Presonus Eris E5 BT Review

[Endibol]

View attachment 468870
This is a 5-inch class studio monitor from Presonus.
It’s an active–passive design and also supports Bluetooth mode.


Let’s dive straight into the data.




Frequency Response
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Right from the start, things don’t look promising.
The -6 dB low-end extension comes in at a reasonable 51.8 Hz with a 22 dB/octave slope.
Leaving aside the overall tonal balance, the high frequencies are a complete mess.


As with most things in audio, the cause of a phenomenon often matters more than the phenomenon itself.
If we think purely in terms of the loudspeaker’s transfer function, a narrow high-Q dip in the extreme treble might not be a fatal issue by itself.
So, let’s look deeper below.




Nearfield Measurements
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Indeed, the real issues lie elsewhere.


First, look at the sharp spike near 5 kHz in the woofer’s response — a strong breakup mode peak.
This resonance likely wreaks havoc on the summed on-axis response.


Second, this could have been minimized if a proper crossover filter had been implemented, but for reasons other than cost-cutting, it’s hard to see the design logic.


Third,
View attachment 468846
A naturally measured tweeter response rarely shows such a broad rise in a specific band — yet here it does.
Coincidentally, the woofer response shows the same rise over the same band.


This leads me to cautiously speculate that the manufacturer boosted that band during voicing to achieve a target tonal balance, inadvertently emphasizing the woofer diaphragm’s breakup mode frequency at the same time.
(This is just my subjective guess.)




CEA-2034
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No clear design intent is apparent.
From the on-axis curve to the DI, there’s nothing smooth here.




Directivity
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Without a crossover and without even a waveguide, the mismatch between the drivers’ directivity is obvious — resulting in bizarre, uneven horizontal dispersion.
To be blunt… “It’s not easy to make something this bad.”





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No comment.




Beamwidth
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Again, there’s no sign of controlled design here.
Worse, the 2 kHz–5 kHz range — more than a full octave — is riddled with large directivity errors.





Polar Plot
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Good grief…




THD
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Around 350 Hz, 2nd-, 3rd-, and higher-order harmonics all spike together — a typical sign of strong resonance.




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Increasing the output only made the problem more apparent.




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However, non-linear distortion from the woofer’s motor and suspension is even greater, partially masking the resonance in the THD plots.




Multitone Test
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It’s unrealistic to expect much from a speaker without even a crossover filter.
Even for a 5-inch unit, expectations should be tempered.





80Hz~
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Distortion was already high to begin with, and it climbed further with increased output.
At 96 dB SPL, the level of multitone distortion actually exceeded that of the 76 dB test signal.




Compression Test
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No comment.




Final Thoughts
I’m sorry this review contains so much criticism — and even a few “no comment” sections.
However, this product is marketed and sold as a studio monitor offering studio-quality sound.
Presonus is a long-established brand in the music production industry, and for such products I inevitably apply stricter standards than I would for casual home or desktop speakers.

While the far-field on-axis response has been tuned reasonably close to a flat target, the abundance of high distortion and uncontrolled resonances leaves me skeptical.
Perhaps its colorful tonal character might be enjoyable to some listeners — but as a tool for accurate studio monitoring, I cannot agree that it meets the necessary quality standard.

That’s all.

Thanks Nuyes for another great review.
I guess this is what you can expect for a few hundred euros?

 

[Bruce Morgen]

That's 3 Presonus speakers measured recently here on ASR and all of them measure badly, even the one that costs $899 each. I think that's enough evidence to avoid the brand altogether. Thanks for measuring these Nuyes.

I believe "the brand" was recently acquired by FMIC, i.e. Fender Musical Instrument Corporation -- I hope they didn't pay too much...

 

[NotInYourHead]

I believe "the brand" was recently acquired by FMIC, i.e. Fender Musical Instrument Corporation -- I hope they didn't pay too much...

They definitely did, like anyone who bought a PreSonus product

 

[NotInYourHead]

Thanks Nuyes for another great review.
I guess this is what you can expect for a few hundred euros?

Cheaper speakers completely trounce this mess

 

[Endibol]

Cheaper speakers completely trounce this mess

Really? I didn’t realize that

 

[DanielT]

Ah, my acoustic engineering consultancy experience is telling me this is a result of a classic way of cost-saving on entry-level products the moment I look at the result.

