5.1 Channel Home Theater Satellite Speakers And Subwoofer - Black

A lengthy review follows so for the TL;DR version: Great budget speakers for a small living room or bedroom once burned in and are vastly superior to HDTV speakers or a soundbar. Highly recommend if you don't have the money for a $300 range set of speakers or just want to get your toe wet in surround sound setups. Updated February 25, 2017: Still a good bargain. Having since upgraded the living room surround sound speakers, I've moved these to my PC along with a cheap used 5.1 receiver but with a different subwoofer. They work very well in a "near field" environment of desktop and three feet away especially in gaming. More details at the end of the review. Updated 1/29/2016 Long version: When it finally became unavoidable that I'd have to retire my lashed up 5.1 system consisting of a Creative Labs Dolby and DTS decoder and Gateway BA-7900 speakers, I had to get some surround speakers fast and cheap. Reviews of the 108427 were good enough, the price was right, Prime shipping was fast, so I pulled the trigger. First it is important to relay what kind of taste I have in speakers. Long a fan of Boston Acoustics line of musically neutral products, I value detail and fidelity over shaking the foundation of the house. Yamaha and Polk follow, while I despise Bose and Klipsch for distorting audio. More like torturing it, but that's my personal opinion and audio preferences are very personal. Genres of music listened to are rock, classical, jazz, Sinatra, Dino, electronica, soundtracks, outlaw... pretty much everything other than rap and country. Constantly shifting between music types is why I prefer neutral speakers over "warm" sounding ones. The good news is these cheap Monoprice speakers are very neutral and well detailed for their price point. Better speakers can be had for 2-3 times the price including their own line. After 35 hours of burn in (a must with small speakers), the high frequencies are good, mid-range are good for movies (music is another matter), lows are shockingly good thanks to a subwoofer designed to carry a lot of the load the satellites normally would. If you are going to play a lot of music over these, you will want to either replace the fronts with bookshelf speakers or matrix everything with Dolby ProLogic II or DTS: Neo 6. While not faithful in those modes, they cover up the weaknesses that show in stereo mode. A drawback is the fussy connectors on the speakers. In fact I was sure one of the satellites was defective out of the box. Further examination revealed that some of the strands in the speaker wire had not made it through the hole in the spring loaded connector. It only took five or six strands splayed out to cause the speaker to hiss. Ten minutes of fiddling and muttering under my breath produced clean sound once all the strands were in. Connecting the active subwoofer to a receiver that has a single RCA line out does not require an adaptor. Just take the stereo RCA cord included and plug in only the white jack to to the line out and the white line in jack. Works just fine since it is a mono signal in the first places, though I found on my set that more bass was delivered through the white line in than the red. It may be designed that way like more expensive subs. 8/19/2017 I was wrong about the subwoofer only needing one RCA jack to work effectively. Taking a peek into the enclosure, it became obvious from the wiring that the 8" driver is a dual voice coil at 8 ohms each. This means you NEED a mono to stereo adaptor to get the full sound if you go off a receiver's subwoofer out jack. Otherwise the driver only moves half the air it should! Another review complained the speakers are very directional and I found this to be true. The design of the cabinets is that the drivers sit behind a shallow horn for both the tweeters and midwoofers which limits their off axis performance. While terrible for music, this is an actual plus for movies that have dedicated surround sound mixes or for gaming. Blu-rays of were used to test different surround mixes: TRON: Legacy was used to test DTS-HD 5.1, The Hunt for Red October for Dolby TrueHD, and The Conversation in DTS-HD 5.1. The first two I played to gauge the effectiveness of surround cues with the last movie used to hear how a dialogue heavy movie would fare. Directional cues are excellent making it a joy to listen to modern movies. The torpedoes in Red October zoomed around nicely with the tweeters really adding to the ambiance inside the submarines. The center seems a trifle weak, but it isn't a dramatic imbalance and can be adjusted at the receiver level. The sub is ridiculously good for a cheap 8", managing to be detailed and still able to make your ribcage vibrate when LFE is used in a scene like the dance club in TRON: Legacy. Just don't expect much lower than 40 Hz Though small, the Monoprice 108247 speakers need some oomph to push them. They really don't perform until they start getting loud. For reference, the speakers are hooked up to my Sony STR-DN1010 receiver that is rated to 110 watts per channel. Music doesn't fill out until above 40 volume, while movies and TV require at least 35. Yes, they can get loud as long as you have a decent enough receiver to drive them. Remember to calibrate the speakers with your receiver if you can and make sure the crossover is set to 160 Hz. Part of my putting together the new surround setup involved assistance from two three month old kittens. As a result, I can report that the speakers are fairly tough units able to survive a 3 foot drop with only the grill popping off. Of course, I don't advise trying this at home, kids. Love the movie performance, but playing music over them left much to be desired. Consequently, a pair of Insignia NS-SP213 bookshelf speakers have replaced the fronts. Currently they are burning in and I forgot to get the banana jacks to turn the setup from 5.1 to 7.1, so I'll update this review later with the results of that. 1/29/2016: While I still haven't gotten the 7.1 up and running, the NS-SP213 speakers up front blended in much better than expected with the 8427 set. Stereo music is very enjoyable now with the subwoofer perfectly overcoming the low end weakness of the new fronts. Though auto calibrated by the Sony receiver again, the center volume had to be manually bumped up a couple of decibels to overcome it being drowned out in the mix. In fact, I'm wondering if the calibration is what made the center seem weaker in the first place. To anyone interested in playing music over these speakers, I highly recommend adding a pair of bookshelf speakers to the mix. Also did some testing with and without the metal grills and found little discernible difference with the 80247 satellites, unlike the Insignia pair which need to have the grills off. February 25, 2017 Two of the satellites and the center now are being used with my PC via an old Sony 5.1 receiver. The directionality mentioned earlier is terrific for playing video games that use proper surround cues -- there's no sneaking up on me now! The subwoofer is also in service, but in the home gym/hobby room filling in the void for some deep bass deficient stereo speakers. Being able to wire the hot stereo outs to the speakers is a nice plus on such a bargain unit. I've also taken apart the remaining unused satellites to get a look at construction and was surprised at what I found. Though finding a capacitor bridging the woofer to tweeter wasn't a shock (it prevents lower sound frequencies from frying the tweeter), the polyfill mat to dampen sound was. The back of the plastic cabinet also seems to have been designed with the option to put a full crossover in! Build quality is better than expected for something this low priced leading to some mad scientist experiments on the spares.

