"Pro" Active Monitors

Reference quality is something of an over statement, but the Tannoys will provide you will high quality sound. I personally prefer the JBL LSR28Ps (available for less than $1,400 pr.). Spendor, Mackie and ATC also make superior quality active monitors. One thing to be careful about is that these speakers are near field monitors and are intended to be listened to in that manner. You will also need to budget for a high quality stand.

Well, you are definately correct, in some cases. Take the ATC speakers. They started out as ONLY doing pro-audio. All of their speakers are internally bi-amped or tri-amped depending on the number of drivers. ATC took home the Stereophile system of the year for 2001 also... 60% of the recording studios have them, including Sony and Todd AO.

You can get a pair of internally powered Active 10's for $2500 or active 20's for $6900. Both are just amazing bookshelf sized monitors.

The Paradigm Active 20's were also an awesome speaker, but they stopped making them due to lack of interest. Internally amping is actually the best way to go if designed properly. On the ATC active 100's for example, they have 50Watts on the Tweeter, 100 Watts on the MidRange, and 200 Watts on the Bass unit. There is nothing sweeter when the amps are engineered for the specific driver right up front!

Secondly, it is better to have a long wire run BEFORE the amp, where an internal amp has a VERY short run from the amp to the driver. Especially with a balanced cable run, you can run much farther without nearly the loss as you would lose with a powered signal. Lastly, Internal passive crossovers are also not as good as an Internal active crossover....

I've never heard the Tannoys, but worth a listen.

The type of music you listen to may have a large impact. Most studio near-field monitors are meant to be very revealing (so recording engineers can hear what is being done to the signal as they lay down a mix). I have a home project studio in which I use Tannoy NFM 8s (with 8" dual concentric drivers) run by solid state electronics. My listening room however uses tubes and speakers with a rolled-off high end, which I prefer when I'm listening to classical music. For jazz and rock the monitors may be just the thing. You can get a pair of Tannoy Reveal active monitors from www.musiciansfriend.com for $799 with a 45 day money back satisfaction guarantee. Hard to beat.

i personally use ATC active 50's and highly recommend that you take a listen to them as well. the active 10's and 20's are wonderful bookshelf-style speakers and i prefer them to the tannoy line.

listen to both, though, and decide form there. you may prefer the tannoys.

good luck.

For around $800-900, I'd go for "real" Tannoy studio monitors, i.e., dual concentrics. The Reveals are fine as far as they go, but don't hold a candle to the coaxials that Tannoy has designed for the past 55 years. I picked up DMT 12s for around US$700 and DMT 12 IIs for closer to $900 (used). Even with a single modest amp, they'll blow the Reveals (and most hifi speakers) away. Plus you can enjoy them while saving up for some Bryston Power Packs to bolt to the back to make them into bona fide active monitors.

Active is the definitely the way to go, for it gets rid of the speaker cable (or 99% of it) and allows you to use an electronic crossover which can be made to much tighter tolerances than a passive one. Tannoy makes an active model based on the DMT 12, but a pair is very expensive, list price around $6500, though I did once see a used pair for rather less.

By all means audition ATC and Genelec and Tannoys, but compare models at similar price points. Reveals are Tannoy's compromise, because dual concentrics are much more expensive to manufacture than two physical separate drivers.

Happy listening/monitoring!

Joel Tatelman.