Behringer Nekkst K8 Studio Monitor Review

[Enderman]

NEKKST K8

Audiophile Bi-Amped 8" Studio Monitor with Advanced Waveguide Technology

 

Welcome to my review!

 

To start off, I was looking to upgrade my 14.2 surround setup to studio monitors because of "quality > quantity" and also I was starting to do more music production and DJing. I also may move within the next few years so studio monitors are a lot more portable than 10 full size 12" floorstanding speakers

 

I was looking for something that would fit my colour scheme of black and white, but all black would be fine too. My first choice was the Adam Audio A8X, a top of the line speaker at $1000  a piece.

Unfortunately I had a unexpected and severe PC failure that cost me ~$2000 in repairs/upgrades (because if something died, I may as well take that change to upgrade it, right?) so no A8Xs for me.

 

 

Searching for 8" studio monitors brought up several results in the $400-600 range from yamaha, emotiva, presonus, etc... but the Behringer Nekkst K8 really stood out at $200 USD (~290 CAD)

A local electronics store happened to have them on sale for $250 CAD each, so I got a pretty good deal for a brand new set of speakers that were released about a year ago.

 

The fact that they were so new also made me think that the speakers would have much better and improved circuitry and design compared to the >5 year old Behringer Truth monitors.

With only 1 review on these speakers, I decided to give it a shot and test my luck. I'm happy to say that I don't feel like I wasted my money.

 

 

 

 

 

 

First of all, the build quality is good but not perfect. The speakers are made out of some wood or polymer (cant really tell) with nice curved edges and a very rough textured surface that hides scratches and dust very well.

 

The front of the speaker however is made out of a plastic panel which looks very good but scratches easily. There is also a significant gap (about 1-2mm) between the speaker body and the front bezel.

 

A very nice white light-up "NEKKST K*" logo is on the left size, and this is on whenever the speaker is powered on. So far the speakers have been on for months with no dead LEDs, so that's good.

 

There is a large port at the bottom to help with bass as well as a nice minimalist "behringer" logo.

 

The amplifier on the back is a nice panel amp that is flush with the speaker body, not protruding like the Truth series of monitors.

Unfortunately the power switch is at the back, so turning the speakers on/off is an inconvenience. I just leave my speakers on 24/7, but if you want to you can just plug them into a powerbar and switch them off with that.

 

The main driver is a 8" fibreglass woofer which looks more silver than white (like in the product pictures) depending on the lighting. Not sure how much the fibreglass helps, but it sounds and looks nice, and the rubber surround is very high quality. The woofer can go down to 40Hz.

 

The tweeter is a 1" silk dome that can do up to 20KHz and has a wave guide which works pretty well, I can listen to the speakers at a 45 or 60 degree angle with no loss of clarity, just loss of volume which is normal.

 

There are audio controls on the amp, for room compensation, cutting highs, cutting lows, etc...

I am not using any of those any more, although I did cut the highs when I first started using them because I wasn't used to the high frequency.

 

There are 3 inputs on the back:

balanced XLR or TRS ( I am using XLR)

unbalanced RCA

 

Audio:

Very good.

 

The audio is extremely clear for all frequency ranges, and vocals stand out just right.

When I first started using these speakers they sounded way too sharp because I have been using 12" floorstanding speakers with +10 bass on a home theater receiver for 5 years, so I was used to listening to much lower frequencies and not highs.

After a few weeks of using them my ears adjusted and now I am listening to them with no EQ settings at all, no cutting the highs.

Not painful/tiring to listen to at all.

IMO they are very flat, however I don't have an analysis microphone to test with.

Definitely a great 8" monitor for the price, highly recommended for anyone starting to get into audio production or just wants to listen to accurate audio.

 

Why not excellent?

-Missing a bit of low end punch for an 8" speaker, but still better than any 5 or 6" speaker.

-I don't know if I can hear over 20KHz, but if I can I wont know because this speaker cant do it. Other high end options use ribbon tweeters to go up to 35 or 50KHz. Even if you cant hear that high, it gives a flatter/more accurate response in the audible range.

-Very slight white noise comes from speakers when powered on, even with no audio cables attached. Can only hear when ear is right up to the speaker, but still not perfect. I don't know if this also happens to $1000 monitors like Adam Audio, but behringer said its normal for powered speakers to have a bit of white noise.

 

 

The biggest problem of this speaker:

Massive ground loop when connected by RCA to anything plugged into the wall (really loud buzzing EMI noise). Tested with my PC, laptop, and multiple 3.5mm to RCA cables. With the laptop it only makes the noise when the laptop is plugged in, so its definitely a ground loop. Plugging the speaker into a separate power circuit reduced the amount of noise but it was still impossible to use the speaker. Possible fix is using a cable with no grounding wire, not sure if that would fix it but I didn't want to try because ungrounding electronics can cause damage from static electricity building up, especially in something sensitive like a speaker amplifier.

