Can you connect your active monitors directly to your Elektron gear?

[Speldosa]

I received an answer from Yamaha now. This is the email I sent them:

I have a pair of HS5 that I drive directly via the Elektron Syntakt, a device that can put out a maximum of +19 dBu. My question is the following: I would like to max out the volume on the Syntakt and then adjust the volume knob on my HS5 to set it to whatever dB SPL that I want to hear (in my case, pretty low, maybe around 65 dB SPL). Is this safe to do with respect to the speakers operation? That is, do I risk destroying the speakers in any way when feeding them a signal that is much hotter than a standard line level signal (which is +4 dBu)? I couldn’t find any information about maximum allowable signal strength in the manual. So if you don’t want or can answer this question regarding my specific use case, maybe you can say something about what voltage is safe to send to the speakers?

And this is their answer:

I reviewed the service manual and all specifications list an input value of -10db. It does say with the level knob adjusted to 12 O’clock its optimized for input level of +4db.

We cannot guarantee the product wont be damaged or perform properly if the signal is higher then +4db. It is designed to work with level between -10db and +4db.

I hope the provided information is helpful. Please feel free to reply back if you have additional questions or problems. I would be happy to continue support when you need it.

I fail to see how you can say that I’m overthinking something when the manufacturers themselves say that they can’t guarantee that the product “wont be damaged or perform properly” if I’ll just do what has been suggested here without thinking so much about it here.

I’m still open to the possibility that I can be wrong (and that Yamaha are wrong/overly cautios in their answer) since I don’t know much about this topic, but I’m going to say that the burden of proof now lies with those who say that I can feed my speakers with a signal much hotter than +4 dBu (if anyone care to justify this position with some hard facts). Or we could just drop this whole discussion. That’s fine too.

However, for the time being, I’m going to assume that I need to attenuate my signal somehow (I’ve got several good tips in this thread, so thanks) before sending it to my speakers.