Hello all,

I will buy a pair of monitors in a couple of days. I have a home studio, which is about 25-30 m2, and acoustic treated. I am on a budget, and the options are:

1)Monkey Banana Gibbon 5
2)Behringer B1030A
3) Fluid Audio C5
4)Alesis Elevate 5 MKII

I will do both mixing and mastering with them. I generally do rap/trap music.

Which one would you recommend, and why?

Cheers

 

JBL 30XP MKII, YAMAHA HS-X, KRK ROKIT X.........

And if you have the great luck that it comes out good from the factory: Kali LP-X

 

Behringer 2031A

 

I would go with Presonus Eris E5, they're sold in pairs and are right in your budget. I purchased a pair of Eris 8 XT's a while ago and they are unbelievably good for the money. Presonus has some of the very best cost vs. quality value I have seen and I looked long and hard before buying them. There was a hiccup at first, one of the speakers had a nasty groundloop issue where I could hear the electronic noise coming from my PC like mouse movement, clicks and random CPU calculations etc. I returned the speaker to my retailer, waited 2 or 3 weeks while they shipped the unit to the US for inspection and in the end they just sent me a brand new one that had zero issues, no extra charge.

That aside, the Eris line is positively worth it. Now the E5's are an older model but the most noticeable difference between E5 XT is a bit narrower stereofield. I'm in a similar sized space and the E8 XT's feel a bit large for that so I think the E5's are just perfect. I need to move to the very back of the room to catch the lowest frequencies correctly but other than that it's not a problem.

But if you decide against them, at least skip Behringer. They are known for cutting corners and I absolutely would not trust the accuracy of those monitors, especially since they're on the cheaper side. I'm by no means a Behringer hater, I have two rack units of theirs, the Ultralink Pro v2 and Ultragain Pro v2. The preamp is a few days old so I have no impactful comments yet but it feels fine for what it is and what I wanted out of it, but the Ultralink is a bit of a dissapointment because the potentiometers are low quality and touching them (not turning, just rubbing against them) will either drop or raise volume a bit, that is not something I would trust for hearing accuracy. It's fine for listening to random sources like a radio reciever or something like that where quality is not that important. Also they have a sketchy business model which puts me on the fence about buying their products, but the price is hard to argue with a lot of the time.

Good luck with your pick.

 

I have the YAMAHA HS-8 they go down really low with the 5's you might want to get the matching subwoofer for the 808's drones

 

The problem with a single 5 inch driver is the lack of low end intelligibility usually requiring the additional expanse of a matching sub-woofer.

Then there is the placement of the sub to avoid added resonance. A good set of 8 inch near fields that can be placed 6 feet apart & focused using the triangle method would be a better fit.

The Behringer model mentioned by @PULE or, something similar would work well.

btw...You should post your reasoning for the dislike to the response from @PULE.

From the RULES:
"All your ratings (especially negative or neutral) should be meaningful - so when you're asked to provide reasons for such rating, you should have one. Giving out lots of negative ratings for no obvious reason can get you into trouble. You don't have to rate any posts, it's completely voluntary."

 

Last edited: Jan 29, 2021

@quadcore64

 

in the Price performance cat.
JBL rules (all sizes)

dont like the small (5") presonus,KRK & Yamaha

yamaha and presonus 8" are good, highs are over emphasized for my taste
krk 6" is fuun! above, lows are less defined

used adam P & S (old) series great!
Genelec 8030-8050 ok
6010, 8020 only @ low volume + sub

a mate of mine used old passive Tannoys
used pair 100-150

 

In the "affordable price" range, I would say any well made set that has an effective "audible range" from 30Hz to 20kHz. The actual frequency range will be 45Hz to 50Hz. The added lower frequencies are a result of driver, cabinet, port & tuning.

The Behringer Truth 2031A with all settings to neutral, will give adequate performance placed correctly (away from walls & reflective surfaces).

My home setup is two 2-way 8 inch powered monitors behind me separated by the length of a three person leather sofa. I can lean in & out 1 to 1 1/2 feet with very minute differences in the stereo field while maintaining the mono field.

The Presonus Eris E66 dual 6.5" looks promising.

 

m audio bx8 d3.. very low price.. good bass..

 

Just stumbled across this comparison while looking for HS8 specs. The KRK Rokit 8 G4 seems to have a low end smearing issue which clouds the upper-mids & highs. the Yamaha HS8 seems to be more clear & defined.

 

If you narrowed it down to those options you probably know more about them than most people here, only advice to give is if you can go in store and test them with a few reference tracks that you know how they sound good across different speakers. e.g home, phone, car etc. and take your time to test them. Also take a look at the frequency charts of each speaker so you know you aren't being fooled by exaggerations while testing.

 

Thanks for all the comments and all your help! I reconsidered my options and I think I'll go with Eris 5 -- also after reading a couple of sponsor-free reviews.

One other thing, the dislike I have given seems to be a hell of a deal here. I've received messages about it, and also I see some advised me to tell why I have done such a thing in comments as well. So, here's why: when I tell you about a budget, and ask for a comparison between some monitors in a certain price range, I'd still appreciate if you bring some other models in the same price range into the discussion, sharing your knowledge/experience, but there is no point in recommending me a model that doubles my budget. It's like I'm asking you if I should go from point A to B by coach or train, and you tell me "why not by a private business jet". It's just a loss of time.

 

I seen a thread with OP asking for a cheap second hand Mac.
And ppl asking him to buy a new M1

 

@Mind the Gap
From the four you mention the Fluid Audio C5 is most likely the best but ever so slightly. The F5 from Fluid which costs about 50 euros more for the pair, is better and probably the total winner in the low priced 5"s, so you may consider this, here's a review of both as well:
https://www.musictech.net/reviews/fluid-audio-f5-c5-review/
Another good small one is the Tannoy Reveal 502. Old model (but about the same as the Fluid) but capable enough with a good degree of detail (for the price). A pair costs about 200 euros. To my ears it sounds more flat and natural than more expensive 5's like the KRKs or the Yamahas and is certainly much more balanced than the Behringer B1030A or the Monkey Banana Gibbon 5:
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/tannoy-reveal-502-402
Cheers

 

I've been on this forum for about 6 years or more now and there is a progressing case of pussytitis spreading around and people take offense at every little thing. Also there is an inability to read apparently and a lot of the time people who post answers completely miss the point of the question and misinterpret what was asked, so yeah things are not looking good here these days.

 

none of those, and here's why:
25-30m2 room is decent enough for bigger monitors, using 5" is somewhat inferior solution for the room you have,
5" woofers although capable and can produce some low-end at lower volumes, won't do great job for trap, and subwoofer is a questionable choice either,
even with treated room, you'd maybe want to invest in coaxial monitors which minimize the impact of the room acoustic reflections,

since folks here recommend Eris E5, I had those (original model, not newer XT) and can definitely tell they are one of best monitors for the price, and there is somehow way more clarity in vocal range, compared to bigger E8 which I got too - anyway I ended up with Kali IN-8 now (and sub), having roughly 24m2 room they fit just perfect at roughly 2m listening distance

 

krks best all rounders for the price the white ones are ubber sexy