Need passive monitors recommendations

[pascual]

Hey amigos.
I’m looking for some quality passive monitors (8ohms)that I can feed with A Yamaha receiver. 6”, easy on the wallet, good for listening to music and light production.
Any suggestions?

[BertKoor]

I really like my Alesis MonitorOne mk2 set. Not produced anymore alas.

But I would never buy monitors without listening to them. I made the choice to buy mine despite another pair sounding better, but costing more, and other pairs costing roughly the same just sounding different. These are decisions only you can make.

Have you narrowed down the search already?

[pascual]

I really like my Alesis MonitorOne mk2 set. Not produced anymore alas.

But I would never buy monitors without listening to them. I made the choice to buy mine despite another pair sounding better, but costing more, and other pairs costing roughly the same just sounding different. These are decisions only you can make.

Have you narrowed down the search already?

Not really. I’m currently living pretty far away from any good shop or audio store to get to demo some speakers. So I’m probably gonna have to order them online.

[BertKoor]

Just now I've visited three "local" online music shops (bax-shop, Thomann, KeyMusic) The list of passive monitors is short, not much to chose from.

There's the JBL Control 1 Pro. Very affordable. Bass port on the front, good for bookshelf or close to a wall. Light weight plastic housing puts me off, but they get good reviews. Not in stock, takes about a month to get them.

Then there's the Behringer rip-off of the above mentioned. I say no more about them.

Next up are the Auratone & Avantone cubes which are in the next price category. Since these are single driver and don't have a cross-over, they might be somewhat more flat in response. Otoh some people say these are to check your mixes on "average" speakers. No effort put in extending bass, indeed! Midrange & highs should be flat though. These are a bit expensive to be crap.

That's what's locally available for me. Sounds like you're one or two decades too late for a large choice of passive speakers.

You might be temped into getting some good hifi speakers. When I was shopping, I tried a set of Wharfedale Diamonds. They messed up with the cross-overs and you could only hear the tweeters if you were exactly in line. Clearly not designed for near-field monitoring... That was the 8.1 model - not produced anymore. Two decades later, things might have changed.

Good luck!

[Nobdi]

JBL Control 1 Pro are not really monitors.
Their very nice for casual listening but far from linear.
So imho good for a 2nd or 3rd pair but not as mains.

[currentsound]

Passive monitors are almost non-existent now. They are inferior to active monitors. With passive monitors, you need an amp to drive them. Since the manufacturer of the monitor has no idea what amp you're going to use, the coloration of the amp can't be tuned/adjusted for by the speaker and you end up with a less accurate sound. So that's why all new monitors are active now. Active monitors solve the problem of the amp coloring the sound of the monitors.

So you're only really going to find active monitors on the used market from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. Even the cheap budget monitors are all active now.

The most popular passive monitors on the used market are probably the Yamaha NS10s.

[BertKoor]

Passive monitors are non-existent in shops because nobody buys them anymore, so nobody produces them anymore.

Inferiority or correction of amp colourations has not much to do with it. Coloration of a bad amp is even near non-existant when compared to the coloration of a good speaker.

Imho it's just the convenience of having everything in one box that killed the separate components.

[The Noodlist]

Then there's the Behringer rip-off of the above mentioned. I say no more about them.

Next up are the Auratone & Avantone cubes which are in the next price category. Since these are single driver and don't have a cross-over, they might be somewhat more flat in response. Otoh some people say these are to check your mixes on "average" speakers. No effort put in extending bass, indeed! Midrange & highs should be flat though. These are a bit expensive to be crap.

Auratone successfully defends trademark against Behringer parent company Music Tribe

The bare-faced cheek.

[Hink]

I have a pair of Tannoy Protoj's...I'm old school and I dont want my amp part of my speaker for many reasons. I have had my monitors since 1999, two different power amps.

[BertKoor]

[...] Behringer rip-off of the above [...]

I was actually referring to 1C-BK being rip-offs of Tannoy VMS1 and JBL Control 1 Pro, but thanks for the update:

Auratone successfully defends trademark against Behringer parent company Music Tribe

The bare-faced cheek.

Had to opt out a LOT of cookies, then read this:

Music Tribe previously registered the Auratone trademark as its own on 13 April 2014, prompting Auratone to file a protest on 11 June 2014, as well as its own trademark application that same day.

Up until the court’s decision last week, the rightful user of the mark was up for debate. Jack Wilson, the founder of Auratone failed to renew the trademark in 2014, a year before his death at the age of 84.

And it doesn't stop there. Here's a bit of "product information" I found:

The Behritone speakers pay tribute to a now-defunct company with the legendary 5C speakers.

For anyone interested in passive monitors, all the Behritones are active and classified on their own website as "legacy".

[The Noodlist]

I was also referring to the general principle of design copying. The picture below might infer the customer is receiving an actual Auratone product by the use of the name.
https://www.dv247.com/en_GB/GBP/Behring ... 008525-000
Behringer speaker clearly marked. Using someone else brand name reputation might be seen as
borderline deception.

[chk071]

Imho it's just the convenience of having everything in one box that killed the separate components.

It always seemed too much of a hassle for me to amp passive speakers, so, yep, I can only confirm that.