Why YOU NEED a monitor controller

[@oluwafemiolaonipekun]

Can I use the Presonus montior V2 with a 5:1 set-up?

[@mattingramsound]

Nope, sorry.

[@ElementoHostil]

Yes 🎉🎉🎉

[@052RC]

This is the first video I've seen of yours, but I couldn't help noticing your comment on noise with your old passive controller. Something's not right. You can't get noise with a passive unit. All a passive is nothing more than a volume control. You can make one. If you just buy a raw volume pot and attach some rca or ts connectors to it, that's it. In fact, if you're just using the controller for volume only, you don't even have to plug it in. That's what makes it passive. Where I'm going with all of this is, as long as you're sure that the unit was really passive, the noise has to come from somewhere else. Since a passive has no gain, you have to rely on whatever you're using before it, to have enough clean gain to get the signal through your passive and on to the the next component. Some components can handle that with no problems, and some can't. In a case like that, you'll need to use a preamp, because having a gain stage on the input almost always guarantees you won't have any problems. Noise like what you are talking about, is usually gain related. However, the problem could be something else, such as mixing balanced and single ended connections, you may have cables that work fine in an active connection, but not passive. Plugging a non line level signal into something that is, or mistaking a gain control for a volume control can also cause noise issues. I just though I would mention it because the industry does a very poor job in some areas, and problems like this are one of those areas. If you still have the equipment and you're interested, do some experimenting. If you try different combinations, you'll figure out what the problem is.

[@mattingramsound]

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I recommend you check out the full video on the big knob passive to have a better understanding.

[@052RC]

@@mattingramsound I watched the other video you mentioned. Just about everything I said in my first post still applies. One of the things I didn't realize is that some of the noise was due to a dirty volume pot. Something like that isn't considered a defect because its maintenance. All pots get dirty and have to be cleaned. Aside from the dirty pots, the differences between the Mackie and the Audient are so great, that its hard to put them in the same class of product. The Audient is a preamp, and the Mackie isn't. An active line stage, because of its design, if far better at being compatible with a wider range of components than a passive volume control. You can get just as good, if not better, sound from a passive, but you have to know what you're doing. It takes more work to get them sounding right. You have to rely on the active circuitry of the connected components to work well together, where an active setup is much more forgiving.

[@mattingramsound]

There is a wide range of quality in all components, including pots. As I mentioned in the review, I did clean it, many times, but it never sounded fully clean, and it continued to get noisy very quickly. And yes, the big knob passive and the NERO are vastly different in quality, however, at the end of the day, they are both monitor controllers.