This is a review and detailed measurements of the PreSonus ERIS 3.5 Generation 2 "Studio Monitor" (powered speaker). I purchased it on member suggestion for US $100. It normally costs US $109 but is on Prime Day sale right now for US $89 (a pair).
Speaker is quite small and light (picture makes it look bigger/nicer). I like the front controls which makes it much more useful for desktop use than a traditional studio monitor with no volume control and gains in the back. Speaking of the back, it is very feature rich:
Alas, this is the "master" speaker. It feeds the other speaker using just one pair of wires meaning the crossover is passive and there is only one channel of amplification per speaker.
If you look at the tweeter level, you see that it is turned down some. During pre-testing, the levels of tweeter were quite high so I decided to bring it down some. As you will see later, this was not enough.
Note that this is the "generation 2" which is supposed to be newer and improved. The original is still on sale on Amazon.
PreSouns ERIS 3.5 Gen 2 Speaker Measurements
As usual, we start with our anechoic speaker measurements:
Oh boy. This is as bad as it gets folks. It seems there was no attempt at optimizing the response at all. The only positive is the good directivity once the tweeter takes over (above 2 kHz).
The woofer does its damage to both early reflections and predicted-in room response:
Near-field response shows some of the causes:
Port is tuned high which in turns causes even more of a one-note bass response. The woofer misbehaves throughout the range, messing with otherwise decent response of the tweeter. Cabinet resonance pokes its head up high below 2 KHz.
The two drivers are close in size so directivity turns out to be good:
Vertical directivity is quite narrow so best to stay at laser level of tweeter:
I could hear the little woofer struggling at my standard 86 dBSPL during sweeps. So instead of going up in level, I went down to 80 dBSPL for comparison:
The woofer is misbehaving and badly. Here is a comparison of the total THD at the two levels:
From bad to worse.
The very uneven frequency response means that the absolute levels of distortion can be quite misleading:
I am going to stop here. And no, I am not going to listen to it!
Conclusions
From what I recall, the Gen 2 was supposed to have an improved woofer yet the product being lower cost. Well, the managed the latter but not the former. This is a disaster of a response and not worthy of purchase at any price. Shame is that for the same cost, it could have been better.
I can't recommend the PreSonus ERIS 3.5 Generation 2. Save a few hundred dollars more and buy a proper "studio monitor."
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Speaker is quite small and light (picture makes it look bigger/nicer). I like the front controls which makes it much more useful for desktop use than a traditional studio monitor with no volume control and gains in the back. Speaking of the back, it is very feature rich:
Alas, this is the "master" speaker. It feeds the other speaker using just one pair of wires meaning the crossover is passive and there is only one channel of amplification per speaker.
If you look at the tweeter level, you see that it is turned down some. During pre-testing, the levels of tweeter were quite high so I decided to bring it down some. As you will see later, this was not enough.
Note that this is the "generation 2" which is supposed to be newer and improved. The original is still on sale on Amazon.
PreSouns ERIS 3.5 Gen 2 Speaker Measurements
As usual, we start with our anechoic speaker measurements:
Oh boy. This is as bad as it gets folks. It seems there was no attempt at optimizing the response at all. The only positive is the good directivity once the tweeter takes over (above 2 kHz).
The woofer does its damage to both early reflections and predicted-in room response:
Near-field response shows some of the causes:
Port is tuned high which in turns causes even more of a one-note bass response. The woofer misbehaves throughout the range, messing with otherwise decent response of the tweeter. Cabinet resonance pokes its head up high below 2 KHz.
The two drivers are close in size so directivity turns out to be good:
Vertical directivity is quite narrow so best to stay at laser level of tweeter:
I could hear the little woofer struggling at my standard 86 dBSPL during sweeps. So instead of going up in level, I went down to 80 dBSPL for comparison:
The woofer is misbehaving and badly. Here is a comparison of the total THD at the two levels:
From bad to worse.
The very uneven frequency response means that the absolute levels of distortion can be quite misleading:
I am going to stop here. And no, I am not going to listen to it!
Conclusions
From what I recall, the Gen 2 was supposed to have an improved woofer yet the product being lower cost. Well, the managed the latter but not the former. This is a disaster of a response and not worthy of purchase at any price. Shame is that for the same cost, it could have been better.
I can't recommend the PreSonus ERIS 3.5 Generation 2. Save a few hundred dollars more and buy a proper "studio monitor."
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
