Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The Alesis Monitor One Mk2 monitors surprised me with really good sound quality and stereo imaging. Listening to these makes it evident that the engineers who worked on this product really made an effort to sweat the small details that make for truly good sound. The crossover network (the electronic circuit that transfers high frequencies to the tweeter and low frequencies to the woofer) is one of the most critical components in a good loudspeaker system, and it's not easy to get it right in a passive loudspeaker system - but the Alesis engineers managed to do it. The result is smooth imaging and sound dispersion through the midrange and into the high frequencies, which makes the sound seem "larger than the box" - you never hear a little wooden box, instead you hear a glorious expanse of sound filling the entire sound stage.
I'd recommend these Alesis monitors not only to home recording engineers, but also for general music and TV listening. If you're used to muffled consumer-grade speakers, these monitors will sound a little bright at first - and then you'll notice how much more detail you're hearing in the music, detail that is obscured by lower quality speakers.
The Monitor One's have good bass response for their size, but this is inevitably limited by the 5" effective piston diameter of the woofers. I added a budget Velodyne VX-11 subwoofer to extend the bass response of the Monitor One's. The subwoofer is set to roughly a 70 Hz crossover frequency, and about 8 o'clock on the sub volume knob. The Velodyne integrates very smoothly with the Monitor One's at these settings, and the overall sound is nothing short of superb - for a total budget of about $300 for both monitors and subwoofer! Outstanding sound on the cheap!
I have not heard anything that sounds audibly better than these Alesis Monitor One's until you get to the Mackie HR 824's in the $1300 range - more than *seven times* the Amazon price of the Alesis Monitor One's!
As an aside, these passive Alesis Monitor One's sound much better than the active Alesis M1 Active Mk II monitors do. The active monitors use the same woofer and tweeter, and the active crossover network is even smoother, but unfortunately the M1 Active's have very sloppy, boomy, undefined one-note bass that ruins the otherwise smooth balance of their sound. A real pity.
In summary, if you're looking to spend under $1300 for a pair of monitors, check these Alesis Monitor One Mk 2 out. There's a lot to love about them, and not much to critique.
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