Passive Montior Question

[thegeek]

I have a need for new monitors and I was thinking about getting some passive monitors and using a power amp from my old live rig. I have a pair of Mackie FR1400s and a Crown CE 2000 available.

I know passive monitors can be a touch cheaper than their active counterparts but I wasn't sure if those power amps would work well. They have huge amounts of power compared to what the speakers will need but couldn't I just turn the output down?

[Marc Alan Goodman]

Yup, just don't blow em out.

[mscottweber]

I have thought about doing something like this too. In general, would power amps from live rigs not sound as good as low power ones meant for smaller studio speakers?

[sound for sandwiches]

Those bigger amps usually have a loud fan in them. that would be one consideration.

[dsw]

In general good power amps sound better than poor power amps regardless of power rating or market they were created for.

PA amps that sound good: Crown, newer QSC
Studio amps that sound bad: Alesis, Samson, Behringer

Get yerself a nice Hafler.

And don't worry about the wattage, just don't crank the volume up so high the speakers distort and you'll be fine. Distortion is a speakers way of saying OW!!

[dsw]

sound for sandwiches has a good point...fans can be annoying. sometimes you can stick the power amp off in a closet somewhere though, just make sure there is ventelation. a lot of guys look for old Adcom hifi amps too. Those are fine.

[snatchman]

Yeah, these amps will work but as mentioned, the fans gets aggravating..!..The extra power sounds good..!.. ..I had a Hafler P-7000 ( 350wpc..!) that sounded amazing with my NS-10s, but it had a fan... .. Ended up with the " baby brother" P-3000 which is a good sounding amp but doesn't have quite the ummfff of the 7000...The fan wasn't extremly loud, but you could hear it in my "one room studio"..Good luck

[sound for sandwiches]

For some reason I have accumulated quite a collection of power amps, and all of my smaller ones were free ("that's broken, you can have it," they say....) needing little more than deoxit and some TLC. I wound up with an old BGW (50 wpc I think), a Yamaha "natural sound" series with 60 or so wpc, A peavey CS800, and a crown D75 this way. I'm no golden ears but they all sound good to me. way better than my old POS qsc units from my rock n roll PA. The BGW is my favorite, the front is a solid 1/4" thick, 3RU piece of aluminum with one switch on it.

I've always monitored through old stereo speakers (KLH, yamaha, etc) and one of these amps. If I ever get a really nice space to record in, I will invest in some real monitors, but this works for now.

David

[Marc Alan Goodman]

Yeah, these amps will work but as mentioned, the fans gets aggravating..!..The extra power sounds good..!.. :lol: ..I had a Hafler P-7000 ( 350wpc..!) that sounded amazing with my NS-10s, but it had a fan... :evil: .. Ended up with the " baby brother" P-3000 which is a good sounding amp but doesn't have quite the ummfff of the 7000...The fan wasn't extremly loud, but you could hear it in my "one room studio"..Good luck

'

Totally true. NS-10's in particular sound WAY better with an overpowered amp. I haven't experimented with it a ton but I'm willing to bet that works pretty well across the board.

You might think about soldering a fuse holder into the hot side of you speaker cables right outside the cabinets, assuming the speakers themselves aren't already fused. It prevents you from being able to push them as hard as they can go, but it also prevents them from blowing out most of the time. You just have to figure out the right value for the amount of wattage you want. I'm sure someone online somewhere has a good map of those numbers. It's well worth it, and a hell of a lot easier than drilling holes in the speakers themselves to add fuses.