Passive studio monitors?

thomasw88

Any recommendations?  I have an amp and old set of speakers attached to my pc.  They're ok but  I'm having issues with one of my speakers attached to the amp, so I was thinking of replacing it.

I also have a cheap set of Eridol's MA-10A's which are connected to my interface.   They're nothing special and I was thinking of  upgrading.

So my question is as I have an amplifier, would I be as well just buying a set of decent passive studio monitors?  Or is that a bad idea..  The amplifier has a direct setting on it which bypasses all eq etc.   My PC is used for making music, bit of gaming, and also general PC stuff.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Cheers,

Tom 

octatonic

Passive monitors usually fall into the cheap/crap or expensive/awesome camp.

Personally I'd suggest a good pair of affordable powered monitors.
Otherwise buy some used hifi speakers.

goldtop

octatonic said:

Passive monitors usually fall into the cheap/crap or expensive/awesome camp.

Personally I'd suggest a good pair of affordable powered monitors.
Otherwise buy some used hifi speakers.

Funnily enough I went looking for ProAc Studio100s a while ago. Once you factor in an equal-quality amp, the whole setup was annoyingly spendy.

The SoS test which showed that the B&W DM303s hifi speakers were pretty good was about as 'affordable' as it gets:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/monitors-vs-hi-fi-speakers-part-1

octatonic

goldtop said:

octatonic said:

Passive monitors usually fall into the cheap/crap or expensive/awesome camp.

Personally I'd suggest a good pair of affordable powered monitors.
Otherwise buy some used hifi speakers.

Funnily enough I went looking for ProAc Studio100s a while ago. Once you factor in an equal-quality amp, the whole setup was annoyingly spendy.

The SoS test which showed that the B&W DM303s hifi speakers were pretty good was about as 'affordable' as it gets:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/monitors-vs-hi-fi-speakers-part-1

Yes this is exactly the problem.

IMHO the main advantage to 'cheap' powered studio monitors is it simplifies cabling and takes up less space, rather than 'sound quality' or neutrality.
If people are not mixing for commercial then it isn't a huge deal.

Stuckfast

There is a technical difference, in that systems with an external amp usually have passive crossovers: the amp generates one signal per channel and that is split to feed both the tweeter and the woofer. By contrast, active monitors usually have separate amp modules for the tweeter and the woofer. This has some advantages, because typically the woofer needs a lot more power than the tweeter. It also has some disadvantages because you have to stuff all this electronics into a sealed box where it's subject to heat and vibration.

thomasw88

Ok cheers chaps some good stuff there.

John_A

I use a pair of Genelec 8040s as main monitors and have some Monitor Audio Bronze 2 hifi speakers that I picked up for £50 as a second reference pair.  I run these from a Samson Servo power amp and they sound excellent.

What amp do you have?  It may be that the amp isn't great so better speakers still wouldn't be fantastic

thomasw88

John_A said:

I use a pair of Genelec 8040s as main monitors and have some Monitor Audio Bronze 2 hifi speakers that I picked up for £50 as a second reference pair.  I run these from a Samson Servo power amp and they sound excellent.

What amp do you have?  It may be that the amp isn't great so better speakers still wouldn't be fantastic

IT's a cambridge Audio Azur 340A.  I know it's not top end but it's actually fairly decent.

John_A

thomasw88 said:

John_A said:

I use a pair of Genelec 8040s as main monitors and have some Monitor Audio Bronze 2 hifi speakers that I picked up for £50 as a second reference pair.  I run these from a Samson Servo power amp and they sound excellent.

What amp do you have?  It may be that the amp isn't great so better speakers still wouldn't be fantastic

IT's a cambridge Audio Azur 340A.  I know it's not top end but it's actually fairly decent.

I would bet that it would be a weak link in the system, I used to use a HIFI amp years ago, upgraded to a cheap Alesis studio one and it was night and day.

Id say go for a pair of active monitors, even the cheap ones, alesis, m-audio etc sound really good