
I’ve just become the proud owner of a set of KRK Rokit 5 G4 monitors for the home studio. One of my old Alesis M1’s died for the second time – a great excuse to go shopping! I’ve recently done some acoustic treatment in the room anyway so it’ll be good to do some mixing in there and hear what we’ve got.
Aside from the price and many great reviews, the Rokits appealed to me because of their built in DSP room tuning gizmo. Like most home studio owners, my space is far from perfect so anything that can help achieve a truer sound is good. I’ll have a better idea of how well this works in a week or two.
The idea is that the speakers can be adjusted to counter any acoustic problems like standing waves and bass traps. This is done via a a multi function button on the back of each speaker. There’s also a small LCD window on each where you can scroll through various settings. KRK systems provide an app that works in tandem with the DSP tuning.
This produces white noise, pink noise and sine waves. These are analysed by the app as you move your phone around your listening area. After around 20 seconds the app suggests some presets for the speakers. You can then dial those in via the interface on the rear of each speaker. Basically they apply a little low or high pass filtering to hopefully compensate for anomalies in your room acoustics.
Rokit 5s – Hey Good Looking
My very attractive KRK Rokit 5 G4 monitors are, out of necessity, close to a bay window. I have some acoustic foam behind them but there will still be some sound reflection issues. I’ve dialled in the suggested EQ tweaks and already the sound is an improvement on the Alesis monitors. Since the basic idea with mixing is to get music that sounds good through all sorts of equipment I’ll soon see how this translates to my home HiFi, car stereo etc.
The KRK app also helps you to achieve the correct listening angle (30 degrees) for each speaker when they are 1 – 1.5 metres apart. With your head being the 3rd point of an equilateral triangle you should have perfect stereo imaging. There’s also a polarity tester which highlights any issues you may have with cables/phasing. Clever stuff.

My one gripe so far – and it is a small one – is this: KRK state that the Rokit series of monitors are designed specifically for less than perfect home studios. In many cases, like mine that’s going to mean the monitors being too close to a wall or window. Obviously that means not being able to get behind them easily to access the DSP stuff without moving them and having to set them up again. I guess there are a number of reasons why they couldn’t have put the controls on the top or side. Anyway, not that much of a big deal. Once they are set up they are set up.
The KRK ROKIT 5 G4 Monitors – To Be Continued…
The KRK Rokit 5 G4 monitors are satisfyingly heavy. Though quite a bit smaller than my old Alesis monitors, they feel about the same weight. Heavy. With their yellow speaker cones, backlit logos and rounded edges, they are a good looking set of speakers.
These are very well priced monitors. I got mine online from DJDeals for £218. That’s actually cheaper than my Alesis monitors cost me over 10 years ago. They arrived promptly and very well packaged with a free pen an a little bag of Haribo sweets. Nice touch. Since I didn’t opt for extras like cables or foam pads to sit them I just got the monitors and mains cables for them.
As I say the proof will be in the mixing but so far I’m very pleased with these monitors. After doing the set up I played a song I’m nearly done mixing through them and a couple of things did stick out. I’ll post again when I have more to tell. Meantime if you’re on a tight budget but need some monitors the KRK Rokit 5 G4s are well worth a look.