Should I upgrade to active studio monitors from passive setup?

[DanielT]

Of course, you can upgrade from passive to better active speakers—just as you can upgrade from active to better passive ones.

Thats not exactly true. There are advantages to both. Active flattens at the crossover. Passive has less hiss.

As long as the passive speakers have good directivity, you can EQ them yourself. However, there is nothing you can do about the hiss found in some active speakers—at least not without major modifications, as far as I know.
(when and if hiss is annoying depends on the listening distance and individual irritation thresholds.)

The biggest upgrade I perceived is having a subwoofer that handles the low frequencies, a proper crossover and the ability to eq. The latter for integrating the sub and speakers and adjust to the room from 20 hz to about 500 hz.

Subwoofer is usually what it comes down to—at least whenever various bookshelf speaker options are discussed.

 

[Roland68]

Hi,

I am currently using Wharfedale diamond 10.1 and also have diamond 9.1 speakers and sound quality is pretty enjoyable.
Amplifies are Soul Note sa3.0 and Sa4.0 mono blocks and also Class D O-Noorus D4 [PFFB] upgraded with opamps.
Listening distance is around 4-5 meters and room is medium-large.

I was wondering if I buy JBL 305p, Kali LP6 V2 or any other studio monitor. Will it be an upgrade or downgrade? considering room size and listening distance
Speakers will be used for casual home usage only.

Given such a large room and a long listening distance, I would look into powerful floor-standing speakers. Active monitors in the same price range would likely pale in comparison.
For the European market, I would recommend the Heco Aurora 700, which can be found on sale for €500–700 per pair. Your amplifiers are perfectly adequate for them, and in my experience, they are in a different league compared to the speakers you listed.

 

[sabih]

Given such a large room and a long listening distance, I would look into powerful floor-standing speakers. Active monitors in the same price range would likely pale in comparison.
For the European market, I would recommend the Heco Aurora 700, which can be found on sale for €500–700 per pair. Your amplifiers are perfectly adequate for them, and in my experience, they are in a different league compared to the speakers you listed.

I don't have much space for floor standing speakers. But two different dealers suggested me to purchase Dali Oberon 3 bookshelf. Both of the dealers said that this particular model will give similar enjoyment like a floor standing speakers.

 

[Roland68]

I don't have much space for floor standing speakers. But two different dealers suggested me to purchase Dali Oberon 3 bookshelf. Both of the dealers said that this particular model will give similar enjoyment like a floor standing speakers.

No, they don't; your dealer wants to sell you something and is telling you fairy tales. It comes down to physics: to achieve similar performance, you would need correspondingly large bookshelf speakers—featuring a large woofer and an internal volume comparable to the Aurora 700s. That would result in a truly massive box.
If you place your speakers on existing furniture or shelves, you would indeed need more space; however, given the long listening distance, it might actually be better to position the speakers a bit further forward.
But if you use stands, the footprint—and the space that can't really be used for anything else—is the same as for floor-standing speakers; in that case, it’s more of a mental thing.

But that’s just a suggestion based on my own experience. It is solely your decision, and you don't have to explain yourself or answer to anyone.

 

[Mort]

But two different dealers suggested me to purchase Dali Oberon 3 bookshelf

of course they did. Dali's aren't particularly well-regarded here.

 

[Cote Dazur]

I don't have much space for floor standing speakers.

The only scenario for bookshelf to take less space than tower is if you put them on a shelf.
Putting them on a shelf limits where you can put them in the room as far as how wide, how far from boundaries and at what height, which are all important factor to optimize their performance in a given room.
To extract the performance of bookshelf you need to put them on stands, which both add to the cost and negate any floor space advantage.

 

[MouseOnMars]

The only scenario for bookshelf to take less space than tower is if you put them on a shelf.
Putting them on a shelf limits where you can put them in the room as far as how wide, how far from boundaries and at what height, which are all important factor to optimize their performance in a given room.
To extract the performance of bookshelf you need to put them on stands, which both add to the cost and negate any floor space advantage.

