Features:

  • Studio-quality design, sound and performance ideal for multimedia creation and entertainment
  • Stream music from any smartphone, tablet or other Bluetooth enabled device
  • Professional-grade components for optimized sonic performance
  • Convenient front panel features including headphone out and aux in
  • Tons of included accessories including monitor pads to get started right out of the box
but also sound great. They have been able to handle everything I've ...

These monitors not only fit exactly the way I needed them on my computer desk, but also sound great. They have been able to handle everything I've thrown at it from classical music, Hip-hop, EDM, jazz, hard rock and everything in between. I've been using them for editing videos and mastering a variety of music mixes I've been working on. Good flat sound is crucial to mastering audio correctly and the ample wattage prevents it from distorting the sound at high volumes which works great when mastering tracks. These meet all the aforementioned criteria and for a excellent price as well.

These little speakers are absolutely amazing! I have them connected to my Mac through ...

These little speakers are absolutely amazing! I have them connected to my Mac through a Cambridge Audio DacMagic 100, also I have a Onkyo CD player connected into the DAC via optical cable for playback of audio CDs. The sounds that comes out of these little speakers is amazing! real audiophile sound and the fact that they are only tiny 2-way bookshelf speakers with a 3" woofer and 25-watt amp (50 watts peak) blows my mind. I have played jazz, classical, pop and rock through them and I'm completely satisfied with the sound I'm hearing .. sure they would benefit from a subwoofer but you'd be amazed at the sound of the bass they do reproduce, it's tight! but of course for low frequency sounds you'll only hear the upper octaves of it and you wont' feel it. They don't break the laws of physics .. they won't fill a huge room with loud undistorted sound but for a small - mid sized room they'll be very satisfactory. The CR3s won't satisfy the low bass THUMP THUMP hip-hop crowd but speaking as a poor audiophile who has owned a system that had cost around five thousand dollars I find the Mackie CR3s very impressive! If this is what Mackie can produce for only $100 I'd love to hear their more expensive studio monitors! TIP: If you want to add a subwoofer to the CR3s you'll need a sub with low level right/left inputs AND outputs which isn't common these days. The only sub I'm ware of that has this is the Bowers & Wilkins ASW600 10" subwoofer. It's an older model and has been discontinued so you'll have to try to pick up a used one on ebay. You'll need to run the L/R RCA cables from your DAC or whatever you're using to the sub's inputs, then the L/R outputs to the CR3s then set the low pass crossover on the sub to the highest frequency.

Solid studio monitors for the price

Was looking at these monitors for a year or so, wanted to upgrade my recording studio setup from a standard cd/am fm stereo to actual studio monitors, got some extra cash my way and made the purchase, incredibly happy I did. I went with the 4” model w/out Bluetooth, I’ve always been an aux cable guy Right out of the box they sound great, no need to tweak anything, they are small but the clarity of the tone is top notch. Very good amount of bass considering their size. I play mainly heavy metal they stand up well to the blistering chugging of my guitar and the huge thumps of my bass drums and low toms. I can’t recommend these enough, powerful enough to stand up to music with lots of bass and tone but small and compact enough to not get in the way, plus the color combo on these make them aesthetically nice to look at.

Home recording or multimedia monitors that are no joke...

As a songwriter/musician who has experience recording in my home studio and in project/pro studios, I've heard many monitors over the years. Classic '80's Yamaha NSM-10's, really nice Genelecs, and I owned some first generation passive Alesis Monitor Ones, and so on. These Mackie's are unreal for the money, I wouldn't flinch at $100 each, not $100 per pair! But they are, and in that regard they are really great speakers for general use (PC speakers, gaming, multimedia, etc.) For studio monitors they aren't completely transparent and don't have a razor flat frequency response, but if you already have good ears and experience with recording then these are great "B" monitors or primary monitors if it's for home recording and demos, etc. They have a bit of mid and bass hype but actually it's very small...if you "learn" them over the course of a week, along with some mix testing on other sources (car stereo, iPhone speaker, other speakers) you can mix any project on these no problem. They are very present and the stereo spread soundstaging is quite good. With music being listened to more and more on ear buds, cell phone speakers and other poor quality speakers the Mackies are perfect for getting great mixes and using their less than perfect (and it's really a small 'less that's), you can mix with the end user in mind from jumpstreet. It's why engineers use the little Auratone speaker and have for years, to check mixes on inferior playback speakers..."if the mix sounds good on it, the mix will sound good anywhere" mentality except the Mackies really do sound great, they are amazing really. If you need some monitors you may want to try these and see what myself and others here have been saying, these speakers are, for the price, an almost essential gear purchase for a home studio. Even if you don't open them and store them for emergency back up monitors, whatever...but just get them.

