that's great. I think you are out of the very few who have moved from a dedicated passive stereo setup to an active monitor one. It will very nice to hear about the experience and the differences.
IMO,
most of the Active Speakers users today, must have been passive users yesterday. I would think there are very few who would have started off as active speaker users and stayed that way
Coming back to the Original Post, Active Speakers need a lot more
discipline, IMO
Most of the active speakers, try to be neutral but it is not really very easy to achieve neutral especially at a very small prices if it is not nearfield monitoring, even if there is more than 3 feet distance from speakers to the listening space.
Also, there is this thing about not beating physics. What large drivers (read as >= 8" drive)could do to sound vs a smaller 6.5" drive
Given all this, a particular active speaker sound only one way, whether you like it or not. Some believe that it is the accurate sound but in reality it might not be as accurate as one wants it to be.
So how is all this different from passive? In passive configuration, one tries to balance the sound of the speaker with the sound of the amplifier in their preferred way where as in an active configuration one tries to enjoy what the manufacturer thinks is the right matching.
For some, manufacturer's matching is acceptable and I might even say, enjoyable. For some others like me, at my given price point, the passive combination works best to my sound liking.
Coming back to the Pro-Audio range of Active speakers, there is a tremendous value one can buy in. One gets an active bi-amplified speaker (even tri-amplified speaker with a stretch on budget).
So, what's the catch? There is actually almost none - Most Pro audio speakers are meant for the Sound engineer to analyse the recordings rather than put his legs up and enjoy. This is where the most discussions are centered around. Some says there is no difference in the above two scenarios. If so, the whole home audio business is all about rebranding the pro audio stuff into home decor friendly clothing. Personally, I think there is a major difference between the two. This is where the analytical nature of the gear comes into picture.
When a pro-audio makes a pair of active speaker, I would assume that he tries to make the amp + speaker combo as much analytical as possible to give the sound engineer the needed insight into the recording so that he can tweak the mix for wider acceptance. A sound engineer does not have to be a musician but he needs to know the sound of the instruments and possibly have greater idea of what might be appealing to wider end consumer of the recording.
My guess is if a Sound engineer is into listening to music at home, he might not have the same gear as his studio but the one that would play the recording as an enjoyable piece of music.
If all the above is true, then why there is so much overlap / confusion? I would say, over the years, the job of Sound Engineer (like many other professions) has spread over from larger studios to home production. With the internet boom, youtube artists, garage bands all this has spread over like wildfire. Now the pro-audio companies are also into the business of catering to the home production and hence the gear are slightly tuned to home but overall the main objective is not lost - that is being analytical and ability to look into the recording are still the the strength of the pro-gear.
All this brings to another interesting aspect of our hobby.. If something is really neutral and accurate, then how can one not enjoy the music? The answer is there is nothing really neutral out there. Atleast at the normal asking price that I can think of. Also the mic that are used to record, the sound engineer's thoughts on how things should sound, his gear all add up the recording that we are playing being already different from the live sound. The last chain our gear, adds its own distortion be it small or large.
So, I gave up on neutral long time back and look for something that I can enjoy with minimum distortion. Pro-audio gear though sounds good and great VFM, IMO sounded best from a desktop position (Adam A7x that i auditioned, for example). It was very clean but still sounded detached. I am no sound engineer and may be they help the sound engineer better. Also, the speakers sounded very different when I was some 7 feet away from them.
Coming back to discipline, one needs to be very clear about what kind of sound they want and a particular active or pro-audio speaker makers definition of SQ is matching their own definition and if they are happy with that kind of accuracy / neutrality for longer periods of listening then they hit the jackpot! As it costs a lot lesser to go pro-audio route or active speakers route.
By no means, I am saying that active speakers are cheaper. There are some competent active speakers which costs a lot of more but also if you look at real pricey ones most of them tend to be passive. But the good news is that active speakers entry price for a given technical level of performance (read as RMS and SPL) is much VFM than passive counterparts. But in terms of ground reality about how much fun one can get out of them (keeping the technicality aside for a minute) is all for you to decide!
Now, Burn me!
(pun intended)
