Active studio monitors anyone?

Look at the Quested Line, Active Speakers, I have a dealer which has given me excellent pricing on them. The Z Series though designed for Home Theatre do have a Active Remote Amplifier setup Such as the Z8s. Hanz Zimmer uses Quested Speakers in his studios.

Active speakers have a ton of advantages.

Take a look at the Focal SM9, They use A/AB amps and have a built in EQ that can be by passed. They basically have modified utopia and electra drivers in them. They are $7500ish and crazy cheap when compared to focal's other speakers. There is a big thread on gearslutz about the SM9.

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.

If it were such a great idea we all would have this arrangement. In reality almost none of us does. What does it tell you? One thought is that we are stupid, another that we are ignorant, yet another that we are arrogant, and the final one is that we know what we do. You choose.