You can't go wrong for the price excellent product very happy would recommend budget friendly nice sound quality overall good product

My Dad is the one that got me into Home Theater. I grew up listening to music and movies on really good sounding speakers like Polk Audio, Infinity, Bose, and My favorite speaker company in the world Paradigm. If I would have gotten a chance to hear the Monoprice 5.1 system first before buying it I would have passed on it. I just keep reminding myself that this system cost less than 100 bucks. I will say one thing, If you crank these puppies up with something good like a Denon, Onkyo, or Pioneer Elite they will surprise you they get loud!! My Denon puts out about 90 watts and they take the abuse. You definitely will want to turn the gain down on the little sub-woofer if you plan on playing it at high levels. I wasn't real happy with the over all sound that came from the system at first, I thought the sound---sounded like the music was being played through a tube or something. It just didn't seem to have any depth to it, and sounded very cold and tinny. I think I've had them for about 5 weeks now. I have to say they are finally starting to break in and open up. The weak point of the system is the sub woofer, is not powerful enough. If you would decide to get another sub or just replace the amp in this sub make sure you get an amp that has a clip limiter VERY IMPORTANT. A clip limiter will keep the amp in the sub from over driving your speaker. I used to have a 12" Paradigm Sub woofer and it had a limiter on it. It was so awsume cause you could crank it up as loud as your system will go and it didn't distort or over heat. I had i for 5 years and had to sell it to pay for a speeding ticket, a very sad day. I have a BIC F12 Sub without a clip limiter. I really wish it had one but it sounds really good

