After many years of using regular active speakers on their side for stage monitors (which work well enough) I’ve done lots of research and decided to move over to Studiomaster Sense 12A+ monitors. Four of them arrived earlier this week so here’s a quick rundown and first impressions.
For the size, features, and of course price, these are pretty incredible units. Here’s the specs:
- 300W RMS total class D amps (260W LF + 40W HF)
- 127dB max
- Dual XLR input with mix output
- On-board DSP with two different built-in EQ presets (Live or Monitor), plus delay, limiter, selectable sub crossover frequency and three-band EQ.
- 12″ coaxial driver
- Plywood case with chunky rubber feet and the usual hardwearing black paint
- Metal top hat for 35mm speaker stands (centre front edge)
- Steel grille with foam to protect the driver from damage, dust and dirt
- 15kg
Why dedicated monitors?
There has been nothing particularly wrong with the active speakers we’ve been using for monitors, we regularly get positive comments about the sound quality on stage – so why change?
There were several reasons behind the decision.
Due to being a smallish outfit, we need to be flexible. The speakers we’ve been using (Alto TX12 and Stagg SMS12P) were bought separately and with full knowledge that we’d being using them for both dedicated front of house, front/side fill, and stage monitor duties.
The Sense 12A+ are about as loud as the TX12, more powerful than the SMS12P, have a smaller stage footprint and being dedicated monitors, are angled much more upwards – towards the performers’ ears instead of their knees. The smaller footprint of course also means more room in the van and less space taken up when they’re on stage or in storage.
Should we need them for fill or even mains duties we can still mount them on a stand and either use them as-is or with a sub or two. Thanks to the on-board DSP, we can run them from the main output of the mixer along with the subs, and use their DSP to set the crossover frequency and also to time-align them to the subs.
Interestingly, the DSP looks and feels very similar to the one in our Behringer DR110DSP speakers, so is possibly using the same or similar DSP chip.
The competition
Other models and brands we looked at include:
After that you’re into the significantly more expensive stuff like Electrovoice, Yamaha, RCF etc. an can easily pay three, four or more times the price per unit. That stuff was well out our budget.
The HH, whilst being a perfectly solid speaker, is fairly basic in its capabilities. It lacks the DSP controls – only having a switch to select between FoH or Monitor mode. It has a clip indicator, but the specs don’t mention it having a limiter.
The Citronic has a DSP, but it’s still pretty basic, only allowing you to select between a few different DSP presets. It does have a limiter, but there’s no delay setting. The DSP doesn’t include an LCD – you just get some simple LED indicators. It also has Bluetooth, but we actively don’t want any possibilities of people connecting to this during an event and fiddling with settings or playing music.
The LD MON 12A is a great unit but approximately twice the price of the Studiomaster for the same dB output level and similar capabilities.
The Turbosound TFX122-AN is a great little unit, and it was a strong contender. The DSP is great with plenty of useful features. It’s about a third more expensive than the Studiomaster, a few kg heavier but with a slightly lower maximum db output level. Ultimately, it had some features we felt like we were paying for but wouldn’t use, such as ULTRANET.
The dB FMX12 is about twice the price of the Studiomaster and whilst it has clever things like FIR filters and a rotatable HF horn, has a much less configurable DSP with no display.
Note that the only difference between the Studiomaster Sense 12A+ and the 12A is that the 12A has a carpet finish, whereas the the 12A+ has a painted finish. Personally, I find the latter looks more modern and is also a lot easier to keep clean and looking smart.
Performance (December 2025)
We’ve had these for about a year and half now, having originally bought them in June 2024. They’ve been great! The sound is really clear and performers can hear themselves really well because the coaxal drivers are angled just right – they face much more upwards than a standard powered speaker laying on its side. They’re plenty loud enough, we’ve had to run them at lower signal input level than our older speakers. There’s some photos of the Sense 12A+ in use on stage in our gallery.
We’ve found them to be really convenient when used at festivals: many bands these days are moving to use in-ear monitoring, and they can just plug their headphone amps (e.g. a Behringer Powerplay P2) directly into the output XLR. We can also use that output to daisy chain the signal from one monitor to another where we know we don’t need individual monitor mixes.
So far, we’ve kept the onboard DSP completely flat because we EQ the monitors on the Soundcraft Ui24R/Ui12 mixer, but it’s a nice feature to have and we always have the limiter engaged just in case. The delay is handy for aligning the tops to subs, in the event we use these for front of house or fills.
As a side project, we bought a broken 12A+ on eBay and decided to see if we could repair it. Parts were fairly easily available – we got a new power amp & input module from FBT Audio UK, and replaced the 12″ coaxial driver with an Eminence Beta 12CX from Lean – the HF compression driver was undamaged and screwed right in the back of the 12CX. So we now have five 12A+ monitors, with one being just a little bit more special due to the Eminence driver!
Conclusion
There are a lot of different active monitors around, and you can pay well above the price we got the Studiomasters for, but for our needs they look like being just about perfect.
I’d also like to add that we bought some zip-up covers from Hotcovers for these Studiomaster speakers and had great pre-sales assistance from them. These aren’t the first covers we’ve had from Hotcovers, and they certainly won’t be the last.
Finally, we have no affiliation with Studiomaster and this is not a paid review, we’re just really happy with their product!
RCM Audio 