Eris 5BT (Pair)

Have been eyeing these up for a while and finally glad I bought. Mainly for TV use and although I have to connect via headphone socket (no BT) the sound is amazing. With speakers set to 75% and tv at about 40%, the whole experience is brilliant, on a 4K fire stick and a PS4. Full volume is loud but very clear, gives some bass thumps when playing FPS games.Connection on them are analogue (balance and unbalanced 3.5mm) but should have went for BT version. I bought a BT add on module (from a well known auction site supplied from a country very far away) and while it worked fine, the BT module added latency that the fire stick couldn't compensate for. So I went back to analogue connection as that was working ok, just added a few extra cables to dangle around!Well worth the money. Very happy with the purchase.

If you produce any thing with any sort of base, it doesn't matter how good your monitors are, you need a sub.I have giod monitors and great headphones, but my mixes came out muddy as hell anywhere I played the music that wasn't a decent set up. Adding a sub to my set up has let me mix in those lows soooo much better and it's made playing it on sub standard speakers sound so much better too. So it made the mixes sound better on a good setup but also made it sound better on a crap set up and got rid of a lot of muddyness. Having a sub truly is imperative to producing/mastering your own mixes. Looks great, functions as you would expect, plenty of drive, connects through Bluetooth (though I have it set up connected to my monitors through cable) size is as stated so nothing to worry about if you have a specific area you want to place it. Not remote controlled but honestly who needs that when you have the controls on the PC right Infront of you. The Bluetooth is pretty useless I feel unless your whole system is set up on bluetooth, as you need to either have Bluetooth or your audio interface playing, you can't have them both on at once unless you can find a work around.

I got these after 2 more expensive sets failed me:IK Micro-Loud - too much hiss, unjustifiable at their high cost, so returned.Logi Z407 - sounded mediocre with boomy out of sync base, poor vocals, returned.I gave up and returned to using my MacBook Pro 14" speakers. Then I saw these Eris 3.5 units on sale and thought why not try. They actually sound really decent for the money. Maybe not the same as a pair of £500 genelecs, but really for near £70 they are just really solid with near flawless sound and no loud hiss, and a clear step up from my MacBook audio. Might have expected more if they're expensive, but at this price level they're an easy 5 stars. Love the aux-in and headphone jack both being on the front too alongside the power button. Odd choice to have controls/power on left speakers, but that's a very minor quirk. Well done PreSonus!

Some of the reviews here suggest that Presonus have a quality control issue with the Eris 3.5. No such problems with mine, I'm happy to report. No hum, imperceptible hiss even with the volume turned right up, and both channels are equally loud.Connected by unbalanced RCA cables to my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, the sound is clear with as much bass as you'd expect from such small woofers and plenty of treble. The midrange is good with reasonable amounts of detail. When used as desk-mounted near-field speakers, volume levels are very adequate.The EQ controls on the back of the left-hand (master) speaker are of limited use. I found little point in adjusting the bass control as turning it up just made the sound confused and flabby without actually making it go any deeper. If you want lots of deep bass from small speakers then adding a subwoofer is the only way to go. However, the rather splashy treble does benefit from being turned down a bit as these speakers are plenty bright.As for whether they are "monitors"; no, not really. They are decent-sounding desktop speakers at a fair price that are a huge improvement on cheap plastic ones, but they're too bright for reliable mixing and mastering, and would tend to create a a mix that would sound dull on other, more balanced speakers, and would also be quite hopeless for setting bass levels correctly.One last positive comment - there's no automatic turn-off after an inactive period as one sees with many powered speakers, so there's less risk of missing an alert because your speakers have decided to go into power-saving mode.