They Work Great for My Needs

I bought these Mackie CR3 speakers to go with a very basic "beginner" turntable setup that I was building. I recently joined a "monthly subscription service" where a new vinyl record is sent every month, and although I had a large all in one turntable setup in my basement I wanted something smaller and a bit more intimate to put into my living room for listening upstairs. After doing some research, and reading other reviews here on Amazon, I decided to go with these speakers. They arrived quickly, as is usually the case for stuff from Amazon, and the packaging was top notch. I like that they actually came in a full color box with pictures and images on the sides. At this price point I expected a brown box with just some wording on it with maybe a rudimentary image of the speakers...but the box is just attractive. When I opened it I found the speakers packaged well with great protection and packing materials. The instructions were easy to follow (not that most people will really need to) and I found the included wiring to be sufficient for my limited use of these speakers. I set them up and hooked them up to my turntable. One of my favorite features about these is the ability to switch which speaker is the powered speaker via a switch on the back. If you want your powered speaker to be right and the passive to be left, you can. If you want them opposite, you can do that, too!!! That's a great feature as where I have them set up having the powered one on the left side would make it very awkward for me to adjust volume and hook up headphones while sitting...however, having them on the right it's very convenient. This is a feature that I thought would be nice, but has turned out to be priceless for me. The speakers are easy to turn on...they have a "main" power switch on the back, and once that is on there is another power switch on the volume knob. This means you can turn them off from the volume knob without having to reach behind them to hit anything. The sound on them is very solid. They EASILY fill my living room with rich, balanced sound. Now, I'm not saying that they are as good as a set of Klipsch speakers that cost three times as much...but for the price you're going to be blown away by the quality of the music you hear from these speakers. I have been really impressed at how well they sound over a wide range of music...classic rock, hip hop, jazz, funk...they all sound great out of these speakers. I imagine if you were using them with some way to adjust the sound settings (an equalizer) you would be even happier with them...however, I don't have that option, and frankly don't want that option with this setup, and even without it I find the speakers to produce music in a great way across that wide range of genres. I also really like that these have a headphone jack on the front of them. Sometimes I'm listening late at night when the wife is asleep and there's no way I could actually use the speakers themselves...so I jack in some headphones and listen that way. The sound in this way is also great...I'm guessing it has a bit to do with the quality of the amplifier in the speakers, but also with the quality of the headphones, which I have some pretty good ones. It's a great feature though, and one that I've seen absent on other speaker sets in this price range. Another nice touch is that they come with foam isolation pads. These pads serve to keep the speakers from rattling if they are placed on a hard surface. They do exactly what they say they should do, and they actually don't look terrible doing it. Great addition to the package. Finally, I have to touch on the color combination. I feel that it's a love it or hate it thing. I love it, personally, but I could see where others might not like it at all. I feel that black would have been a better option, or gray, and then give users the ability to purchase other color surrounds (or even include a couple in the box) so that they could customize their speakers. That said, because I like the color I'm not going to let it change my review score. Overall, for the price, I'm EXTREMELY impressed with these speakers. They were easy to hook up, look nice, sound great, and work exactly the way that I had hoped they would in the system I was planning to use them in.

Literally just plugged these in to my desktop and trying ...

Literally just plugged these in to my desktop and trying them out as I'm typing! Highs and mids sound so crisp and accurate! My desktop is a gaming rig that I will also use for music and video edits. All this needs is a powered sub to compliment it and true bass is the only thing that is missing. I ordered a polk audio Powered 10" with a y adapter which is coming this wednesday. But stand alone these are still awesome. Clarity and tonality is so much better than my previous but outdated Bose. setup was a breeze as you just plug the input jack for the monitors behind your desktop or which ever audio or aux input u use and just simply connect the left and right red and black cables from one monitor to the next.also there's an aux output and earphone jack on one of the monitors that you can hook up your iphone or mp3 player too or even mixer. i'm very satisfied!!!

The BEST customer Service!

Update: so yes these did die less than a year after I got them. However one short phone call with Makie and they were sending me a brand new pair & a shipping label to return the defunct pair! So in the end the Mackie name stood behind their product! These were 5 star speakers until they just stopped working I bought them in August of 2016 and they have been the kind of awesome quality and sound you expect from Mackie then one day recently they went silent. Now I can either pay a bunch of money for shipping for them to decide if they are under warranty or throw them away :-(