It's true they technically take up as much space as towers, but the certainly don't look like it. Towers would be overwhelming appearance in my living room. Bookshelfs on a stand are much less obtrusive. And I can hide subs behind curtains.

 

[RexrothPigeon]

Active Speakers—The Second Wave, by Bruno Putzeys, Part 1 of 2

What can active speakers do that passive ones can’t? Impulse response, impulse response, impulse response, says Bruno Putzeys.

pmamagazine.org

Active Speakers—The Second Wave, by Bruno Putzeys, Part 2 of 2

Bruno Putzeys concludes his two-part series that explains why active speakers are inherently better than passive ones.

pmamagazine.org

putzeys has a lot to say about active speakers, good read for anyone interested imo

 

[Cote Dazur]

It's true they technically take up as much space as towers, but the certainly don't look like it. Towers would be overwhelming appearance in my living room. Bookshelfs on a stand are much less obtrusive. And I can hide subs behind curtains.

Depending on what tower you are talking about, I agree that one might find the look of a bookshelf on a stand more attractive, it is up to personal taste, your argumentation was taking more room.
With a tower you might not have to have a sub at all, so then, no need to hide it anywhere.
You can do with your decor as you like, I am just pointing at alternatives.

 

[Ellebob]

If you were to have two identical speakers, with the same cabinet and using the same drivers, there would be no doubt active would be better than passive. No doubt about it! There's a lot of reasons for this.

However, we are not comparing the same speakers. They will have different dispersion patterns and different other qualities. Maybe one has better drivers than the other, disperses better, Etc.

If you are happy with your current system, enjoy it! In this hobby you can really go crazy going down a lot of rabbit holes, trying to get that next level of performance. Get off the forums and enjoy your system. That's the best advice I can give you.

 

[fpitas]

If you were to have two identical speakers, with the same cabinet and using the same drivers, there would be no doubt active would be better than passive. No doubt about it!

Could you elaborate on that?

I mean, I have active speakers, but I'm not sure why you say that.

 

[Waxx]

speakers are in the first place to enjoy reproduced sound, and whatever works for you is good enough.

But speakers with dsp (build in or external) can easelier be processed to be neutral than passive. It's not always the case, and passive can be as neutral as active, but it's harder to do, and so often not done right. Active speakers, where the amps are build in, also have disadvantages, as the amp is what breaks down first, and it's often hard or impossible to repair.

I mostly use self build speakers myself, and most that i build now (for myself or others) are hybrid, where a part of the filtering is active and a part is passive (whatever works best for the specific case). Or i use dsp eq over passive speakers. It's not black and white only, there are a lot of variations and hybrid solutions also. So use what best fits your need.

 

[Steve Dallas]

I have had too many active speakers fail to want to use them outside of studio monitors. And even there, I just migrated to passives with external amps plus EQ / DRC. Good passives can last 20+ years. Actives no so much.

 

[Ellebob]

Could you elaborate on that?

I mean, I have active speakers, but I'm not sure why you say that.

Splitting signal level before amplification allows a more precise crossover with less distortion. Less distortion with amps powering each driver and amps made for each driver. Better speaker protection. This is all without DSP. Active has been around a long time and advantages are before discussing DSP. When you add DSP you can do even more.

We have actives that have been working for over 25 years in installations. In any system the electronics will likely fail before the speaker drivers. Also, passive crossover can deteriorate over time and affect performance. Passive crossover performance can change with temperature. Most homes don't vary temperature enough to matter.

This comes down to quality of build. You can buy a Bryston amp with a 20 year warranty but most amps receivers won't last that long. Speakers are tougher to tell deterioration as we get used to their sound change over time. If you measure some speakers new and then after 10 years many would be surprised. Speakers with better capacitors, resistors, inductors can last a long time but not everyone is buying the better built speakers or buying better electronics.

For a home system it is easier to change out a receiver or amp if something goes wrong. Plus receivers often get switched because of technology. Repair of lower priced active speaker is tough to find and often their is a new model so tougher to replace. The better companies do repair their active speakers for decades but again they are not the bargain models.

