Mackie MR524 or Adam Audio T5V. Which one should you buy? Short comparison review


Today we compare Mackie MR524 and Adam Audio T5V studio monitors. Which one should You get for your home studio project? Which works better for music listening? Let's find out!

Build Quality

Right of the bat, Mackie 524 gets extra brownie points for being considerably more compact than Adam T5V. Adam's box is a bit taller and substantianlly (almost 8cm!) deeper, which makes it bulky and hard to position properly on cramped desk. Another two brownie points goes to Mackie for having LED status light on the front panel (Adam has them on the back panel) and for much more reasonable hiss levels (T5V's hiss is much more annoying and intrusive).
Overall build quality is slightly better on Mackie, tone controls for example are higher quality, but neither can say it is premium quality product. I also preffered the looks of Mackie a bit more, but Adam looks quite stylish with is sleek front panel and copper coloured tweeter as well.

Sound Quality 

Mackie MR524 has more linear and balanced frequency response compared to Adam T5V. Adam T5V has a big dip in frequency response between 2kHz and 3.5kHz and than a big lift between 5kHz and almost 14kHz and this gives it forward, analytical and bright tonal balance that lacks some presence to distorted guitars and cymbals for example. Mackie is smoother, more natural and coherent to my ear, but it is not perfect either, but MR524 manages its deviations from neutral much better though. In Mackie's frequency response there is a a bit of a lift between 1.5kHz and 2.5kHz which makes human voices pop out from a mix a bit more for example. Overall voices sounds more coherent and present on MR524 without being harsh or bright which is nice. Both Mackie and Adam have very nice top end but T5V seem to have a bit more air and detail up in the treble range. Both image very well with a slight edge to T5V.
Both Mackie and Adam has solid bass response without any help from a subwoofer. Mackie has a bit more boost in midbass, but overall MR524 feels a tad tighter to my ear.

Hore is frequency graph of T5V and MR524 measured at 1meter using UMIK1:


Here is a sound demo video from my YouTube channel:


Conclusion

In summary I preffered smooth yet detailed sound MR524 more, and when we add that Mackie is also more compact and build a bit better, than it becomes obvious that it will get my recommendation in this comparison both for music production and music listening.

Komentarze

  1. Thank you for your comparisons!! Do you think that MR5 MKIII and MR524 have any sound differences?

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