M-Audio BX8-D2 Monitors Comparison Review

This article is a follow on to my Studio Monitors article. For the long time I have preferred M-Audio products and have used my trusted M-Audio Studiophile AV 40 desktop monitors for mixing down my productions in my home studio. Having said that, have always itched for a bigger studio monitor so that I do not need to go back to headphones all the time to get the bass/Drum mix right.

Recently took the plunge and got the M-Audio BX8 D2 studio monitors. My impression of them went from them being great to "holy cow...what monsters did I buy!!!". For reference see image below showing comparison between M-Audio Studiophile AV 40 Powered Speakers (4inch) and the M-Audio BX8 D2s.

As you can see, the size advantage moving up from a 4-5 inch monitor to this is huge. Plus this thing gets loud and I mean serious loud in my home studio, very easy to hurt your hearing running these on full blast. I have them hooked up to my Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 and use that to control the master volume. The volume knob on these guys has been set to half way, any more and my room windows my sustain some damage.

Advantages

• The very big advantage that this beast has over the smaller speakers is that it is bi-amped and much easier to set up in a small home studio to get a flat frequency response. (More on this below)
• The size of these makes them perfect for placing them on a solid mixing desk with the tweeters coming perfectly at ear level. No need for isolation foam to lift them up to ear level. They ship with pads which are very good with the isolation.
• They have nice blue indicator LEDs up front which get the brightest at the right angle, so setting the angle for the listener is easy.
• Mixes sound incredibly detailed, there are no bumps anywhere in the bass response, true flatness till around 45-50Hz after which it starts to drop off. This is perfect for most music except the very demanding Movie soundtrack scoring work.
• Highs are superb, you can immediately tell if your hats, strings etc are set at the right level.
• If your studio has not been treated acoustically this speaker might actually help as from the get go it can produce lower frequencies much easier than the smaller speakers which require room eqing for getting the right response. My M-Audio AV40 monitors had a bump in certain bass frequencies due to the port and also the smaller size of my room. This speaker showed no bumps throughout the spectrum and sounded very flat.

Disadvantages

• Size. this will not have any (look, spouse, girl friend!) approval factor when it comes to looks, it is a beast and shows it's size right from the time you unpack the box. 

Things to do to make them sound good in your room.

• Takes a little bit more time to set up since, you will need to manually adjust volume levels to get them sounding equal on both sides. With the size and weight this process is a bit cumbersome, would recommend setting them at mid way volume and using your audio interface volume to control the levels.
• Needs some breathing room behind the speaker. As with any good speaker with ported design, this speaker needs at least a foot of space behind it. (the funny thing is my room does not have that much space and I have them pretty close to the back wall, less than a foot distance and they sound great).

They are the perfect monitor for Home Studio and intermediate producers looking to mix down quality mixes. Buy them soon before they go back up in price, amazon has them on sale currently!.