Passive monitor controller alternative (just volume adjustment)

[thecontrolcentre]

If you carefully read all reviews of monitor controllers at Thomann than there's only one without main complaints and that is the Heritage Audio Baby which costs 198 € !!
https://www.thomann.de/en/heritage_audio_baby_ram.htm

That's the one I have. Has a volume knob with dim, mute, mono & audio in/out select buttons. Has two pairs of monitor outputs and two stereo inputs. Great bit of kit.

[xalama qo]

I guess that review makes perfect sense. Electric guitarists, and famously Eddie van Halen, use the passive volume knob as a tone control, even on clean tones. So I suppose a similar darkening at low volume and brightening at full volume on these passive monitor controllers is feasible. It would be interesting to A/B with a decent active system, say even a Mackie mixer master fader. I'm no expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's some psychoacoustic facet in the mix too, because louder always sounds hotter signal-wise. If that makes any sense.
The review mentioned degrading of stereo field and dynamic range iirc, which I suppose is the beginnings of "starting to sound muffled" which would be very undesirable indeed. Such a pity these aren't truly transparent, they'd have a ton of gain staging uses in a studio beyond just monitor controllers.

[simmo75]

I own and highly rate the Heritage Audio Baby, it does its job perfectly.

[Winstontaneous]

I've had a Mackie Big Knob for about 10 years and it works great for both volume control and switching between 2 sets of inputs and/or speakers. I am aware of the tradeoffs of passive circuitry, but as it's being fed by low impedance, line-level signals using short high-quality cables any tone suck is minimal. If you get an active solution at this price point you'd likely have different issues of tone quality from cheap circuitry, and encounter distortion and noise if not gain staged correctly (a non-issue with passive).