Mackie CR4 + Chromecast Audio = winner winner

I like listening to music, that's all. I'm no audiophile or musician, I just wanted speakers that could play music with great quality when I'm hanging out at home (mainly through Pandora, Spotify or Google Music). So my research began and obviously considered all the big name bluetooth and wifi speakers, such as Bose and Sonos. But then I remembered that Google came out with the Chromecast Audio that allows me to connect to any speaker through a headphone jack and cast music from any iOS, Android or computer device. So ultimately I could buy speakers that are better quality at a cheaper price, and so I began looking into the world of studio monitors which I hadn't considered before. My budget was $200 and luckily you can get some really great studio monitors for this price, such as these Mackie CR4's. They're the perfect size for my bookshelf, had amazing reviews (and rightly so), very easy to hook up, very very good quality sound and look fantastic. My wife was frustrated asking "Why do you even need these speakers when you have your (cheapo) bluetooth one????" but after I played her some music with the Mackies she just said, "oh...yeah these are nice". Overall quality wise, you get to hear all the nice details in the music with very good lows, mids and highs. Some people complained that the bass was not good enough, but I think it's perfect. There's certainly a lot of bass there and you will be surprised at how much you can get out of these guys. The clarity you get, even at low volumes, it simply astonishing. It's not that I've never listened to high end speakers before, but it's that I didn't think (even after reading all the reviews) that the quality would be THIS good. I would recommend these to anyone looking to get a set of quality monitors plus a Chromecast Audio if you want the wireless option. I would pick these over a Sonos 3 or 5 any day, unless I was doing the whole entire home wireless speaker thing, which I'm not.

Great for apartments, small rooms, mama's house, auntie's house for mixing and studio monitoring.

First let me say, if you have the cash JBL LSR 305 have the better sound overall, although they are around the $270-$290 range for a pair compared to this for $150. I bought these speaker for plenty reasons. 1. Good for small rooms. I have some JBL LSR 308 monitors and they make the whole house dance with all the bass that penetrates the wall and floor regardless of the amount of acoustic foam i had surrounding. Plus the JBL LSR 308's are huge for a small room situation. Bass traps are too expensive for me after all the d**n acoustic foam i had bought. These monitors are ideal for someone in an apartment situation or parents house and don't want to wake up Aunt Vivian from sleep. 2. Price I thought about getting the CR3 , but i said "Hey, for $50 more and the good youtube reviews i've seen, i mind aswell get the CR4" 3. They fit on desk with no need for speaker stand. Unlike my mega JBL LSR 308's from earlier, these studio monitors actually fit on my desk completely without hanging off the side. These are 6 and One-Eighth wide and 8 and Three-Fourths Tall. 4. Price to Sound Ratio You won't find studio monitors this price that sound this good anywhere, but check out Edifier R1700BT Bluetooth Bookshelf Speakers below because although not stated as studio monitors, some use them that way and may even prefer that sound over these. Edifier R1700BT Bluetooth Bookshelf Speakers - Active Near-field Studio Monitors - Powered Speakers 2.0 Setup Wooden Enclosure - 4 inch Subwoofer - 66w RMS Last of all, these monitors also came with foam to put up underneath to minimize vibration, but i wouldn't bother with it because they aren't as dense as other isolation pads, but its better to use them rather than none at all. Another thing to consider is to cover walls with acoustic foam to prevent even more noise from escaping your thin bedroom or apartment walls.

HOLY SMOKE . . . AWESOME !!

I bought these speakers to augment the flat screen we have over the fire place in the living room. The mantle is not really big, and so was looking for shelf speakers. These fit the size bill perfect. The speakers were really easy to get connected and working with the TV. Step 1: Figure out which side of the TV to put the control speaker on (side closest to the power outlet) and making sure you have the "left/right" setting correct in back of that speaker. Step 2: Connect the two speakers together with provided cable. Step 3: Connect speaker to TV with provided cable. Step 4: Plug speaker into wall outlet. Step 5: Turn on TV and speakers. That's pretty much it. As for the sound; well the kids and I LOVE these speakers. We put in Pacific Rim, got to a scene where the robots were fighting the giant monsters, and started working up the volume. I got like 1/2 turn, and the wife gave the hand and arm signal for me to cut the sound, as the pictures were vibrating and she was worrying they would fall off the wall. MUUUuuaaa haa haa haa Holy cow, you get some power from these suckers. Watching Star Wars, the X-wings sound like they're coming at you from one side of the room, flying across the room, and going out the other side . . . NICE. OK, so I'm not a sound/audio geek. I'm not going to be able to tell ya whether I would use these to mix a movie soundtrack together, or whether the London Philharmonica sounds better on these or some high end concert speakers, or how high the highs are, and how low the lows are. But I will tell ya this. For the money, these little shelf speakers ROCK !! If you're just wanting some compact speakers to blow away the family and friends when you have them over for movie night, or have the neighbors calling the cops because they think WWII is going on over at your house because you're blasting your victorious Battlefield I gameplay . . . then these babies are for you. A negative . . . hmm . . . why no remote? Just a simple little remote that let's you power on/off, and volume up/down. That would have been nice. I guess that's it for negatives. I'll update this review if I end up having any issues with them. So if you don't see an update below this . . . then rest assured that they're still blowing us away.

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