When I ordered the speakers the shopping cart said they wouldn't be available until the 12th, so I expected to see them late in the week. After ordering them, I even received an email saying they where backordered.
They arrived at my house on the 13th.
COOL!
The packaging was the worst I've ever seen. I opened the rather large shipping box to find a much smaller box inside. The internal box had plenty of room to slide around. No support or 'fill' at all.
But somehow, the inside box had no damage on it at all. UPS must have taken very good care of this parcel.
No harm done, but thinking of the potential...........
Hook up was a matter of plugging in three cords;
- 120 volt
- USB cable
- mono 3/32" "umbilical cord" from the "master speaker" (right channel) to the left channel.
Insert CD in computer and BAMMMOOO.
We gots toons.
Without getting my SPL meter out, these little baby's ROCK. They can fill a 1800
2ft house with enough sound and volume that lyrics are clear and understood. No distortion or buzzing from the cabinets from the excessive SPL unless the bass boost switch is flipped. But due to the less than ideal placement on the amoire shelf, they have plenty of low end reinforcement to have a nice tactful thump despite the advertised low end capability of 80Hz. The 1.5" rear port helps as well. The shelf is appromately 30" wide by 14" tall by 20" deep (numbers are from visual memory, not actual measurements). Construction is very solid, fit and finish is impeccable. The back of which has various types of inputs, one of which are RCA jacks. Now the users manual says a
turntable can be wired to this, but does NOT specifically say if there's a phono preamp in there. The right side ("master") speaker weighs twice what the left side does, so there is a bunch going on inside. The wife wasn't too keen on the idea of me taking it apart to see what makes it tick. If memory serves, the spec sheet on the website talked about it's ability to "read" various types of incoming signals and decode them. It also shows an electric guitar plugged into the 1/4" input as well. So these are very versatile little speakers, although we'll never use any of the inputs other than USB from a PC.
The wife had an Alan Jackson CD handy (yea...sorry about that)..... It was able to play softly with very good accuracy and an overall pleasant sound for nearfield. I couldn't stand much more of that, so the next CD she found was Kid Rock, "SummerTime". Yea, it can jam better than ANY set of speakers from a PC than I ever heard.
Now the comments I'm making about the
Alesis M1 Active 320USB Studio Monitor Pair is solely based on my experience with PC speakers. These are in no way a replacement for your main system. Not by a long stretch. But for $100 PC speakers, the wife, son, daughter, and myself all give them thumbs up in every category. If the speakers on
my PC ever die, I'll get another pair of these.
Highly recommended.
During times when the family is gone, I'll try to break them in a little better.
Duc, Last night I got a great big hug, and a very genuine
"Thank You, Thank you, Thank you" from my wife.
Hope that helps.
Bob
