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Sound Quality

The sound quality is excellent! I wondered if they would have enough power and clarity when turned up, and they definitely do - provided, of course that you are not playing an arena with them. But for small gigs they are adequate. They can certainly get pretty loud without distorting. My guitar synth sounds better through these than it does through a guitar amp. They also provide a decent amount of bass for such a small speaker. I generally try to position them up against a wall to increase the bass response in the room for gigs. I performed yesterday and somebody asked me afterwards where the subwoofer was. They couldn't believe how full the sound was from just those two little monitors. When I'm not using them for performances, I have them hooked up to my computer and use them for listening to music and for monitoring my ProTools recording setup. I also have a set of Yamaha NS10M studio monitors that I've used for years for recording, so I use both sets of monitors to check my mixes for different perspectives. The Roland's actually sound much better than the Yamaha's, which are studio standards, but I don't know if it's a fair comparison since the Yamaha's are designed to have a flat frequency for mixing, while the Roland's are not designed as studio monitors and could have certain frequencies accentuated. But flat or not, they sound fantastic.


I haven't had them long enough to evaluate the reliability, but they are certainly well contructed and seem quite rugged and heavy duty. I know someone else who has a pair of them and has never had any problems.


General Comments

I am very happy with these monitors and would definitely buy them again if I needed to. There wasn't a lot out on the market to compare them to when I was shopping around. The only other one's I saw were a new model by Alesis - I forget the model name. The Alesis had more power - 50 watts, I believe, which was attractive, but not nearly as many inputs. They also didn't seem as durable or road-worthy.


I can't think of any other features I'd like to see on these (except maybe being a little less expensive). Perhaps maybe more power or a larger speaker, but then they'd be bigger and heavier. I really like the portability of these monitors.


All in all, excellent sound, great features, and a breeze to carry around - a very impressive package. I've written a lot of gear reviews here on Harmony Central and am usually hesitant to give out "10's", but I think these deserve it.

Reviewer's Background

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