 

[dualazmak]

Hello, OP @sabih,

My PC-DSP-based multichannel multi-SP-driver multi-amplifier full-active audio project would be of your interest and reference; I have converted my 3-way (woofer, midrange, tweeter) passive SP into full active configuration by completely eliminating/bypassing LCR-passive network and the attenuators. Furthermore, I have added L&R active heavy-large subwoofers and super-tweeters (dedicatedly and directly driven by an amplifier) to my audio setup.

You can find the latest setup of my audio system in #931, #1,009 and #1,022 on my project thread.

Please find here and here the Hyperlink Index for my multichannel active audio project.
_

 

[fpitas]

I will point out one place where active is clearly superior, and that's when time delay is necessary for time-aligning drivers. You can line up phase pretty well with passive, but other than large, complicated delay networks it's tough to get broadband delay. That is admiitedly kind of sideways to the question the OP asked.

 

[bravomail]

Hi,

I am currently using Wharfedale diamond 10.1 and also have diamond 9.1 speakers and sound quality is pretty enjoyable.
Amplifies are Soul Note sa3.0 and Sa4.0 mono blocks and also Class D O-Noorus D4 [PFFB] upgraded with opamps.
Listening distance is around 4-5 meters and room is medium-large.

I was wondering if I buy JBL 305p, Kali LP6 V2 or any other studio monitor. Will it be an upgrade or downgrade? considering room size and listening distance
Speakers will be used for casual home usage only.

I could only suggest trying 3e audio 5 amp in bridged mode (TPA3251 based). It will drive your speakers with more "authority" in lower bass regions.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

If I was starting over, I'd just use active speakers. In pro audio, we moved the crossovers to be prior to the amplifier sometime in the 70s and never looked back. Doing it at line level instead of at speaker level allowed for much more precise filtering, and for a big PA system one active crossover was far cheaper than a dozen passive crossovers inside the boxen.

With digital dsp, and active monitoring of the drivers, even more improvements are possible. And then there's the simple engineering fact that putting everything in one box and optimizing the interaction among the drivers, amplifiers, crossover, and whatever additional processing should provide a better overall result than making components and hoping they will work with whatever other gear they going to be used with.

But the home audiophile hobby is often about fiddling with your system, and you can't do that with an all-in-one solution like an active speaker. So, audiophiles tend to eschew actives and are left to experiment with silly things like bi-wiring and placing aluminum blocks on their amps to absorb eddy currents.

But I'm mostly happy with the audio systems I have and am not in a hurry to re-wire the house to replace speaker cables with ethernet & AC so I'm not updating to actives any time soon. That said, my "studio monitors" in the computer room are active, and sometimes I think about upgrading them.

 

[Alexei]

Hmmm. I think I will keep using my systems for now.
But will try something like Kali Audio LP6 V2 out of curiosity just to check why some people are going towards active route.

Sounds like a sensible plan.

I do agree with much of what other members have said in this thread.

I’d like to add my subjective opinion that the Diamond 9 & 10 series 2-ways have some kind of audio balance magic that you may not find elsewhere easily. Vocals, perceived transients, perceived timing coherence, imaging in both depth & laterally, and pleasant overall balance won them awards.
Their neodymium soft-dome tweeters sound so much more realistic than what they’re doing with Dentons & Lintons nowadays.

If you like what you hear now with the ‘.1s’, don’t be surprised if other speakers won’t live up to the hype even if they seemingly measure amazingly. They may initially dazzle but will you want to keep listening after an hour.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/wharfedale-diamond-101-loudspeaker for what it’s worth.

I have the larger 10.2s still in daily use and I’ll never get rid of them despite also having several other larger and better-measuring speakers.
The 10.1’s were generally regarded by reviewers as even better balanced-sounding, but with a bit less bass. My listening distance is also 5m away.

If all you are looking for is more or deeper bass, then a sub would be a cheaper way and easier to hide in the room than floorstanders.

Good luck in the search but hang onto those Diamonds. (Diamonds are Forever! Ha ha).