Active studio monitors anyone?

For many practical reasons, active monitors are what one will find in many project and mastering studios. Pro monitors are not designed for or marketed to the retail trade; beautiful woodwork and WAF are not a concern and marketing costs are kept minimal. Thus they have a rather narrow and utilitarian focus on sound quality and high value for the money. What one gets with an active pro monitor is a speaker that is no nonsense with a built-in amp engineered specifically for that speaker, along with sundry, often useful, options to EQ, balance and adapt their sound to the studio environment, be it near-field, mid-field or free-standing far field. Do keep in mind that active studio monitors often, but not always, accept only balanced (XLR) signal connectors, and that they also require an IEC power cord.

Because they are not commonly retailed (some cheap ones can be found at Guitar Center stores, but...), it is often difficult to directly audition and comparison shop studio monitors. Instead, Gearslutz https://www.gearslutz.com/board/ , as mentioned, has endless, and extremely detailed, discussions by pro and semi-pro sound studio people comparing all of the various brands. One can spend days...

In my studio, I worked with Focal CMS 65 monitors for a few years. Well built and designed, good sound and an excellent value @ $800 each (studio monitors are almost always sold individually). However, they make everything sound "nice," and I needed a monitor that was more detailed and precisely revealing. For me, that has been Swiss-built PSI Audio A21-M active monitors. http://www.zenproaudio.com/psi-audio-a21-m They are phenomenal; read the reviews. Absolutely flat, neutral, "fast," and utterly coherent and transparent, they "disappear" sonicly even in near-field and give me the sense that I'm listening directly to the source. They're analytical in the best sense of the word and not aggressive or fatiguing in the slightest. Carefully paired (wonderfully well) with my Focal CMS SUB http://www.zenproaudio.com/focal-cms-sub , the system is essentially flat to about 30 Hz. The downside? Not so good for background music; they're hard to ignore. See what they have to say about them at Gearslutz. The entire PSI line is remarkable and similar. There may be other monitors as good, but none at a comparable price that are notably better. (ZenPro is a joy to deal with as well.)

So if you want to simplify your system, and hear something similar to what the mastering engineer heard, get yourself a pair (or more) of pro monitors.

@inna - The answer to your question is that *active* pro monitors are not made for or marketed to consumers. No salons and a flattened distribution chain, very limited and very specialized advertising, little or no fancy furniture and no concern about the WAF, and not much in the way of "show-off" designs (exotic drivers and/or materials, creative cabinets, etc.) that don’t demonstrably benefit the sound. For most studio people, monitors are simply tools that one develops working experience with, and not something to endlessly tweak. There are other, more productive, things to do, and often as much or more time and money is devoted to room design, treatment and acoustics. At the very top end, beyond about $10K each, some studios will sometimes have passive "consumer" models such as Duntech or B&W 802 or 805s with associated high end amps. But even then, those speakers are often in addition to rather than instead of smaller active monitors. Active monitors are hard to beat when it comes to near- or mid-field listening and sonic "bang-for-the-buck." If I ever replace my "living room system" speakers (Thiel 2 2s driven by a Classé amp), it will almost certainly be with active studio monitors such as those by PSI.

@cwlondon Not to mention obsessing over speaker wire/cable/whatever, interconnects unbalanced/balanced 10-9s OFHC, and of course the preamp. Myself, I don’t even use a preamp. Same as the fellow referenced by bob_reynolds, I have for years used a Mytek DAC, which supports 4 digital inputs and has a volume control pot built in. It directly drives my PSI, and before that Focal, monitors and sub. Balanced interconnects by Monoprice (which I compared to several others, and they’re as good as Mogami, Canare, Monster & the like). Clean!

To wit, active studio monitors are indeed less "fun." They’re no nonsense high value tools designed and built for audio professionals who usually have better and more profitable things to do than constantly tweak their monitoring system. Instead, professionals get to know what they have, thoroughly, and how best to work with it. They then get on with the job.

A note of caution. As mentioned, studio monitors tend to be holographic and attention commanding, and perhaps aren't the best for background listening. Moreover, a system like the PSI will tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the sound. By design, you will hear everything about your system and your source recording, the spectacular, the mediocre and the ugly. It won't put powder and lipstick on anything, but natural beauty will shine through like nothing else.