Mackie CR4 Reference Monitors

[Guest Kloaked]

Just a quickie for first impressions. I have the limited edition 4" version if that matters.

 

They come with isolation foam to sit them on which is a plus, as well as sufficient cables to hook them into whatever your source is. You can also change which speaker is left or right with a toggle switch on the speaker with the volume knob on it.

 

They both sit nicely on my desk and thanks to them being small they don't take up a huge amount of room like my old Sony speakers did. And please excuse the dirty mouse mat - I'm going to clean it today since the picture makes it look more dirty than it is.

 

 

So, they sound utterly boring, which is what I wanted them for. I'm mainly going to be using them for mixing my music, so they're going to do me a great favor in that regard since my headphones aren't necessarily reference ones (haven't fixed my HD280s yet). Hearing your mix through speakers will also help in picking out frequencies a bit better than you could with headphones too - gives you a better idea of what it'll sound like through other type of audio devices.

 

I was going to wait a while to review these like I was going to with my HD650s, but I don't think there's much to go over with these. I've heard other reference monitors from JBL, M-Audio and other brands and some of those will have a brighter treble than what I think should be in a reference monitor. These don't have that, and they sound boring like I said.

 

So these are an instant 10/10 -IGN for me.

[Dackzy]

we have fairly different views on those speakers. I would give them 6/10 and I would have gone with the lsr305, granted they cost more.

Nothing about those speakers says reference, to me they are just a average pair of small'ish desktop speakers that are decent...

Glad to hear that you like them.

[Guest Kloaked]

11 minutes ago, Dackzy said:

we have fairly different views on those speakers. I would give them 6/10 and I would have gone with the lsr305, granted they cost more.

Nothing about those speakers says reference, to me they are just a average pair of small'ish desktop speakers that are decent...

Glad to hear that you like them.

Was gonna get some JBLs but I didn't want anything too expensive yet. I figured I'd go with these since I've used Mackie for live audio before.

[Ahoy Hoy]

1 hour ago, Dackzy said:

we have fairly different views on those speakers. I would give them 6/10 and I would have gone with the lsr305, granted they cost more.

Nothing about those speakers says reference, to me they are just a average pair of small'ish desktop speakers that are decent...

Glad to hear that you like them.

The JBLs arnt very good reference monitors from my testing I found that Behringer truth are better reference speakers. (and thats saying something since Behringer are renown for being crappy but then again so are JBL these days)

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Ahoy Hoy said:

The JBLs arnt very good reference monitors from my testing I found that Behringer truth are better reference speakers. (and thats saying something since Behringer are renown for being crappy but then again so are JBL these days)

 

Can you elaborate, or are we just expected to take it for granted that you know what you're talking about?

[Dackzy]

41 minutes ago, Ahoy Hoy said:

The JBLs arnt very good reference monitors from my testing I found that Behringer truth are better reference speakers. (and thats saying something since Behringer are renown for being crappy but then again so are JBL these days)

never heard the Behringer truth, they are also close to twice the price of the LSR 305. Could you maybe explain a bit more about them?

[Ahoy Hoy]

1 hour ago, Dackzy said:

never heard the Behringer truth, they are also close to twice the price of the LSR 305. Could you maybe explain a bit more about them?

In Europe there about a extra 20 to 30 percent more then the JBLs so not a huge difference.

 

2 hours ago, SSL said:

 

Can you elaborate, or are we just expected to take it for granted that you know what you're talking about?

So the test was with the JBLs the Behringer and a couple other speakers, using a hemi anechoic chamber and a reference microphone. Frequency sweep through each speaker. The one with the most flattest reference frequncy response was the behringer. I cant remember any major details because it was a couple years back, the results are on my old computer somewhere.

so you know i wasnt testing which is the flattest it was to do with technical specifications in real life.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Ahoy Hoy said:

In Europe there about a extra 20 to 30 percent more then the JBLs so not a huge difference.

 

So the test was with the JBLs the Behringer and a couple other speakers, using a hemi anechoic chamber and a reference microphone. Frequency sweep through each speaker. The one with the most flattest reference frequncy response was the behringer. I cant remember any major details because it was a couple years back, the results are on my old computer somewhere.

so you know i wasnt testing which is the flattest it was to do with technical specifications in real life.

 

Thanks for clarifying. I figured that your opinion could be discounted.

 

Basing a conclusion purely on measurements is lame.

[Dackzy]

2 minutes ago, Ahoy Hoy said:

In Europe there about a extra 20 to 30 percent more then the JBLs so not a huge difference..

depends on the model. A single truth B3031A cost more than a pair of JBL LSR, the 1030A is about 30% more than the LSR 305

[Ahoy Hoy]

1 minute ago, SSL said:

 

Thanks for clarifying. I figured that your opinion could be discounted.

 

Basing a conclusion purely on measurements is lame.

but thats what makes a reference speaker a reference speaker. Its meant to be the flattest thing going so that no single frequncy sounds louder then another frequncy. Otherwise you listen to your mix and go oh that is a bit high, but actually its your speaker has a massive spike at the higher frequencies.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Ahoy Hoy said:

but thats what makes a reference speaker a reference speaker. Its meant to be the flattest thing going so that no single frequncy sounds louder then another frequncy. Otherwise you listen to your mix and go oh that is a bit high, but actually its your speaker has a massive spike at the higher frequencies.

 

Nearly any speaker can be made flat on-axis with EQ. JBL has good off-axis performance, so the reflected sound has a similar FR to the direct FR.

 

Mindless measurements are as worthless as none at all.

[spwath]

27 minutes ago, SSL said:

 

Nearly any speaker can be made flat on-axis with EQ. JBL has good off-axis performance, so the reflected sound has a similar FR to the direct FR.

 

Mindless measurements are as worthless as none at all.

and fr isn't the whole story.