[REVIEW] Kurzweil KS-40A Compact Monitor Speakers

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[REVIEW] Kurzweil KS-40A Compact Monitor Speakers

Postby Icky » 04 Aug 2011 22:57

KURZWEIL KS-40A REVIEW
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Note: I decided to create a review on these because I wasn't able to find a lot of information on them and I was surprised by their quality.

Monitor speakers and you
So first off, what are monitor speakers?

"Studio monitors, also called reference monitors, are loudspeakers specifically designed for audio production applications such as recording studios, filmmaking, television studios and radio studios where accurate audio reproduction is crucial." - Wikipedia

Let's imagine for a moment:
You are creating a bomb track using your 2.0 logitech multimedia speakers. You have no subwoofer so you end up with a lacking bass, they also hype the high frequencies a bit because that sounds cool right? So in your song you end up turning the bass up a bit and the highs down to make up for those speakers you have.

Your track is finished and you decide to listen to the track in the car. You turn it on and.. the bass is killing you, you ended up hyping frequencies you were barely able to hear on your speakers and now that you're playing the track in the car with your subwoofer the entire song just drowns in bass. Your song also sounded very nice and crisp on your multimedia speakers, however you hear almost no highs in the car because you turned them down a bit!

So that's what studio monitors do, they try to sound as accurate and true to the sound you're creating as possible.
Keep in mind it's totally possible to master properly on multimedia speakers if you know them well.

There are multiple types but most producers use "Nearfield" monitors, which are small and ment for closeby listening. They are also the cheapest, starting at around 300 dollars a pair for active ones (you'll need an amplifier for passive ones, which start at about 180 a pair I think)
You heard that right, 300 dollars a pair for the cheaper ones.

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KRK Rokit RP-8 G2s

"Compact Monitor Speakers"
In the same vibe as the Korg Microkey Series multiple companies have started making compact monitor speakers for on the go with your laptop or if you're broke and want to pretend you have KRKs. Some examples are the Behringer MS series, Akai RPM3 and the M-Audio AV series.

I've been wanting to get rid of my Logitech 2.1 speakers for quite some time now. I decided to buy these for 2 reasons:
- The price. I'm still in highschool and jobless. 300 bucks is a lot of money for me.
- The size. Monitor speakers are pretty large. Even if I had the money I probably wouldn't have enough room for them on my desk.

I'll go into more detail why I picked the Kurzweil KS-40A and not one of the other many speakers in this price category later.

Stop with the shaking, It's time to get unboxing!

ZE BOX.
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Some information on the box. (yeah, this image is completely unneccesary because you could probably read this on the previous one aswell :3)
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Open the box (no bees though)
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So what's in the box? the 2 speakers wrapped in plastic, a small instruction manual in english and chinese on how to connect them (I'd advice you to read this) and the cables you'll need to connect these to your PC.
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The speakers themselves
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The right one has 2 inputs, so you can hook up your keyboard and play along with songs played from your PC. note that "Input A" has a treble boost (I assume this is for a keyboard but I'm not sure). There's a knob for Volume and Bass. Altough the speakers have small 4 inch woofers they still manage to push out some pretty banging bass with the S.BASS knob turned up.
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Keep in mind that the bass port as at the back, so you can't place them close to walls.

Size comparison time!
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The Kurzweil KS-40A next to a Zippo lighter and a 6,3mm jack plug.

BUT HOW DO THEY SOUND?
So I went to the store to take a listen to the different speakers they had. I was especially interested in the ESI nEAR04 but I ended up falling in love with the Kurzweil KS-40As for their punchy bass and clean sound. (especially the behringer MS40 sounded very muddy to me compared to these)

So are they really "compact studio monitors" or just hi-fi speakers with a cool name slapped onto them. Well I guess you could say they're kinda inbetween hi-fi speakers and studio monitors. You wont be buying tiny genelecs that's for sure, but these things sound a lot better than any logitech or creative speakerset you will find.

Compared to my old Logitech Z-4 It's a lot easier to tell the difference between left and right and altough my old logitech actually had a subwoofer that went pretty deep I honestly prefer the bass on these (which says a lot, I listen to a lot of hard EDM music). It's tight and punchy, not as exaggerated as my old speakers.

They will also go pretty loud without distorting, and believe me I tried. I've been torturing these poor little speakers all day. I finally won when I turned on bass boost and turned the s.bass knob all the way up and played DnB on very high volume. I think you could definitely use these for DJing in your own room or mabye for a small party in your livingroom.

So if you're interested in new speakers but you're on a budget definitely take a look at these. they are insanely good for the price (80 bucks)
They will also make your desk look 20% cooler.
4.5/5
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Icky
 
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