I'd had my eye on these for a while, having always had good experience with these folded ribbon/AMT tweeters....what I wasn't expecting was the depth of bass response. As it happened, I first fired these up next to a full THX-certified studio monitor setup with a sub the size of a coffee table, so it was quite a surprise to have these bookshelves covering the audible range of most music, and one of very few speakers I'd be pretty happy to use without a sub (action movie no...music yes).

There's a lot to like: very well-behaved, smooth, just ever so slightly light on highest end (which is often perceived as less fatiguing) but with eyebrow-raising amounts of detail and no standout box resonance or other problem areas. The bass/treble controls sound to me like high/low rolloff and are thus pretty useful in tuning the sound to your liking without creating harsh side effects, and can be adjusted via remote FROM YOUR LISTENING POSITION instead of fumbling behind the speakers themselves. The huge array of inputs, rock solid bluetooth performance, surprisingly nice matte finish (I was not expecting seamless corners) and thankfully subtle branding all round out this package as very likely the best Hi Fi system you're gonna find anywhere under $1K, and certainly the most capable all-in-one solution I've ever heard. And Hi Fi these are - they are not as brutally honest as a studio monitor, but rather more flattering, with just a little extra punch that combines with the buttery smooth and endlessly detailed high end to make you fall in love with all your music all over again.

Oh yeah...and they go to sleep; the standby mode (rare these days, especially with a real amp bypass relay, which you can heard if you listen close) means you really never have to manage these; they turn themselves on when you play something, and back off 10 min or so after you're done. Perfect for smart assistants

The speakers have a clean and sharp sound. The tweeter array provides a clean and detailed depiction of instruments and vocals. If one listens closely you can hear the detail of the instrumentation within the scope of a tune....very nice.
It seems that one must listen to hear the mids, they're there but seem a bit under welming Overall a GREAT setup for the price point of $299!!

The MM5Rs sound great! Awesome theatre, gaming, and music speakers imo. The remote gives you bass and treble control but a better EQ would be ideal for lowering the bass response without killing the midrange. Flat response on these make them sound the most spatial and lively to me and I use a dedicated subwoofer for the low end. They get pretty loud and the usb input works great, no hum at all. Heavy as well.
The warranty service is great as well, 5 years no questions asked replacement.

That brings me to my gripes...

Stop marketing the speakers as biamped tweeters and woofers separately! That is simply not possible; advertise that part correctly please.

Use tiffany style rcas jacks and raise the price 10 bucks or something as mine broke once since they are held in by a weak solder joint. (Monoprice replaced it for free but in the time i sent it back and got a replacement I had no set up for a while)

Lastly, and maybe my biggest disappointment, why even include a headphone jack... I mean it is the most crap amplifier I have literally ever heard in my life... The speakers are so good and then this headphone amp is the one thing that you just have to avoid and not think about because it is SO USELESS. My Oneplus can power my headphones with more power... That is a cell phone... Point being it is literally unuseable, quiet and so muffled.

Love the speakers! Would buy in a heartbeat when on sale! Also consider listing the DAC details please!

Ok, I bought these speakers 2 years ago. First, I bought the MM5's, and was not impressed. Shipping took FOREVER, and when they finally arrived, they didn't sound that great. They were topping out on the high end, and it sounded pretty bad. [I ordered a subwoofer as well] But anyway, when the sub came, I hooked it all up and said, ok, maybe with some time - tuning it will sound better, I mean they had pretty good reviews. Well, I went to use the USB in because I wanted to play directly from my iPad to the speakers. Well..... That didn't work at all.

So.... I decided, well, since these didn't work out, and I wasn't impressed by the high end, lemme try the MM5R's. WOW. They sound so good. The highs are so crisp and clean, beautiful separation and clarity. They don't have the best omnidirectIonality, but for my needs, [near to mid field] that's ok. But I have a 12" subwoofer [also MP, but not Monolith] hooked up, and it sounds great! I don't experience the hum that I've seen others speak of. Technically, I could use these speakers without a subwoofer, but If you can afford to get a sub with them, please do, You will instantly have a $1000 set-up for $500. [I'm saying with the sub]

I have a really nice set of reference monitors and a higher powered sub for mixing / monitoring / playing around on the synth I impulse bought myself but definitely didn't need. And although the frequency response might be flatter on the monitors, I have to remind myself that these are designed for music. I mean, I get that they're not the best speakers n the market, but they are certainly the best speakers on the market for the money ,

[In my humble opinion...]

Good speakers, but the subwoofer output gives a constant drone.

Punchy good spatial imagery confident drivers doesn't need a sub but will add one in the future

These are hi-fi level acoustics. Outperforms many well-known competitors ... Forget them, there are many brands on the market that deceive you!
I don?t want to describe the sound, but many people don?t need more of this sound. The sound will also appeal to audiophiles.
But, be sure to resolve the issue with resonance damping, or you will lose a lot. Also use a better connection (AptHD/USB), not just Bluetooth standard version.
In addition, you can purchase a piece of speaker cable for the left speaker and a power cable like the AudioQuest NRG-X2 and you will be happy!)
Thanks Monoprice for this!

