“New onboard EQ controls help tailor your monitors to your environment, as well as tap into three preset response curves for different listening needs.”
The music gear business has always been a challenging one, both from the perspective of retailers, as well as manufacturers. Several years ago, the Gibson family of brands – of the renowned Gibson guitar lineup, as well as Epiphone, Kramer, and others – set its sights on aggressively expanding beyond its core guitar business. While well-intentioned, the company filed Chapter 11 in 2018, but emerged from those dark days a little slimmer and more focused. Since then, the company has re-established itself as a market leader in the guitar world — nearly the company’s sole focus. The one exception? KRK, the venerable maker of studio monitors, remains in the Gibson family.
I’ve long been a fan of KRK. My own home studio sports two pairs of KRK monitors — one 7-inch set from the ROKIT line and one 4-inch set from the V-Series line paired with a subwoofer — that I switch between when mixing and mastering. When the opportunity arose to test out the latest iteration of the ROKIT line, now in its fifth generation, I jumped at the chance.
While improvements in technology and computer-aided design might have made a major impact in speaker design years ago, these days, generational improvements are more incremental than revolutionary. But that hasn’t kept KRK from continuing to steadily up its game.
The Basics
For this review, Gibson provided a pair of ROKIT 5 Generation Five monitors, meaning that the main drivers are 5 inches in diameter. In the past, KRK has offered the ROKIT series in a range of sizes, from 4 inches on the small end to 10 inches on the large end. The Generation Five family comes in just three: 5, 7, and 8 inches. Each step up in the line brings (of course) a larger main driver, but also incremental increases in total wattage, SPL (sound pressure level), and low-frequency response. It goes without saying that each increment also brings an increase in price.
Beyond these incremental differences, each model in the ROKIT line has a lot in common. Each member of the family has just a single, balanced input — a combo ¼-inch and XLR connector — along with a monochrome LCD panel on the back, and a single rotary knob for making configuration adjustments (more on that later). All three sport a 1-inch tweeter with a silk dome diaphragm, and a main driver with KRK’s trademark yellow woven Kevlar aramid fiber cone.
KRK quotes both a frequency range and a frequency response in its specifications; the latter numbers are arguably more useful, while the former includes a broader range that extends past the speakers’ drop-off points. For the 5-inch version, the response is 54 Hz to 30 kHz, while the 7-inch version extends things in both directions: 45 Hz to 36 kHz. The 8-inch version isn’t much different from the 7-inch version apart from overall power, bringing the low end farther down by just 3 Hz to 42 Hz.
Frankly, depending on your needs and the type of music you produce, any of the ROKIT Generation Five models would benefit from the additional low-end provided by a subwoofer. KRK offers several options, notably the S12.4 that’ll bring the low end all the way down to 26 Hz. This is part of why I have two sets of monitors in my own studio, with one pair matched up with a subwoofer: I can get an accurate sense of the very low end, while still being able to hear how things are sitting for arguably more typical listening environments.
What’s New
In addition to newly updated transducer designs, the ROKIT Generation Five series includes separate Class D amplifiers on board, meaning there’s one for the main driver and a separate one for the tweeter. KRK says this provides more headroom and better dynamics, while keeping operating temperatures lower.
Also new in the ROKIT Generation Five series is a set of onboard EQ controls that are intended to help you tailor your monitors to your listening environment, as well as tap into three preset response curves for different listening needs.
The overall EQ settings provide several options for matching the monitors to your room environment. Even with sound treatments installed, few rooms set up for production, mixing, and mastering are acoustically perfect, which means that some level of EQ tuning is required to ensure that you’re hearing accurately rendered audio. The challenge, in my view, comes in knowing when you need to boost or cut low and/or high frequencies, and by how much.
While the ROKIT Generation Five series provides set-up flexibility, I still prefer leaving my monitors at the flattest response setting, and using a calibrated, aftermarket tuning solution. I personally use SoundID Reference from Sonarworks, which pairs a calibrated microphone with intuitive, software-based configuration and tuning software to ensure accurate results by EQing the audio before it even hits the monitors. (Note: The free KRK Audio Tools App also provides room-tuning tools. It’s available for iOS and Android devices.)
But beyond the base setup, the three new voicing modes — Mix, Focus, and Create — provide additional, easy-to-access, EQ-curve options. Mix provides flat response; Focus boosts the midrange to better reveal vocals and lead instruments; and Create boosts some lows, cuts some mids, and boosts some highs, lending itself to beat creation and general listening.
All these various EQ settings and modes are dialed in using the rear-panel rotary encoder, which also provides other general set-up options, like whether the KRK logo is illuminated to indicate power status.
Within the ROKIT Generation Five, you’ll find two different front faceplates included in the box – one with and one without grilles. KRK says which one you choose doesn’t actually make a difference in the performance; it’s more for aesthetics, and whether you feel you need the physical protection of the grilles.
Lastly, the company now provides foam isolation wedges that can be used to tilt the monitors to direct the sound to your listening position, while providing acoustic isolation from your desk or monitor stands. It’s a nice added touch.
In Use
Judging studio monitors is as much subjective as objective, unless you have access to a lab full of audio-diagnostic gear. And even when tuned with a solution like the aforementioned SoundID Reference, each monitor brand and line will have its own character. As I’ve found in the past with KRK monitors, I was pleased with the sound and performance of the ROKIT Generation Five monitors.
As I do with any monitor review, I used the ROKIT Generation Five pair to listen to a range of commercial music and my own music projects, all of which I know inside and out. My own finished mixes and the tracks I chose from my library sounded as I expected them to, while checking some unfinished projects revealed problem areas (frequency collisions and other bad mixing choices) the way I would anticipate. As expected, the 5-inch drivers are more than capable of providing pleasing audio across the usual range, but are not going to deliver the types of super low end, punchy bass sounds that are not uncommon in electronic music. Again, this would be mitigated with a subwoofer, if applicable to your own studio use cases.
My only real complaints with the ROKIT 5 Generation Five monitors include an evident noise floor; the hiss you’ll hear when the monitors are powered up, but not being fed an audio signal. Additionally, while the back panel display and configuration options are terrific, the fact that you must access the back of the monitor to change the settings may limit the value in some cases.
Conclusions
The KRK ROKIT Generation Five studio monitors continue the company’s tradition of providing a solid monitoring solution at an appealing price point. The 5-inch model runs just under $200, while the 7-inch and 8-inch models come in right around $270 and $320, respectively — all pricing is per unit (not per pair). That makes them pretty appealing, price-wise, in my book for a well-designed, well-built monitoring solution for any home studio.