 

Solution:

Use an audio interface (or external DAC)

I'm currently using the one in my DJ controller, but will buy a proper audio interface soon.

So if you're planning to buy these speakers you will have to save up for an audio interface too, which you probably should want anyway when using studio monitors.

 

 

Full review:

I spent some time editing a video for this, hopefully if you have time you can check it out.

I need to get a new camera because the 1080p recording on this one kinda sucks, but I did what I could.

BTW all the slides/pans/b-roll is done by hand or by sliding the camera tripod on a glass table with a piece of paper for less friction. I better get creativity points for that.

 

TLDR:

Great speakers for the money, but you will probably need an audio interface.

 

Product: https://www.music-group.com/Categories/Behringer/Loudspeaker-Systems/Studio-Monitors/K8/p/P0AZU

 

[TrigrH]

7 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Unfortunately I had a unexpected and severe PC failure that cost me ~$2000 in repairs/upgrades (because if something died, I may as well take that change to upgrade it, right?) so no A8Xs for me.

what broke?

[Enderman]

3 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

what broke?

PSU killed my motherboard+hard drives+CPU

[TrigrH]

Just now, Enderman said:

PSU killed my motherboard+hard drives+CPU

what PSU model?

[Enderman]

6 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

what PSU model?

AX860i

[TrigrH]

Just now, Enderman said:

AX860i

hmm corsair Flextronics unit pretty expensive psu at $2200 :P, this is why I preach seasonic

[vanished]

24 minutes ago, Enderman said:

-Missing a bit of low end punch for an 8" speaker, but still better than any 5 or 6" speaker.

-I don't know if I can hear over 20KHz, but if I can I wont know because this speaker cant do it. Other high end options use ribbon tweeters to go up to 35 or 50KHz. Even if you cant hear that high, it gives a flatter/more accurate response in the audible range.

 

• I'm not surprised; I've seen a cheap and small but well-placed sub out perform much larger, nicer woofers that were built into the main speaker themselves.  Interesting to see this seems to extend to even very generously sized woofers
• I can't be certain about this since I'm not you, but with 99.999% confidence, I can say that no you can't hear over 20 kHz   It's considered the very peak of human hearing and this degrades with age.  Thing is, even by your teens 18 kHz would probably be top of the range and by mid 20s I'd think that would drop to more like 17 at best.  But you're right - even though no one can hear that high, speakers than can do it typically sound better in the range we can hear.

Anyways, nice review.  Seems quite thorough  

[Enderman]

28 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

• I'm not surprised; I've seen a cheap and small but well-placed sub out perform much larger, nicer woofers that were built into the main speaker themselves.  Interesting to see this seems to extend to even very generously sized woofers
• I can't be certain about this since I'm not you, but with 99.999% confidence, I can say that no you can't hear over 20 kHz   It's considered the very peak of human hearing and this degrades with age.  Thing is, even by your teens 18 kHz would probably be top of the range and by mid 20s I'd think that would drop to more like 17 at best.  But you're right - even though no one can hear that high, speakers than can do it typically sound better in the range we can hear.

Anyways, nice review.  Seems quite thorough  

 

I HIGHLY recommend that everyone buys a subwoofer

no matter what speakers you buy

 

You miss out on a ton of stuff without one

There are many songs that you think suck but are actually amzaing if you can hear whats going on below 40Hz

[Enderman]

39 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

hmm corsair Flextronics unit pretty expensive psu at $2200 :P, this is why I preach seasonic

I bought a seasonic after that

 

The corsair PSUs are definitely not bad, I have never seen anyone have an issue like I did

Maybe I'm just unlucky, maybe when I modded it and replaced the fan something went wrong (very unlikely, since it worked for months with the mod)

Maybe the new hard drive I bought shorted it or something when I tried to boot up after plugging it in

 

We will never know

All I know is that I voided the warranty so no RMA for me, so I sold it to a friend for like $20

 

Hopefully no more issues like this happen in my lifetime

[TrigrH]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

I bought a seasonic after that

 

The corsair PSUs are definitely not bad, I have never seen anyone have an issue like I did

Maybe I'm just unlucky, maybe when I modded it and replaced the fan something went wrong (very unlikely, since it worked for months with the mod)

Maybe the new hard drive I bought shorted it or something when I tried to boot up after plugging it in

 

We will never know

All I know is that I voided the warranty so no RMA for me, so I sold it to a friend for like $20

 

Hopefully no more issues like this happen in my lifetime

if you are super worried id get a UPS it will clean the power coming in (if you haven't already)

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, TrigrH said:

if you are super worried id get a UPS it will clean the power coming in (if you haven't already)

Yup got one too