I am not equipped to bench-test speakers, but I am an experienced musician, engineer, and AV tech who's been listening critically for 60+ years. Now retired, I have a lot more time to listen for fun, but less time to waste on listening to junk. But with limited financial resources, I need to get the best bang for my buck.

I ordered these speakers hoping to create an optimum nearfield listening station at my PC, where I could easily connect computer media, or my phone, or legacy components, or the random portable device and hear accurate reproduction with no meaningful compromise. These speakers meet that goal. I've now used them daily for about two months, so they are well broken-in and have presented no problems or issues.

I have not tested the subwoofer output, nor the digital audio (toslink) input. I have used the RCA analog input, the USB input, and Bluetooth. I have also used the handy front headphone jack. I have the speakers flanking my 27" monitor on a tabletop, using the included angled stands. They are at most only 3-4 feet away from my ears.

The DAC seems perfectly OK. There is plenty of gain for headphones; I'm using Monolith M565C cans and they sound great. Also, I hear no hint of the hissing that another reviewer mentioned. The speakers are completely silent, even with my ear up next to the AMT driver, when no signal is present.

I listen to a range of music that includes jazz, classical, Americana, progressive rock, singer/songwriter, and a number of recordings I've made myself over the years of music and documentary subjects. I have a pretty good idea of what sounds accurate, and when a speaker is adding or removing something. But I also listen for pleasure, and I am aware that some speakers are just more fun to listen to than others.

I'm really enjoying these speakers a lot. I'm using them with the USB input from the very vanilla sound chip of my very vanilla Dell desktop, playing FLAC or 320kbps MP3 files, as well as audio CDs and video streams. Again, the MM-5r's DAC sounds absolutely fine.

The low end is robust, and can reproduce the lowest notes of a bass guitar cleanly and clearly. There's no boominess, and no need for a subwoofer with most music, especially in the nearfield configuration. They can play louder than I can comfortably tolerate without sounding strained. At levels I use for critical listening, they are present and natural, undistorted, and clearly reproduce the audible range without issue.

The midrange articulation is very natural. Male and female voices, woodwinds, brass... it's all natural and properly present.

The high end is remarkable. It doesn't call attention to itself, but whatever is there in the recording is there in the listening. It takes awhile, playing a variety of recordings of different types, to understand that these tweeters are simply transparent to the source. As faithful a high end as I've heard.

The imaging is also fine at normal distance.

Monoprice has done well in creating a set of features that offers great flexibility. You can easily connect most common audio sources. The handy remote duplicates the existing power, source-select, and BT pairing functions, and adds tone control (including both a tone-defeat button and a tone on/off toggle). But the front-panel control for volume, source-select, and pairing (a very clever single knob for all that) is also convenient and functional. My only tiny nit-pick is that the auto-on feature is a little laggy, taking a couple of seconds to turn the speakers on after the music starts.

Bottom line: if the form factor, feature-set, and size are suitable to your needs, there are nor worries here regarding audio quality. At their sale price, I consider these a real bargain in audiophile-grade powered speakers.

Solid construction, nice looking, lots of connectivity. Great sound -- crisp and clear, very dynamic with strong tight base. Excellent sound stage with wide, tall and deep effects. Can easily fill a medium-sized room with good off axis sound, and the remote works well. The MM 5R is a strong performer and great value, especially when on sale.

I was shipped a mismatched set of speakers. In the box was one MM-5R and one MM-5. It took Monoprice 5 days to respond to any of my contact attempts. By the time Monoprice reached out to me, this item was no longer in stock and replacement speakers would not be available for about 3 months. The rep seemed uninterested in setting up my account to make sure I could re-buy them at the sale price, so I opted to just return the units at that point. The slow response time, lack of back stock to resolve customer issues, and lazy support reps has really disappointed me as a long time Monoprice customer.

In the 5 days of ownership, I did enjoy the use of my new Frankenstein speaker setup. The only noticeable cheap aspect of this set was the provided speaker wire. It looked and felt so cheap that I decided to use my own 12 gauge wire with Monoprice banana plugs. I like that both speakers use 5 way binding posts and not some proprietary connection.

I primarily used the optical connection, but the USB, RCA, and Bluetooth all worked flawlessly. The selector light on the front is perfect, on but not blindly bright. The highs were cleaner and more detailed on the MM-5R versus the MM-5. The bass was surprisingly good for this set, especially considering their size and price.

The MM-5R has one crippling flaw that makes them unusable as a desktop speaker. We all know that powered speakers have a hiss, but these are obnoxiously loud. They hiss, hissss, HIIIISSS, HIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!! At over 3 feet away, I can hear them howling. Ran on a separate circuit with a Tripp-Lite line conditioner, the MM-5R still spewed forth a vile hate of silence. Notice I said the MM-5R, the silk dome MM-5 was much quieter. I had to literally place my ear next to the MM-5 speaker to hear the hiss. I am not sure if this is because this speaker was the amp less unit or if it was due to the silk dome, but if I was to purchase again I would gamble on the dome tweeter and not the ribbon. Even if both speakers had arrived matched, I would have returned these speakers due to the hiss issue.