Monoprice 5.1 Channel Home Theater Satellite Speakers And Subwoofer - Black

A lengthy review follows so for the TL;DR version:Great budget speakers for a small living room or bedroom once burned in and are vastly superior to HDTV speakers or a soundbar. Highly recommend if you don't have the money for a $300 range set of speakers or just want to get your toe wet in surround sound setups.Updated February 25, 2017:Still a good bargain.Having since upgraded the living room surround sound speakers, I've moved these to my PC along with a cheap used 5.1 receiver but with a different subwoofer. They work very well in a "near field" environment of desktop and three feet away especially in gaming. More details at the end of the review.Updated 1/29/2016 Long version:When it finally became unavoidable that I'd have to retire my lashed up 5.1 system consisting of a Creative Labs Dolby and DTS decoder and Gateway BA-7900 speakers, I had to get some surround speakers fast and cheap. Reviews of the 108427 were good enough, the price was right, Prime shipping was fast, so I pulled the trigger.First it is important to relay what kind of taste I have in speakers. Long a fan of Boston Acoustics line of musically neutral products, I value detail and fidelity over shaking the foundation of the house. Yamaha and Polk follow, while I despise Bose and Klipsch for distorting audio. More like torturing it, but that's my personal opinion and audio preferences are very personal. Genres of music listened to are rock, classical, jazz, Sinatra, Dino, electronica, soundtracks, outlaw... pretty much everything other than rap and country. Constantly shifting between music types is why I prefer neutral speakers over "warm" sounding ones.The good news is these cheap Monoprice speakers are very neutral and well detailed for their price point. Better speakers can be had for 2-3 times the price including their own line. After 35 hours of burn in (a must with small speakers), the high frequencies are good, mid-range are good for movies (music is another matter), lows are shockingly good thanks to a subwoofer designed to carry a lot of the load the satellites normally would. If you are going to play a lot of music over these, you will want to either replace the fronts with bookshelf speakers or matrix everything with Dolby ProLogic II or DTS: Neo 6. While not faithful in those modes, they cover up the weaknesses that show in stereo mode.A drawback is the fussy connectors on the speakers. In fact I was sure one of the satellites was defective out of the box. Further examination revealed that some of the strands in the speaker wire had not made it through the hole in the spring loaded connector. It only took five or six strands splayed out to cause the speaker to hiss. Ten minutes of fiddling and muttering under my breath produced clean sound once all the strands were in.Connecting the active subwoofer to a receiver that has a single RCA line out does not require an adaptor. Just take the stereo RCA cord included and plug in only the white jack to to the line out and the white line in jack. Works just fine since it is a mono signal in the first places, though I found on my set that more bass was delivered through the white line in than the red. It may be designed that way like more expensive subs.8/19/2017I was wrong about the subwoofer only needing one RCA jack to work effectively. Taking a peek into the enclosure, it became obvious from the wiring that the 8" driver is a dual voice coil at 8 ohms each. This means you NEED a mono to stereo adaptor to get the full sound if you go off a receiver's subwoofer out jack. Otherwise the driver only moves half the air it should!Another review complained the speakers are very directional and I found this to be true. The design of the cabinets is that the drivers sit behind a shallow horn for both the tweeters and midwoofers which limits their off axis performance. While terrible for music, this is an actual plus for movies that have dedicated surround sound mixes or for gaming.Blu-rays of were used to test different surround mixes: TRON: Legacy was used to test DTS-HD 5.1, The Hunt for Red October for Dolby TrueHD, and The Conversation in DTS-HD 5.1. The first two I played to gauge the effectiveness of surround cues with the last movie used to hear how a dialogue heavy movie would fare. Directional cues are excellent making it a joy to listen to modern movies. The torpedoes in Red October zoomed around nicely with the tweeters really adding to the ambiance inside the submarines. The center seems a trifle weak, but it isn't a dramatic imbalance and can be adjusted at the receiver level. The sub is ridiculously good for a cheap 8", managing to be detailed and still able to make your ribcage vibrate when LFE is used in a scene like the dance club in TRON: Legacy. Just don't expect much lower than 40 HzThough small, the Monoprice 108247 speakers need some oomph to push them. They really don't perform until they start getting loud. For reference, the speakers are hooked up to my Sony STR-DN1010 receiver that is rated to 110 watts per channel. Music doesn't fill out until above 40 volume, while movies and TV require at least 35. Yes, they can get loud as long as you have a decent enough receiver to drive them. Remember to calibrate the speakers with your receiver if you can and make sure the crossover is set to 160 Hz.Part of my putting together the new surround setup involved assistance from two three month old kittens. As a result, I can report that the speakers are fairly tough units able to survive a 3 foot drop with only the grill popping off. Of course, I don't advise trying this at home, kids.Love the movie performance, but playing music over them left much to be desired. Consequently, a pair of Insignia NS-SP213 bookshelf speakers have replaced the fronts. Currently they are burning in and I forgot to get the banana jacks to turn the setup from 5.1 to 7.1, so I'll update this review later with the results of that.1/29/2016: While I still haven't gotten the 7.1 up and running, the NS-SP213 speakers up front blended in much better than expected with the 8427 set. Stereo music is very enjoyable now with the subwoofer perfectly overcoming the low end weakness of the new fronts. Though auto calibrated by the Sony receiver again, the center volume had to be manually bumped up a couple of decibels to overcome it being drowned out in the mix. In fact, I'm wondering if the calibration is what made the center seem weaker in the first place.To anyone interested in playing music over these speakers, I highly recommend adding a pair of bookshelf speakers to the mix.Also did some testing with and without the metal grills and found little discernible difference with the 80247 satellites, unlike the Insignia pair which need to have the grills off.February 25, 2017Two of the satellites and the center now are being used with my PC via an old Sony 5.1 receiver. The directionality mentioned earlier is terrific for playing video games that use proper surround cues -- there's no sneaking up on me now!The subwoofer is also in service, but in the home gym/hobby room filling in the void for some deep bass deficient stereo speakers. Being able to wire the hot stereo outs to the speakers is a nice plus on such a bargain unit.I've also taken apart the remaining unused satellites to get a look at construction and was surprised at what I found. Though finding a capacitor bridging the woofer to tweeter wasn't a shock (it prevents lower sound frequencies from frying the tweeter), the polyfill mat to dampen sound was. The back of the plastic cabinet also seems to have been designed with the option to put a full crossover in! Build quality is better than expected for something this low priced leading to some mad scientist experiments on the spares.

