I recently bought and tried these monitors. I've been recording for 17 years and have been using my current monitors for 7 years. I bought these as an upgrade being I wanted the extended low end response, which I will get to. First things first, these monitors are nice and flat. It bothers me to see comments on the net that say "scooped mids" "hyped mids" "harsh treble" "dull treble"... I mean which is it?? It can make your head spin as everyone has something to say that is completely opposite what someone else said. Well, I say ignore all those comments and rely on the fact you're getting a monitor that is extremely flat with a graph to prove it. I was extremely pleased with these monitors but I did discover one of the speakers had a bad tweeter that was only operating at about 50% effeciency, meaning it was dull and was making an audible static noise. I returned it and the replacement is perfectly fine. So as a result of that I had to rate 5 for quality. Now, here's the problem... if your setup is half-space, meaning there's a wall right behind the monitors you will likely find big problems with the bass end due to room acoustics. At first you'll be excited thinking you're hearing the missing lowend but you're not. You will see that everything sounds *better* in the Mackies due to the killer lowend only to find it sounding quite different on all other sources. Well, this is due to room acoustics and to fix it requires a few thousand dollars to fix with *real* basstraps - ie. NOT foam ones. So, as a result I am sadly returning mine and sticking with my original monitors that go down to 50hz. I will give this bit of advice, if you are operating with your speakers near a wall or corners and still want speakers with serious low end make sure to buy ones with the bass porting in the front! The Mackies push bass out the rear using a passive radiator which is the cause of the problem. If you get front ported speakers you will be much better off! Overall though, if it weren't for the bass/room acoustics issue I really do love these monitors.

Musician, Recording Engineer

Industrial, Electronic, Nu-Metal, Gothic

serious hoppyist

all

Very natural and balanced. Good nearfield.

Features on par with comp.

Hooking up a speaker ... hmmmm...

Quality is good overall.

Can't beat it for the money. You'd spend thousands more.

Nice looking, even better sounding.

Pro Musician

Rock/Metal

The sound is good. But that's not the problem.

Not bad.

Plug it in and you're good.

After a couple years, my speaker started creating a terrible hissing sound. I sent it in to Mackie and they pretended that they didn't hear it and said it must be something with the grounding. I'm an electrical engineer and can tell you there is something wrong with my speaker. I didn't get the speaker back until the warranty had expired, and of course they said that they couldn't fix it after that.

A speaker that fills your ears with hissing is not very valuable.

See above. Not only did they pretend they couldn't hear the incredibly loud hissing, they tried to CHARGE ME $80 since I sent it in without a problem. After fighting with them for a week over whether or not they would charge me (and momentarily believing that the problem was gone) I finally get the speaker back with the SAME HISSING problem. I've never in all of my years supporting electronics dealt with a more ridiculous situation.

Hobbyist

Rock