M-Audio Forty Eighty

The 8-inch Kevlar woofer drops cleanly down to 33 Hz, completely eliminating the mandatory need for an external subwoofer in small-to-medium home studios. Bass lines are punchy and highly detailed without becoming muddy.
Vocals sound upfront and intimite. Because of the digital crossover network, there is a very clean transition between the 8-inch Kevlar woofer and the tweeter, meaning the lower-mids (where vocals can often sound muddy or "boxy") remain well-separated and distinct.
In dense rock or electronic mixes, you can easily separate overlapping elements like synth pads, electric guitars, and snare drum snaps. It provides a spacious, analytical soundstage without feeling artificially clinical.
The highs are crisp and detailed, but they possess a "soft" characteristic. This is a massive benefit if you spend 4 to 6+ hours mixing or producing, as your ears won't tire out from piercing, overly bright frequencies.
The waveguide surrounding the tweeter expands the horizontal sweet spot. You don't have to sit perfectly frozen in the center of your desk to hear accurate high-frequency panning and stereo imaging. High-hats, cymbal crashes, and vocal breath details are rendered sharply. However, if you are looking for ultra-bright, hyper-crisp highs (similar to what you might find on an ribbon-tweeter monitor like an ADAM Audio), the Forty Eighty feels slightly more relaxed and natural by comparison.
Built with rigid, vinyl-coated MDF, the clean matte-black finish and cream-colored Kevlar cones look incredibly sharp on any desk. M-Audio also thoughtfully includes foam isolation pads right in the box to decouple them from your furniture.
The companion app is called M-Audio Studio Control, and it is available for both iOS and Android. Instead of relying on fixed, basic analog switches common on older studio monitors, the app features a precise 5-band parametric equalizer.
You can pinpoint an exact frequency that is causing trouble in your room—such as a harsh mid-range reflection from a desk surface or a boomy low-end resonance from a corner—and turn it down.
It allows you to dial in your preferred sound signature, whether you want a subtle bass lift, a vocal boost, or a slightly rolled-off high end.
You can use the app's location presets to optimize the sound based on how close the speakers are to your walls or corners.
You can save your custom EQ curves as custom user presets. This allows you to effortlessly switch between a "Surgical Mixing" profile, a "Casual Movie Watching" profile, and a "DJ Practice" profile.
Pro Tip: M-Audio officially recommends using a free third-party acoustic measurement software like Room EQ Wizard (REW) alongside their app to precisely measure your room reflections and map the perfect corrective EQ curves into the M-Audio app.