Okay then, it’s starting to make more sense.
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That was actually my biggest problem. You need a sound optimised room that evolves around your monitor placement. My son is using both rooms and I don’t want to have a living room that looks like a studio. 
Driving big speakers isn’t that CPU intensive iirc. I could easily drive my speakers via my external DAI (this was an old focusrite 2i2) on any computer.
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In that sense speakers are just like basses. You got passive and active speakers. You usually see passive for hifi (external amp) and active (included amp) for monitors.
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Also, it’s not just for playback.
Everything goes through them. When recording (or just playing) my bass, my bass goes directly through them via direct monitoring on my DAI.
When playing virtual instruments in the DAW, even live, they go through them.
For producing music, good monitoring is one of the most important things you can buy. This can take the form of headphones (which I use all the time too), but nice powered monitors are great for listening without headphones.
Ironically depending on the music you like, they may or may not make excellent music listening speakers. They are designed with a very very flat response, and most genres people tend to prefer a scooped response from their speakers.
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All monitors are different too, some are designed to be completely flat and some add a little bass boost. It took me a day or so to adjust to listening to music through monitors vs hifi speakers, but I prefer it now. Of course I am always sitting centered directly in front of them which helps.
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With my setup, the track (s) in Reaper (backing track, drums, original song, etc.) goes to the external speakers (The Boses) via the DAI. My bass comes out separately through the amp head and speaker cab. In other words, the quality (or lack thereof) of my bass playing is not monitored by those Bose speakers at all. The only thing I hear out of them is whatever I’m playing over.
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Understood. For me they have even completely replaced the need for a bass amp. But for me there’s another advantage there in that I am also hearing what the bass will sound like in the context of the other instruments, even soloed.
This is also a place where mileage starts to vary. Honestly at this point even for future live play I am never buying another bass amp. Instead I’ll go mixer into powered PA’s (basically, the big sisters of studio monitors) and run all the instruments through them. Saves both myself and the guitarist from needing amps. Will sound better than any amp I am likely to ever buy as well, as I’ll be running through a SVT amp and cab sim, or similar.
For any small place we are likely to play this should be awesome. Will re-evaluate should we become 50-something rockstars.
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I like that idea, but wouldn’t that preclude you from ever playing at a small venue that doesn’t have such a system available?
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No, I would bring my own. They are relatively inexpensive and portable - more so than a bass amp and cab any way.
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That’s interesting, very interesting. I’d like to explore that idea further.
What kind of mixer?
What kind of PA speakers?
Links?
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There’s no reason for you to do this, Pam. I’m just saying what I would do 
But any mixer would work. A classic that people used to buy was the Mackie 802 or 1202. (about $250, I owned its predecessor). Today I would probably go with a Yamaha and get an audio interface in it.
Powered PA’s are all over the place. I would probably go for something like two Yamaha DBR10’s (700W each, about $300 each).
That should be fine for small bars and so on. A live drummer would probably require more.
The reason I would do this is that we would have three or four instruments going through it via various means and this beats lugging a ton of amps and cabs around. The synths will need something like this anyway, so why not just run everything through it. I’m not giving this as conventional advice, it’s just what I would do today. Or at least try to do and see how it worked out, because it would be super convenient.
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I went down this road of thinking before buying a bass cab. This works out OK if you can get the tone you want out of a 1x10. The sound of a 1x15 or 4x10 isn’t coming out of a 1x10 though.
My favorite in this category is the QSC K10. They are more than twice the cost of the DBR10 however.
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This conversation has grown into bigger things since the original laptop speaker question, but this all has piqued my curiosity.
What is the difference (briefly) between a speaker like the QSC K10, and say the Rumble 115 cab that I have?
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Well, two stereo-split 1x10’s with tweeters 
Good point that 12" PA’s might be a good idea too though. However those start to get big.
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The K10 has a 10” woofer. The larger the woofer the lower the frequency goes. Smaller drivers can couple up when mounted in one cabinet to go lower too.
A bass cabinet may have a tweeter to get some higher frequencies out if it, but full range music played through a bass cabinet won’t sound quite right. A PA speaker has a more complete and even frequency character above the bass so all the instruments sound good.
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I came to the same answer.
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Thanks @DaveT
Here’s a purely hypothetical question:
I have a DAI with 4 inputs. If I plug my bass into one of them, and let’s say a couple guitar players plug into the other ones, would I be able to connect the DAI to a speaker like that one you mentioned?
I’m just trying to get educated on this topic
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Yes. In this case, you are basically using the audio interface as sort of a low-rent mixer. It will work for this. A real mixer would be better but this would work, just like you would use to to record all four instruments (the intended purpose).
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I mean, still less big than three amps plus cabs, especially as I would need a PA anyway regardless for the vocals
But smart PA monitor selection would indeed be really important.
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