KRK Studio Monitor (59107)

I finally got around to buying mixing monitors for my home studio and it has made all the difference. What used to take days of fine tuning takes a single night.

As far as sound quality, they are great, but it’s not about how pleasant they are, it’s about how accurately they playback your mix. Many other speakers I’ve used have exaggerated highs and/or lows, designed primarily to make you think they have a wider range. I can’t say for certain that they are “accurate” but what I can say is that after mixing my song with these, it finally played back on every device, including car stereos, without and harshness or muddiness. I know that if I remove the muddiness and harshness I hear on these monitors, it will be removed on others too without changing the overall sound.

These are built solid, very solid, and very heavy.

I was immediately satisfied after hooking these up to my output device. I use an old M-AUDIO Fast Track Pro as a 96KHz D/A converter for monitoring on these speakers and headphones. They are connected to the ch 1&2 TRS outputs via TRS-to-XLR cables. The only warning I can give is to make sure you power off the speakers before inserting/removing cables. It produces a very loud pop whenever you do.

Quick tip: You don’t have to waste money on overpriced foam pads for these speakers. The foam blocks used in the packaging is already cut to fit your speaker and act as very effective vibration isolators. They are ugly as heck, being while plastic packaging foam, but I can attest to their excellent function.

I do some music recording (mainly guitar) at my home studio and for the past 2 years, I was being really cheap with my speakers and just used a pair of logitech speakers (yes, I know it was not the brightest idea). They just stopped working a month ago, so it was my time to look for actual speakers for music recording.

I had done an extensive research and found a pair of speakers from $99 with high ratings to a pair of $400 speakers.

I ended up going with this one (wanted something that I’d be happy with for many many years to come) and I can say that I am extremely satisfied with them. They have such a good midrange sound with, in my opinion in, enough bass to record vocal and guitar tracks (that’s what I mainly do).

I honestly can’t find anything bad to day about them!

My review is going to be geared more towards people who are interested in these from a music production standpoint.

These are my first pair of studio monitors even though I’ve been producing electronic music for about a year now. While they don’t have a completely “flat” response, I found them to sound exceptionally good (assuming you know how to position them correctly and have applied appropriate acoustic treatment to your room). They aren’t going to be able to emulate frequencies below 55hz (or whatever the advertised frequency response was). This means that without a subwoofer, it will be difficult to hear most of your sub bass content (85-30hz) while producing. Which for dubstep and other types of electronic music, is a huge problem as your sub bass is one of the most important parts of the track.

It is also important to play them on lower volumes for 8 hours or more so that way you can “break them in”. Just be aware of this so you don’t blow them by trying to play them full force right out of the box.

I’m also using this cable to directly connect these monitors to my laptop: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0064P4F88/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_1

Without a proper audio interface, you’ll most likely hear very, very light high frequency cracks while nothing is playing. Just to emphasize, they are extremely quiet but they are still there. Be sure to invest in an audio interface if you plan on using studio monitors to achieve the best possible sound.

So to recap, wherever you are on the spectrum of producing experience, whether you are just starting or a professional, these monitors are a great deal and they sound fantastic. You’d be hard pressed to find any professional recording studio without a set of Rokit KRKs sitting around somewhere. They have pretty much become the industry standard. So yeah, I’d recommend buying them hahahhaah.