I just purchased these a few days ago and they arrived very nicely in the mail. I got them for lower as it was a warehouse deal, but it was well worth it. I was aware that they do not come with speaker wire as the suggestion came up when I was ordering to add speaker wire to the order so I did just that. It would definitely come in handy. For the speaker wire, I bought the RCA 16 gauge 100 foot package. This worked out perfectly and I had some left over speaker wire that will come in handy since I have a cat who likes to chew (odd, I know). It took me a little while to get everything setup. Make sure that if you don't have already precut speaker wires that you get a wire cutter which will cut off the ends of the speaker wire so you can twist them. This will make it a lot easier to cut through the wire and thread them through the holes. One thing that is different about the speakers was the fact that you have to push down on these little brackets on the back of the speaker to then thread the wire though. I read some reviews where people said this was hard, I found it quite easy to thread them through. I have a Sony receiver which you have to thread the other end of the wire and then twist the knob to keep the wire tight. I liked the press and release much better. Additionally, they come with mounts! When I first opened the package I was thinking, how in the world am I going to mount this like my older speakers? Sure enough, there were mounts. They were very easy to mount to the wall also. If you don't have any extra screws lying around, you will need to order some when you get this package or you can run to Home Depot. After wiring and setting everything up, I recalibrated my surround sound system (to each their own, some systems do not do this) and tested it out. I have to say, I LOVE the sound of the speakers! I feel like I am immersed in sound within my living room. I had co-workers trying to convince me to get rid of my surround sound and get a soundbar, they have no idea! Surround sound is the way to go! As for the quality of the speakers, they are a little on the heavy side, but not too heavy. They are very good qualify outside and sound great hooked up to my Sony 5.1 Surround Sound System (receiver is NOT included in the package, these are most likely replacement speakers or for those that bought the receiver and not the speakers). Overall, I am so very happy with my purchase and would recommend these to anyone! Even the woofer sounds great with the surround sound, which I didn't have before!

Honestly, you can't go wrong with these if you are working towards a budget system with quality sound - which is what I was doing. I had a very old HT in a Box system that was in dire need of an upgrade for a few years now. I managed to upgrade with an Onkyo TX-SR313 5.1-Channel Home Theater A/V Receiver(Black) and these speakers for under $300, and I am very pleased. Our TV room is not very big, and our landlord lives above us, so these speakers are perfect for that situation. The rest of my family could really care less about audio fidelity and loudness is not the goal really. With that said, I have yet to even attempt to crank these speakers. There has been no need. I get a lot of sound with the amp dial at 50, and it is normally sitting around 30-35. What I like: 1. Subwoofer! It is worth the $100 alone! It has a very thick, warm and punchy sound (no artificial boominess). It's powered and has cross-over and level dials, and a handful of extra inputs/outputs that I didn't need. If you like realistic bass, you will like this. If you like tiles and windows vibrating in the neighbor's house, you won't like this. 2. Mounting Brackets: Can't mention enough how great these are as an inclusion. 3. Packaging: Monoprice packaged everything well...no damage during shipping. Tinkering with the sub is imperative to find the right balance in sound. The other 5 speakers don't offer much versatility in range. They are mostly stuck in the flat mid-high range. But they produce good stereo separation. I really don't have much to compare them to beyond my previous system which was crap. So yeah, I am very pleased. If only Amazon and Monoprice could work out an arrangement to truly knock off the shipping charge and sell these at list...you would have pure budget home theater gold. If you are looking at these, then you are probably looking for quality on the cheap. These don't disappoint.

Speakers sounded absolutely fantastic...for a few months. Only two months into owning these speakers one of them now sounds tinny and crackles when certain sounds are played through it. The speakers have not been misused at all, no blasting of music or movies. Reached out to monoprice twice to explore options of BUYING a replacement speaker (as only one is not working properly) and have not heard back at all. I really would like to avoid buying an entire new set of speakers and I'd rather not introduce a speaker other than monoprice into this surround sound system as in my opinion it will look silly. UPDATE: Monoprice responded after many attempts to contact them and stated that they do not offer individual speakers for replacement. Unfortunate that if one speaker goes bad you’re out an entire system unless you want to start mixing different brand name speakers. Two months of use and already one speaker is bad. Not happy.

