Jands | jands.com.au | Expect to Pay: $249 each
It’s been a number of years since the world was introduced to the yellow cones in the studio monitor world. These days, they almost seem commonplace as KRK has found its way in professional and home studios the world over. KRK’s incredibly popular ROKIT series, which offers an affordable range of studio monitors for rooms of every size, is now firmly settled into its third generation and continues to prove itself as a popular listening option for home studios looking for a monitoring solution for a small room and budget. This month, I revisited the ROKIT 5 studio monitors, and listened to them all over again with a fresh set of ears.
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It’s pretty safe to assume that everyone reading this has seen some KRK studio monitors at some point or another. They do make their presence known with their trademark yellow cones that are an undeniable mark of their tonal character. You see them in studios and video clips all over the place, and for good reason. They have a certain tonal characteristic that makes them popular with electronic music producers as well as RnB and hip-hop artists. They deliver generously on the bottom end for such a compact studio monitor.
As the name suggests, the ROKIT 5 G3 has a five inch woofer married up with the one inch high frequency driver that works ideally in a nearfield monitoring environment. This makes them ideal for home studios where space is often at a premium, and with the front ported design, you can afford to have them closer to a wall than any rear ported monitors would allow.
There are many studio monitors in the four and five inch size that are often designed to be used with a subwoofer, which comes at an additional cost. While KRK does offer a range of subwoofers that work very well with the ROKIT 5 monitors, they still stand and deliver on their own. When set up with the correct spacing, they offer a great stereo sound and have a sharp transient attack to ensure you hear all that is going on in the top end of the mix right as it happens. While they can deliver perhaps too much low frequency response for their size, this is often seen as part of their charm and character and is what draws many users to the ROKIT sound.
In fact, it is in this regard that the ROKIT 5 monitors stand tall on their own and don’t require the assistance of a sub in most home studio spaces. If you need a monitor speaker for a small room that delivers in volume and extended low end, then it is worth having a listen to the ROKIT 5 monitors at your local music store to hear for yourself just what they offer.
