carewser
Senior Member
I love the irony of a product called "iLoud" and it's one deficiency is a lack of volume
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IK Multimedia iLoud MTM Review (active monitor)
- Thread starter amirm
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I love the irony of a product called "iLoud" and it's one deficiency is a lack of volume
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I find they crank louder than I care to listen at the desk. They aren't really "house chore" speakers unless you're nearby, though.
mohragk
Member
Another tip is to mount them on desk microphone mounts. The tweeter now lines up perfectly at ear height.
I have one oddity though; one of the speakers seems to intermittently reboot itself every once in a while. It doesn't occur often, maybe once every month or less, but still quite odd. I've updated the firmware but that didn't help. Anybody else has this "issue"?
I have one oddity though; one of the speakers seems to intermittently reboot itself every once in a while. It doesn't occur often, maybe once every month or less, but still quite odd. I've updated the firmware but that didn't help. Anybody else has this "issue"?
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Yes...annoying.
I've had mine on continuously (short of power outages) since last November, I've never had that happen.
Had to add this, because I just checked out Glenn Fricker's (SpectreSoundStudios on youtube) video review of the iLoud MTMs, where he says,
"I'm totally blown away by the response on these monitors, the bottom end is just ridiculous, how much bass these things put out, these are as loud as F***".
I posted because it's a hilarious comment, in light of complaints that the MTMs can't play loud. And that comes back to what I said before. This guy mixes metal, which doesn't have deep extended bass (because that robs too much power, and anyway distracts from the mids which are where it's at for metal).
For MTM owners, if you have friends that drop by and see your speakers and say, "yeah, I hear those are decent, but you can't play them very loud", set them in front of this (great MTM demo tune, really nice acoustic guitar and vocals, juxtaposed with hair-singing bouts of electric guitar—if want to see shock and awe, start it in the gentle first verse at 34 seconds in, decent volume, so they don't know what's coming):
"I'm totally blown away by the response on these monitors, the bottom end is just ridiculous, how much bass these things put out, these are as loud as F***".
I posted because it's a hilarious comment, in light of complaints that the MTMs can't play loud. And that comes back to what I said before. This guy mixes metal, which doesn't have deep extended bass (because that robs too much power, and anyway distracts from the mids which are where it's at for metal).
For MTM owners, if you have friends that drop by and see your speakers and say, "yeah, I hear those are decent, but you can't play them very loud", set them in front of this (great MTM demo tune, really nice acoustic guitar and vocals, juxtaposed with hair-singing bouts of electric guitar—if want to see shock and awe, start it in the gentle first verse at 34 seconds in, decent volume, so they don't know what's coming):
mohragk
Member
If you really want to rock the house and show off the bass capabilities, play no other than this one:
How satisfied are you with the buzzing/hissing of these monitors? I admit that I expected it to be better. It is true that I have them connected via RCA-XLR cable, but compared to Fluid F5 they are noticeably noisier.
I am aware that the (only) solution is probably an XLR-XLR connection, but a DAC with XLR output is expensive.
I am aware that the (only) solution is probably an XLR-XLR connection, but a DAC with XLR output is expensive.
mohragk
Member
Are you sure you don't have a ground loop issue? This has probably nothing to do with using a unbalanced signal but I have no issues with noise and I use a simple Focusrite Scarlett which supports balanced signals when using TRS to XLR or TRS to TRS cables per channel.
Vict0r
Addicted to Fun and Learning
They're basically silent now that I've hooked them up to a Motu M4. You don't need an XLR-out on the DAC. A balanced TRS will work just as well.
Almost dead silent. I have also Naim Nait 5si - very sensitive for clean power - if anyone turn on washing machine or dryer I hear loud noise from power supply. I never hear such noise from iLoud. I dont have plan for sell my iLoud setup, verry happy.
Like others have noted, mine are dead silent, in a quiet room, I have to put my ear practically on them to hear smooth hiss, but no buzzing.
Are you driving them from the same source as the F5s? I had an intermittent low level noise before, till it recently was loud enough that I could tell it was purely digital, and immediately realized it was from my DAC sitting under my computer display—pulled it out a couple of inches and it went silent.
If you pull the input cables to the MTMs, do you still have the noise?
It looks like the the Fluid F5's have a 2 wire power connection (so no safety ground). The MTMs have a 3-pin connection which includes a safety ground and a route for ground loops to form. I had a similar experience upgrading from Tannoy Reveal 402's (2-pin power) to my MTMs. I have solved the issue in 3 different ways...
1. I put a cheap USB isolator between my DAC and PC. Cost about £15, but limits USB bandwidth and sample rate.
2. I put an SPDIF/TOSLINK adapter plate in my PC (wired to motherboard header) and connected to DAC via TOSLINK. Cost about £12, again limits sample rates to those supported by the connection. Couldn't use the Toppig ASIO driver.
3. Bought a Topping EX5 with balanced output. Cost: A lot more than the above
TBH, there were no audible differences between the options above, but I had other reasons to buy an integrated DAC/Amp and replace my separates.
*edit* I made a mistake, I was looking at the back of the Fluid F4, the F5's do have a 3 pin power. The steps I mentioned above to solve the issue are all still valid
Walter
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On another thread, @engineer noted that his had an annoying high pitched whine: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...tors-up-to-700-euros.26370/page-2#post-920061. He links to a thread about this on the IK Multimedia forum, https://cgi.ikmultimedia.com/ikforum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=27582, where this is discussed. It appears that the MTMs, or at least the ones made in the last few months and sold in northern Europe, have a pretty bad problem with coil whine when used in areas that use 220V and higher electrical mains supply. There were multiple posts from company representatives basically saying to stop discussing this on the public user forum and submit support tickets instead. The company's support department's very poor response has apparently been that they don't consider this a problem, and don't plan to do anything about it. At least they didn't delete the thread.
I'm pretty familiar with the coil whine issue as it relates to computer power supplies, especially since I live in a country with 230V mains. My understanding is that it does not mean that the equipment is necessarily of poor quality or is likely to fail quickly, but it does indicate that the builder went cheap on both the components and QA testing. I am neither an EE or a DIY electronics hobbyist, so if that is incorrect, I hope someone will correct me.
Yes, you can buy a step-down transformer (AKA power converter) and run them off of 110V, but that just should not be necessary. That is added cost, plus you are left with an ugly box to try to hide out of the way, and sometimes they themselves make noise. More importantly, this does not reflect well at all on the company, or inspire confidence that their products are well built and will last.
I'm pretty familiar with the coil whine issue as it relates to computer power supplies, especially since I live in a country with 230V mains. My understanding is that it does not mean that the equipment is necessarily of poor quality or is likely to fail quickly, but it does indicate that the builder went cheap on both the components and QA testing. I am neither an EE or a DIY electronics hobbyist, so if that is incorrect, I hope someone will correct me.
Yes, you can buy a step-down transformer (AKA power converter) and run them off of 110V, but that just should not be necessary. That is added cost, plus you are left with an ugly box to try to hide out of the way, and sometimes they themselves make noise. More importantly, this does not reflect well at all on the company, or inspire confidence that their products are well built and will last.
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