I am less than impressed with this system. That being said, I am extremely impressed with Monoprice the company. My speakers arrived and the subwoofer did not work. So I emailed the company and they were very responsive. I promptly received another subwoofer, which wouldn't power on unless you jiggled the power wire and then held it in a certain position. So, they once again sent me out another subwoofer. That one worked, but like many others have said, dont expect too much. There is no "boom" or punch to the sound in movies. The did not want the other two subwoofers back, so they sit in my garage.. This is a very inexpensive system and probably fine for a dorm room, apartment or an entry home theater system All of the components require standard wiring and connections which make future upgrades or piecemealing an option. After my experience with this, i woudnt order this package again, but I think Monoprice is a solid company and very responsive.

WOW! I was a little skeptical in making this purchase due to the fact that I really wanted a quality product and as usual, based quality on the $$$. I read the reviews, mulled it over, went back and looked at other products and finally bit the bullet and hit the purchase button. Dont' be a skeptic! These speakers kick it! Crystal clear sound, booming bass. I went to the Big Box stores and listend to many different sets of speakers. I can't tell any difference in the sound or even the structure of these vs some of the high $$$ speakers. Dropped in a favorite movie to see the difference between these and my old system and heard little details that I do not recall hearing before. Gave them some volume and they rattled the windows without any noticable distortion. I usually don't use alot of volume to begin with but if you want to, these should take care of your needs. The mounts for the speakers are easy to install. Yes, you will have to use their mounts but, never fear, they look great as well and the speakers fit them in such a way that you really can not tell that they are even there. Actually they look better than the ones I had with my old speakers and give a cleaner profile when the install is complete. The slots met right up with my old mount holes so there was no additional drilling needed which is always a plus. Your experience may be different, but this was a breeze on my end. I have seen several reviews where they had a problem in getting the speaker wire into the push down connectors. I used a 16ga wire and found no problem what so ever in getting the connections made. I do however sodder the tips of my wires to keep them from flaring so take that into consideration as well. Do yourself a favor, save the money you would pay for the big name, high $$$ speakers and get these little gems. Then take your savings and take the wife out for a steak dinner. You'll win in both cases.

These are a great inexpensive set of speakers - I was more interested in their bigger brother, but Monoprice doesn't sell them through Amazon.ca just yet and their final cost otherwise would have ended up being more than $300. I don't even want to say that for the price these ones sound great, because they put out some deceptively great sound. The build quality is more than decent and extras like wall mounts are a nice touch. I bought some banana plugs to use with my amp but the pin type plugs you can get probably would not work with these speakers unless you're wall or stand mounting them (as there is no clearance underneath if placed directly on a flat surface). I also don't fully understand the situation where someone would need a left and right connection to a subwoofer, so I simply have my single subwoofer out on my amp running to the right input on the sub and it seems to work fine. I may replace it with a Y connector eventually. My only complaint is minor, and that's with the subwoofer - it puts out an audible hum when there's no sound. It seems to be linked when switching inputs with the amp, but thankfully it's not a constant thing (thankfully!). The auto on feature works well and while it won't fill a big room it's got a decent punch to it.

Es necesario tener un amplificador para poderlas conectar, tienen una muy buena calidad de sonido, el woofer responde excelente y el precio es muy accesible.

It's a wonderful product,

I have to say, I read the reviews and CNET's listing as this being the best value 5.1 surround sound system under Monoprice's premium version of these. The sound is exceptional. The only issue we've had is that the subwoofer won't engage all the time. We have to turn it off and plug it in again. We had it on 'automatic' but had to put it to on always as the auto didn't seem to work. Other than that, great sound quality!

Me salió dañado el buffer y no pasaba el sonido alas bocinas así que lo tuve que devolver 🙈