I guess the DSP amp chipset inside this speaker only has 2 channels, and then you only put a small series capacitor on the tweeter as a protection/high pass, no low-pass filter on the woofer at all, you wired the woofer and tweeter+cap in parallal and then you just EQ the response of the whole system until it becomes sort of OK-ish. Yes, the woofer cone-breakup remains as an issue, and the directivity is completely screwed up - But Hey! There are only very limited ways of making an active product at this price point without actually losing money, so...

But don't you think a coil could improve, or reduce the problems with the woffers break ups? Okay, it's only a 6 dB reduction per octave. A coil plus a notch filter? Would it increase the price of them that much if the passive components were added?
_____
By the way, thanks for this review Nuyes

 

[DanielT]

Is it just me, or do so many of these 'woven cone' style bass-mid drivers have major issues further up. Nice looking boxes too, that may even pass muster in a domestic rig.

Stiff cone material in a driver can cause nasty break ups BUT can have other advantages such as low distortion for example (if that is possible to generalize?).
For that type of driver you need to have a proper suitable crossover that attenuates the audibility in the break ups enough. Otherwise, if many components steep crossover is not used (cost aspect?), you can look for some old school paper cone based woofers which hopefully do not have such nasty break ups, but of course do not have the advantages that stiff cone material has.Trade-offs regarding speaker design.
(as you know, mention it mostly to others reading the thread)

 

[renaudrenaud]

Stellar results.

Or a least, planetary results.

If you buy Presonus, you will hear Uranus.

 

[xaviescacs]

Thanks for the extensive measurements! I considered those for a second a couple of weeks ago looking for an upgrade of computer speakers for a friend. Then I remembered some amir's review and finally bought the KRK Kreate 3, with similar functionality, for 70 bucks less at thomann (europe). https://www.thomann.es/krk_kreate_3.htm. And now this... oh boy, take people's comments on thomann with a grain of salt...

 

[Audiofirstdesigns_Harry]

But don't you think a coil could improve, or reduce the problems with the woffers break ups? Okay, it's only a 6 dB reduction per octave. A coil plus a notch filter? Would it increase the price of them that much if the passive components were added?
_____
By the way, thanks for this review Nuyes

It will certainly improve the performance. But these cheap product often sells in big volume. I have seen things worse than this making thousands of sales per month (worldwide). A passive network like what you described cost a few $. That adds up... Most companies won't just give up these profit.

 

[MediumRare]

Thanks, @Nuyes . Another very helpful review!

Could I request in the future, especially for active speakers, to include a photo of the rear panel?

Also, you mentioned it’s active-passive hybrid. What does that mean in practice? And for active, some info about the amplification would be helpful.

Last, please assume some significant portion of your readers won’t be able to properly interpret the graphs, especially bad ones. So please don’t say “no comment“. Just a short line like “distortion above 3% at x hz is audibly unacceptable” would help a lot.

 

[tubesguy]

One positive (just kidding) - the horizontal directivity's psychedelic sheep head


View attachment 468920

I think there may be copyright problems with the Wallace and Gromit folks.

 

[respice finem]

I think there may be copyright problems with the Wallace and Gromit folks.

There would be other candidates

But it might be difficult to sue the analyzer

 

[Nuyes]

Thanks, @Nuyes . Another very helpful review!

Could I request in the future, especially for active speakers, to include a photo of the rear panel?

Also, you mentioned it’s active-passive hybrid. What does that mean in practice? And for active, some info about the amplification would be helpful.

Last, please assume some significant portion of your readers won’t be able to properly interpret the graphs, especially bad ones. So please don’t say “no comment“. Just a short line like “distortion above 3% at x hz is audibly unacceptable” would help a lot.

Thank you for the thoughtful comment.

First, “Active–Passive” here refers to what is widely known as a Master–Slave configuration.

Since I am not a native English speaker and my cultural understanding of Western contexts is limited, I unintentionally caused discomfort to someone in a previous AIYIMA S600 review.

That is why I chose to use different wording this time — I appreciate your understanding.



Also, I will try to avoid using “No Comment” in future reviews.

The reviews I post on ASR are translations of my original Korean reviews from my personal website, and in that context “No Comment” was something my regular readers were familiar with.

I realize this may have come across as self-centered here, and I apologize for that.

I’ll keep thinking about how to make my reviews more approachable to a wider range of readers.

 

[Nuyes]

Ah, my acoustic engineering consultancy experience is telling me this is a result of a classic way of cost-saving on entry-level products the moment I look at the result.

