Aye, I got free next-day-delivery so it was worth an experiment. A quick question on studio monitors: is there any concern about them not being as musically satisfying as 'regular audiophile' speakers or is the difference between them just a matter of marketing?
They are, to my mind, more satisfying.
There is a strange pile of myth and nonsense in hifi, that active speakers are too revealing... too accurate.
A little thought quickly dispels this nonsense though.
What we require from hifi is accurate and revealing...
Every lover of music wants to hear his songs as close as they can to the recording. And active speakers do that.
Studio actives are made for professionals who don’t tolerate mush nor any false hype of any of the frequency range. Nor should the home listener. If they do they are listening to their hifi and not to the music.
As an argument to absurdity, consider how many people who are in the process of upgrading their hifi actually say... ‘well, what I’m really after is less detail and more clouding of the midrange by a bloated bass response, that’s why I’m spending more money...’
In reality serious active speakers are an upgrade to passive systems at even more than the actives cost.
It’s simply a fact of how they are designed and made.
For instance, instead of relying on a two channel, non specific, amplifier split by analogue x-overs, actives have four separate, dedicated power amps, operating
after the digital x-overs.
So, each driver has its own purpose built amplifier with no x-over loss or distortion added by it.
This alone translates into considerably greater overall control, especially of the bass driver, and a greater range of possible volume.
That doesn’t only mean greater volume with no distortion. It also means no loss of impact or detail even at very low, late night, volumes.
For just about any given budget, I’d always go for active monitors.
They actually do what hifi people claim to want.
But so many are into box changing, speaker wire voodoo and the hifi equivalents of homeopathy that actives are sometimes not only ignored but actively shunned for non existent reasons.