Passive vs Active Studio Monitors – Which is More Suitable?

When designing a home studio, one of the most crucial decisions is the set of monitors to purchase. Your choice of studio monitors can have a huge impact on the listening experience in your studio and the wrong decision can impede your ability to create recordings that translate well when played on other sound systems.

Monitors are also important because even in a recording studio, you’re not always making or mixing music. Sometimes you’re watching videos, or doing other kinds of post-production where clear, articulate sound reproduction is crucial to the job at hand.

This article discusses the differences between Active monitors like the Fluid Audio FX series and Passive Monitors and their usefulness and compatibility with home studios. However, before we proceed, let’s go through some vital parts of the studio monitor.

Cabinet/Enclosure – This encases the electronics and speakers of the monitor and is made out of various materials, like wood, MDF, metal, or plastic.

Most Studio Monitors have two separate drivers or Speakers, sometimes also called transducers –

Tweeter - The speaker that is usually near the top of the speaker cabinet is called a tweeter. These are mostly cone or dome-shaped and constructed from a wide range of materials, from paper to cloth to metal. The tweeter produces high frequencies, usually starting at around 2 kHz, but can go as low as 800Hz.

Woofer - The speaker that is usually near the bottom of the cabinet, is called a woofer. Generally, they are cone-shaped and are responsible for producing low and mid-range frequencies in monitors with two drivers (called a 2-way).

Mid-range Speaker – Some monitors also come with a third driver, a mid-range speaker, which covers the mid frequencies of a speaker.

Speaker “motor” – There is a magnet placed behind each speaker driver (usually ferrite or neodymium). Within the magnet is a gap where a wound coil is suspended. When the voltage at different frequencies is applied to the coil, it causes the voice coil to vibrate and drives the speaker cone that the voice coil is attached to. This effectively vibrates the cone and “pushes” the air which propagates sound towards your eardrum.

Passive vs. active monitors

Regardless of where the amplifier resides, speaker drivers need an amplified signal to make an audible sound. This is achieved with two different systems: Passive and Active studio monitors.

Passive Monitor – With a passive monitor, the enclosure only houses the speaker drivers, not the amplifier. For that reason, you need an external amplifier to amplify the input signal before entering the transducers housed in the enclosure. This amplified signal is then sent through a series of electronic components within the monitor enclosure called the crossover network.

The crossover network acts as a filter and separates the input signal into separate signals based on the frequency. The crossover network (in a 2-way design) separates the audio signals into one with high frequencies and one with low frequencies. The higher frequencies are filtered and sent to the tweeter and the lower frequencies to the woofer. This example would be called a “single-amp” system.

Active Monitor – These monitors (more common these days) have amplification built into the same cabinet as the speaker drivers. Upon entering the built-in amplifier, the input signal passes through an active crossover network first. Subsequently, each band is amplified separately before being sent to the speaker drivers.

In a studio monitor with one tweeter and one woofer, the signal is divided into two bands and each band has its own dedicated amplifier. This is called a “bi-amped” system. Drivers produce a more precise and defined sound when powered individually, making bi-amped configurations sound better and handle more power than single-amp designs.

Which one is better for a home studio - passive or active?

Active monitors like the Fluid Audio FX Series are perfectly suited for a home studio setting as they don’t require an external amplifier or the hassle of calibrating the crossover network. This is very useful in designing your home studio where space, time, and budget are always concerned. Moreover, a passive system needs to calibrate your amplifier to your monitors’ drivers. Active monitors are designed so the built-in amplifiers match the speaker driver’s power rating. For these reasons, the majority of modern, professional studios use active monitors, from the 50W 2-way designs, all the way up to the 2000W 3 and 4-way high-end systems.