Full Review

I bought these monitors on advice from a friend who used them extensively. He recommended them for being quite true and flat for the price, and I would agree with him - they sound like a $400 pair of monitors!

OK, so what does that mean? Well, you'll get a pretty accurate sound from them, but don't expect to be completely "WOWed" by their definition. They are more than adequate for my needs (home recording) but I would never expect to see these in a professional studio, other than to be used as alternate nearfields for doing comparison mixes.

My main complaint with these speakers is that the low-end is a little too muddy, leading to my mixes not having enough bass when I try and over-compensate for the muddiness. I've solved this for now by doing a lot of comparison listening on other speaker systems (my car, especially!) and by listening to my mixes outside of my recording room with the door closed (a neat trick, regardless of speaker choice). But you know what? Find me a set of sub-$500 monitors that are exceptionally flat across the spectrum and I'll eat my hat (and buy those magic monitors!).

The best thing about these speakers are that you don't have to lug around a power amp with them - it's already part of the system. That makes the speakers heavy, but that's not a concern for me, and probably wouldn't be for you too. Also, the connectors on the back are universal XLR or 1/4", allowing you to use either jack in the same input.

In addition, they're very well shielded. I use them next to my CRT and I haven't had a problem yet. The other big pro for these monitors is that I can listen to them for a long time and not get too fatigued. Some other systems burn my eardrums out with their treble, but not so the M1-MKIIs.

I'm very happy with these speakers for the money I spent, but I know at some day I'll be moving to a higher grade monitor.