cribbed from the digital controller's IC's spec sheet, an analog integrated multi-channel amp module - like Genelec monitors using unreliable Sanyo STK442 amp chips that you can also find in Sony mini-shelf systems, or ElectroVoice using tiny Hypex class-D modules. Repair technical documentation never available.

 

I think you've misunderstood my post in the context above.

I understand the benefits of actives, I don't understand why - despite the argument against which you've raised - they still don't feature more in domestic audio.

The uncertainty about the internal parts I don't think applies to the majority. Most people wouldn't know whether the internal components in regular gear are good or bad from the end of their nose. A relative few will, but most regular consumers? Nah.

And I'll cite the example of the Akai Pro RPM800s again. Performance way beyond what you'd expect and for the money, they're not going to be using premium parts. They're halfway to being domestic audio friendly, gloss black casing, but the bright red cone will put many off. For the money though, they're an absolute steal.

 

I see your point. They are making their way into the consumer sphere, but unfortunately in sound bar and bluetooth speaker form. Powered subwoofers are at least a thing, and the infrastructure is already there in most receivers to add one.

I could advise against them myself, just seeing how many powered speakers last about as long as the warranty before they go "fizzz".

The power output is also almost universally a lie, being conveniently hidden in a box, and I'm not just talking about cheap brands; seen in JBL, Electrovoice, etc... even if you made a square wave from the power supply rail voltages at the lowest impedance frequency of the driver, it still wouldn't equal the ratings, let alone the power supply that, for example, might only provide 250W total for a 200W + 200W (=400W rating?) pair of amps. I have in front of me a $800 Pro Audio sub amp plate, manufacturer-rated at "700W", that uses two Hypex modules they rate 180W/4 Ohms/1%THD.

 

For me, the JBL LSR305's worked well for my tight budget and the space I am in. I use them on my PC; off a Focusrite scarlett 2i2 (2nd gen). IMO, it's a speaker that doesn't overly color things when I playback instruments I may be recording (for demo) - or any pre-recorded music.

 

I guess the first thing to clarify is I'm referring only to true actives and not powered speakers, where one has all the electronics, amp, DAC, inputs and the other speaker is a passive slave box, a la Audioengine and similar.

And of course, we're comparing this to, what, domestic hifi, which has similar issues that affect it - build, components, etc.

As to power, not all actives are megawatt affairs. My Quads are 65w/40w to LF/HF respectively. AVI's DM10, and their predecessors on the other hand have all been 250w/75w while my previous Acoustic Energy AE22s were about 100w or so.

 

I've been using active studio monitors from Geithain for home listening for ca. the last decade and worked my way up the ranks from the nearfield RL 904 via the RL 933K to currently the midfield RL 901K. I never found them to be over analytical or sterile and really enjoy using them for relaxed listening.

A few months ago I had the chance to compare my RL 901K to the Neumann KH 420 here at home. Both, Neumann and Geithain (and incidentally also Genelec), have quite a bit of a following here in Germany in the normal hifi scene. The Neumann is also an extremely "musical" sounding monitor with a lot of PRAT and I really enjoyed having them here at home for a week. Having said that I still happily kept my RL 901K when I had to give the KH 420 back.

I would just love to hear some PMC or ATC midfields here at home...

 

Incidentally, studio monitors don't *necessarily* need to look drab and industrious. Sometimes it's a matter of a paint job and some nice looking stands...

 

Very nice! What are those ? Beautiful.

 

I've heard those Mackies and really enjoyed them. Can't imagine needing anything else - certainly not in their price range.

Jeff