I guess the DSP amp chipset inside this speaker only has 2 channels, and then you only put a small series capacitor on the tweeter as a protection/high pass, no low-pass filter on the woofer at all, you wired the woofer and tweeter+cap in parallal and then you just EQ the response of the whole system until it becomes sort of OK-ish. Yes, the woofer cone-breakup remains as an issue, and the directivity is completely screwed up - But Hey! There are only very limited ways of making an active product at this price point without actually losing money, so...

Thank you for sharing your perspective as an expert — I can fully understand the context of your point.
As a product reviewer, I naturally tend to side a bit more with the consumer, which is why I find it disappointing that even major players like Presonus — and Yamaha as well — sometimes release products while leaving out something as basic as a proper crossover filter.
For example, both the HS3 and HS4 in Yamaha’s studio monitor lineup, like this speaker, were also sold without a crossover.
Perhaps even a small price increase could be justified — at least if the product is to be marketed as studio equipment, even if not strictly “professional” gear.

 

[SoundsGood2Me]

Thank you for the thoughtful comment.

First, “Active–Passive” here refers to what is widely known as a Master–Slave configuration.

Since I am not a native English speaker and my cultural understanding of Western contexts is limited, I unintentionally caused discomfort to someone in a previous AIYIMA S600 review.

That is why I chose to use different wording this time — I appreciate your understanding.



Also, I will try to avoid using “No Comment” in future reviews.

The reviews I post on ASR are translations of my original Korean reviews from my personal website, and in that context “No Comment” was something my regular readers were familiar with.

I realize this may have come across as self-centered here, and I apologize for that.

I’ll keep thinking about how to make my reviews more approachable to a wider range of readers.

No, Sir:

THANK YOU for posting a truly useful and detailed report on crap to avoid! Since I started reading Stereophile at ~12, I gradually learned what all John Atkinson's measurement graphs meant and those measurements along with any I could glean eventually brought me to my current heavenly sounding system. AND I couldn't have good without measuring the bad too!

Please disregard any rude comments, the interweb is a BIG place.

Pic not related

 

[Ageve]

Thanks for the review. Always interesting to see even though the speaker is, well, less than stellar.

I think it's just called a powered speaker btw.

It would be interesting to see how it performs with a crossover.

 

[MediumRare]

Thank you for the thoughtful comment.

First, “Active–Passive” here refers to what is widely known as a Master–Slave configuration.

Since I am not a native English speaker and my cultural understanding of Western contexts is limited, I unintentionally caused discomfort to someone in a previous AIYIMA S600 review.

That is why I chose to use different wording this time — I appreciate your understanding.



Also, I will try to avoid using “No Comment” in future reviews.

The reviews I post on ASR are translations of my original Korean reviews from my personal website, and in that context “No Comment” was something my regular readers were familiar with.

I realize this may have come across as self-centered here, and I apologize for that.

I’ll keep thinking about how to make my reviews more approachable to a wider range of readers.

Thank you very kindly. Please don’t worry about the terminology dust-up. While better terms are needed, there are no accepted standard alternatives. I’m happy to be informed of a manufacturer who has used an elegant substitute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master–slave_(technology)

 

[SuicideSquid]

Looked at the FR and thought "that's actually not so bad for a $100 speaker, that hole at 6khz is probably narrow enough not to be noticeable"

Then I saw the rest of the measurements. Ouch.

 

[respice finem]

Looked at the FR and thought "that's actually not so bad for a $100 speaker, that hole at 6khz is probably narrow enough not to be noticeable"

Then I saw the rest of the measurements. Ouch.

This. A pair is $200 - and, for 50 € more (at least in the EU) you can get a pair of JBL 305P Mk2...

'JBL LSR305P MKii and Control 1 Pro Monitors Review'

Jan 10, 2020

This is a review and detailed measurements of the JBL 305P Mark ii powered studio monitor and Control 1 Pro budget passive monitor. I purchased the 305P Pro Mark ii when it first came out and it currently sells for US $147.50 from Amazon including Prime shipping. This is the price for one so you need to double that for stereo setup. The Control 1 Pro came with my Klippel NFS speaker measurement system. It is only sold through Pro channel and costs US $164 for a pair.

The 305P Mark ii has good heft and feel to it for a budget priced monitor:

Back panel...

• amirm
• Replies: 755
• Forum: Speaker Reviews, Measurements and Discussion

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