I knew nothing about monitors or live sound before. I did a lot of reading and here uh are some… knowledge:

• People on live sound forums are kind of annoying, possibly worse than recording forums. God forbid you not want to outfit your garage with multiple $1500 JBL’s.
• Powered speakers are now a viable alternative to a powered mixer + passive speakers and offer more flexibility. But they’re newer so they’re hard to find used.
• The Peaveys have optional brackets to position them as floor-wedge monitors.
• The Peaveys actually have three inputs on each speaker. Two quarter inch and one 1/4″/XLR combo. All have level control, which is impressive.
• With powered monitors you can use a regular passive/unpowered mixer, which are cheap and plentiful.

The other point of this was to make it easier to integrate the laptop into the full band, which so far has been a huge struggle technology-wise.