Small Floor Monitors

[Art Zemon]

This list has been awfully quiet for a long time. I hope that I'm not the only one still here. Where has this sort of conversation migrated to?

I'm looking for physically small speakers to use as floor monitors on the front of a stage. Do you have suggestions? I am even open to repurposing something like home theater surround speakers. I tried a TV soundbar recently. It was plenty loud for the space but it flooded the audience with sound out the backside so I won't do that again.

    -- Art Z.

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[Kyle Jensen]

What’s your budget? I’ve used Meyer MM4s, and UPMs, JBL AC15s, EAW JF60s, etc. for floor monitors to great effect.

— Kyle 

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 10, 2025, at 08:57, Art Zemon <a...@zemon.name> wrote:



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[Nick Kourtides]

Maintaining mid-bass pattern control off the back of a small enclosure is really difficult. Old-school solutions include heavy multi-ply construction which provides a measure of damping. New-school measures include composite cabinet materials to achieve similar damping without the size and weight. There's almost nothing in the consumer universe of speaker construction that attempts to tackle this, outside of expensive exotica. 

This is also one of the reasons why downstage lip monitors aren't really favored for musical theatre, typically. Beyond the visuals, keeping that contamination out of the audience is difficult. And using something like time delay to align it with acoustic source arrival or with front fills can make a mess for the performers needing a solid time 0.

N

Nick Kourtides

Sound Design

(he/him)

+1 215 915 0159

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[Chet Leonard]

Galaxy Audio Hot Spots? they peter out at 150Hz.

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[Mark Turpin]

There are quite a few options with 4” or 5” drivers.  In addition to Kyle’s suggestions, you could also look at Renkus Heinz or Fulcrum.  If you want a powered device, a Galaxy Hotpot might also work.

 

The back lobe will always be at least something of a problem, though, because it is hard to get much in the way of pattern control from a cabinet that is that small.  A lot will depend on how much low frequency you need from the monitor for your application and how loud they need to be.  Be prepared to high-pass them pretty aggressively.  (See also Nick’s comments about pattern control.  If you also have front fills, you may need to align the monitors to the front fills and that might create other problems for the performers.)

 

Depending on your sonic requirements and budget, you might also consider K-Array and Innovox, but be careful how they are fed.  I had a client who tried using K-Array Anacondas for hidden monitors but didn’t have them adequately high-passed and toasted them by trying to squeeze too much LF out of them.

 

I often use Innovox micro-lines for recording talkback in a recital or concert hall setting.  They work great for that application (voice only) but they won’t provide any LF at all – they are high-passed at 150 Hz or so. 

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[Seablade -]

Add one more 4-5" driver option to the pile, Danley Nanos.  Taking time with  tuning this box can get some decent results for the size.  All the standard things about small size boxes apply here of course though.

Just a little bit larger, I would look at the CCX8 from Fulcrum as Mark mentioned, a bit of LF rejection to the rear due to their design, might make enough of a difference, but haven't heard them in this particular application yet myself.

      Thomas

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[Art Zemon]

Lots and lots of good ideas here. Thank you all! There is such a dizzying array of speakers out there that it helps to have some pointers to narrow the field down.

I did forget to mention that I only need to feed piano into it, with a high pass filter. I've done this in the past with a variety of speakers and it has given the casts what they need.

Thanks again

    -- Art Z.

[Mark Turpin]

We like the Fulcrum boxes a lot for small and mid-sized venues – CCX8 or CCX12 make good compact center (vocal) arrays for smallish houses, and the DX896 is a go-to for rehearsal rooms or live room foldback.

 

One major caveat, though – don’t even look at Fulcrum if you don’t have a robust DSP handling distribution.  They only work correctly with Dave Gunness’s secret sauce FIR filtering on the send. 

 

In the itsy-bitsy tiny world, Frenetik (a small French company) makes some Dante-direct POE-powered boxes.  They have a 4” that might work.  I have only ever used their smallest box (the Spik3) for some discrete control room talkbacks, so I can’t speak to their suitability for broadband music.  Maybe someone else here has used them.

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