Has anyone built GC into a speaker to make a self powered monitor?

[purplepeople]

I believe Mackie uses chip amps in their studio monitors. I think the Mackies are way better value than the Genelecs. Not quite as detailed, but punchier and much less money. Of course, that is not to say that the baby HR624 is cheap.

My own mains are Yorkville YSM1p active monitors. Each uses LM3886 and LM1876 biamped into 2 drivers. Not as smooth, punchy or detailed as the Mackies but a pair costs less than a single HR624.

:)ensen.

[Da5id4Vz]

Interesting thoughts about the Mackies. I’ve never actually heard a set but there seems to be a lot of good vibe about them. Ive often thought that they would make a great 5.1 system. Similarly Ive been curious about the M-Audio active monitors, frugilpelia of a whole new level.

Ive got a bunch of the ApexJR/Alesis amps boards kicking around waiting for me to try and do something with them. I suspect that matching them to the ideal driver will be the biggest trick.

Anyone remember the Tannoy Limpet amplifier? It was a single channel amp that hung on the back of the PBM 6.5/8 to make it an active monitor. Not a bad concept, it might have caught on if they had bypassed the passive crossovers and gone bi-amp. I wish they had stuck with that modular concept with there later active monitors. I liked the conversion-add on flexibility.

Before that thing came out I was toying with the idea of making poor mans HD1’s out of RDL crossovers, Stewart amplifiers and PBM-8’s. With the HD-1’s selling around $5k a pair, they were virtually the only active monitors on the block (back in the early 90’s). Seemed like I could get a lot of utility out of these things, for less critical applications, at a quarter the cost.

[purplepeople]

The M-Audio is not bad, just not good. I would still say they are better than most un-powered speakers in their price range. This is what amazes me most about active monitors - you get nearfields and a chip amp for the price of a typical consumer speaker. In fact, I'm surprised that an audiophile speaker brand hasn't already mated a GC to the back of one of their models.

:)ensen.