M-Audio Studiophile Av40 - Home Studio Monitor Speakers

I've had a pair of M-Audio Studiophile AV40 speakers for almost a year now and not once have I regretted the purchase.

I bought these to replace a pair of Creative Gigaworks T20 speakers as I couldn't live with the poor accuracy, lack of clarity and tonal colouring. Plenty of people praise the T20s sound, but trust me they are not good!

The AV40s are heads above all of the multi-media speaker companies, but that doesn't surprise me as these are essentially entry level active studio monitors, not just speakers! As such they are far more detailed and accurate in their sound, in fact listening to tracks I've edited on the creative T20s is just plain embarrassing as faults I could not hear before are readily apparent.

As for volume, there's plenty, in fact perhaps too much if you are using them in the same location as you would multi-media speakers (my AV40s have never used more than 1/3 of what they can deal up). So if you are planning to use them in this way then the AV40s little brothers, the AV20s are probably better fit.

As for criticisms, the isolation from the desk could be better, but that easy enough to solve with 4 squash balls cut in half. Other than that certain harmonic piano frequencies can cause the grill to buzz, but that's the only real sonic fault to mention at this price point.

OK lets get the bad out of the way. Yes these speakers do hum. But you need to put your ears next to them to hear it. So I do not recommend them being set too close (Like either side of your monitor which would be the natural choice for many). I have mine on a shelf on a wall just a little behind the monitor and cannot hear any hum. The power switch should have been on the front also but it's no big deal.

The real meat and potatoes of these speakers is of course in audio reproduction and on all fronts these deliver. The sound clarity is revealing of every minor detail. To the point that some recordings can actually sound bad. But that is because of the recording not the speakers themselves. Many low cost speakers will hide these faults. Also with the amount of recordings that have compression used (Not compression like in MP3 files etc I am talking about pushing the gain when mastering the CD and squashing the sound to flatten it from peaking) it's no wonder so many recordings sound awfull. But when you get a good recording it shines on these speakers. Such rich tonal detail. I played Art of Noise 'Close to the Edge' and heard the distortion behind some of the samples (Which were recorded on sampling equipment that was well below what we are used to in terms of sampling quality these days). I had NEVER heard that before. Again I must stress this is not the speakers distorting. This was in the samples of the recording itself. Amazing! It's like I have a new pair of ears. Oh and if you listen to a lot of low bitrate MP3's or poorly compressed audio files these may not be for you. 192k or above Lame or Ogg or better still lossless compression codecs like FLAC are the order of the day here (Or CD of course. Best of all would 24bit recordings).

As for anyone saying there is not enough bass. You must be joking! For a 'small' 2.0 speaker system the bass is impressive. Very well rounded and full. Yes you won't get huge subwoofer style rumbling bass from movies etc. But these are not made for that anyhow. If you MUST muddy your sound with so much bass then go get your bog standard Logitech 5.1 or 2.1 sound system. But be aware that you lose so much else in definition and realism. All you will end up hearing is lots of bass and top end with nothing to fill the mid ranges.

These are speakers for people who value accuracy in their recordings and is especially usefull for musicians. I by no means proclaim to have golden ears. I have slight hearing loss in the mid to top ranges and chronic tinnitus. Yet even I can clearly hear the difference. P.S. keep the volume down if you don't want to damage your hearing like me (Too many years gigging) ;)

Fabulous, balanced sound will make your PC sound like a hi-fi system. Do a web search for reviews on the speakers and you'll see there is very little to fault them, try them out for yourself and you'll see why.

The wide number of connection options on the back are extremely useful for hooking up to a variety of sources such as a flat screen TV, iPod or hi-fi system.

Would have preferred the on/off switch on the speaker to be on the front rather than back for easier access, but that is a minor niggle, and for the sound quality it's an absolute 5 stars. Get them while you can as they tend to run out of stock quickly.