I'll start this by destroying my credibility. I am not an audiophile, and this is my first surround sound system worth the name. I did, however, do a massive amount of research before buying these. This is going to be long, so the TLDR on this is:These are great speakers for the price, and will probably be more than adequate for the needs of anyone who is not an audiophile. They are also better than many $600-$800 sets in terms of frequency response curve and general sound reproduction. They will not have the same build quality or design aesthetic as these premium sets, but look fine, and are made well. You won't regret buying these unless you have much more exacting standards than the average person, and even an audiophile would be satisfied with these as a second room/vacation home setup.So, the rest:I was originally settled on the Energy Take Classic 5.1 set. (which has become the long standing gold standard of affordable 5.1 speaker sets)Energy 5.1 Take Classic Home Theater System (Set of Six, Black)But, a price bump on those right when I decided on them led me to do some re-shopping. After reading and watching the CNET review on these, I started looking in to them seriously. I suggest you check out that review.These speakers are actually the replacements to the Monoprice 9774 5.1 system. The reason those were replaced was due to a patent lawsuit because they were exact clones of the Energy Take Classic 5.1 speakers. Nearly identical form factor, Identical internal components, and most interestingly, identical performance and frequency response curve. But over $100 cheaper than the average price of the Energy speakers. So that wasn't going to last, and it didn't. For a while there, they were hands down the best speaker per dollar that could be purchased. These Monoprice speakers are just enough different to dodge another lawsuit. The surprise is that in some respects, they are better than the speakers they replaced. The consensus seems to be that they provide a more satisfying over-all sound than the Energy Take Classic. I can't speak to this because I'm not in a position to directly compare them. But everybody that has seems to agree that these are either equivalent or better. The fact that they're cheaper doesn't hurt one bit.Another advantage is that if you want to add two speakers and make this a 7.1, Monoprice actually sells you two more matching speakers for about $80.Monoprice Premium Home Theater Satellite Speaker - Black (110800)Energy only sells the satellite speakers for their set as a package. And though exactly matched speakers in a 7.1 isn't mandatory, it certainly makes it easier for your receiver to blend.These are a recent purchase, so I can't speak to how long they will last. I can say they sounded great to me right out of the box, and the spring connectors were super easy to use.Important notes:Break in Period: Don't blast these things full volume until you've been using them for quite a good little while. A couple of weeks of regular TV watching should do it. This type of speaker needs time to loosen up and mellow out. Skipping this step is a really good way to permanently damage your sound quality. They're actually supposed to sound even better after being broken in, as well.Subwoofer Cable: if you order these, you need to get a shielded RCA splitter subwoofer cable. (one male connection that splits to two male connections) It will actually run ok off of a single RCA into the white input, but spend the extra $6 and do it right. They're all over amazon. I almost took off a star for them not including this, but I just couldn't make myself do it. The speakers themselves are just too solid.Speaker stands: A lot of people make the obvious (and incorrect) assumption that the Monoprice speaker stands will fit these Monoprice speakers perfectly. (go figure!) They don't. They work, but only if you mount the speakers upside down. I ordered some that are on the way. If those work out, I will edit this review.Edit: They didn't really work out. I'm using them, but they aren't ideal.Anyway, you should just go on and buy these unless the Energy Take Classic set is at one of the periodic low dips to $250 range. At that point they become a serious contender because of a 3 year warranty vs the 1 year that Monoprice offers. (or if you have a fascination with gloss black finishes) But that's about the only things that distinguish them from these. AND they might actually not sound as good.FYI - there are some known problems with the dust covers tending to have the little plastic bits break off inside the speaker when you try to remove them. So, if you want to use these without the dust covers, slow and steady wins the race. I intend to leave mine on, but it is something to be aware of.