Eris E8 XT

Presonus have updated their Eris-series monitors but retained their competitive prices. Are these the best budget speakers you can buy?

No matter what software you use, the results of all your music making must be heard through either accurate studio monitors or decent headphones. If your ’phones or monitors are not delivering your mix to you with this honesty, you’ll mix it incorrectly, and it will sound bad on any other playback system. That’s the theory. The other part of this theory is that ‘proper’ studio speakers cost a fortune. Luckily, that part of the theory has been challenged more and more over recent years…

You can go cheap

Recent monitors from JBL, Adam, Eve and others have proven that you can get accurate speakers at lower costs. Another company who have made bold claims on a budget are Presonus, and their Eris range certainly turned a few heads when it was released back in 2013. The XT range is the latest update to Eris and we have the E8 XT on test here. It’s a big speaker, with a big sound, and at just over £400 a pair – cheap in a market where you can easily pay well into four figures for decent monitors – these look like a lot of speaker for the cash.

First up a quick look at the specs. The ‘8’ in the title stands for the 8-inch low-frequency woofer (there’s are smaller E5 model in the range too, with a 5-inch woofer). This, along with the 1.25-inch silk-dome, high-frequency tweeter, combine to deliver an impressive frequency response of 35Hz to 20kHz – pretty good lowend specs, especially without a subwoofer.

Power-wise, you are getting 75W (from the LF driver) and 65W (the HF) so, as we hinted at earlier, these are for mid- to large-sized spaces, something enforced with the new XT Waveguide addition – see box below – that allows for a bigger listening experience. And with the large physical size of the speakers – weighing in at over 10kg a speaker and over 40cm high – these will clearly be overkill for small studios.

Small price, big sound?

In order to test speakers, we find the best way is to conduct listening tests with a set of professionally-mixed classic tracks and with our own mixes – the latter being tracks we have been working on for many weeks or months (in some cases years!). It’s best to know these mixes inside out; their flaws as well. We also compare the test speakers to our own reference monitors, in this case two sets: one pair of two-way speakers that are cheaper, and one set of three-way speakers that are around £2,000 a set. Again, we know our reference monitors well so comparisons should be valid.

The first thing that shines from the Eris E8s is that sweet spot, easily as wide as our expensive reference monitors and blowing the cheaper ones out of the water. The bass response is also excellent; not quite as controlled as you get on more expensive speakers but nor is it muddy and undefined – a trait straight out of cheap speaker city. We did find ourselves tailoring the sound to our environment a lot – see below for more on these EQ controls – but that’s a necessary step to take anyway. Really, only the mid range sounded slightly muddied compared to our three-way speakers but they boast a mid range driver so should deliver more detail there.

Overall then, the E8XTs stand up well, but when you factor in the price, they really are an excellent buy for the budget producer, even though said producer might need a bigger room than their bank balance!