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| | Product Details | | Product Length: | 25.25 inches | | Product Width: | 16.5 inches | | Product Height: | 19.5 inches | | Product Weight: | 54.3 pounds | | Package Length: | 25.6 inches | | Package Width: | 20.0 inches | | Package Height: | 16.7 inches | | Package Weight: | 55.8 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 26 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 26 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
81 of 82 found the following review helpful:
 Great product - but high failure rate Feb 15, 2009
By J. Pankow
I picked up a pair of BX8a Deluxe speakers on Amazon for a great price. I did some reading online and read about speakers randomly dying after purchase, but the price was just too good and I decided to roll the dice.
Well, 2 months in, my right speaker went bad and never would work properly again. When I would turn it on, the woofer would pop, go full throw, and emit a 60Hz hum. Very bad stuff. I looked at my return / repair options and found I had to return them to M-Audio to get it repaired.
I looked at the M-Audio forums and read quite a bit more about M-Audio speakers failing, and decided I'd take my chances and crack open the speaker to see if I could figure out what was wrong instead of suffering through a potentially long and painful RMA cycle.
3 hours later I had discovered the problem: a short circuit on the main amplifier board, underneath the tweeter's power amplifier chip. The amp is a TDA2052 made by STMicroelectronics. You can look at the datasheet here: http://www.st.com/stonline/products/literature/ds/1585.pdf
The short was between pins 4 and 6 of this chip, so it was connecting the negative power supply voltage to the audio input pin on both the tweeter and woofer amplifier - very bad! This explains why I could hear 60Hz power line noise on the speaker every time I turned it on.
I was about to start probing each pin on the TDA2052 to see if I could figure out what wire on the circuit board had a problem when I discovered the short between pins 4 and 6. I carefully removed the solder flux and other debris between the two solder pads and plugged the circuit board in, and the problem was gone. You can see a picture of my circuit board and the location of the short here: http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/3357/img0054un5.jpg
As to why the short-circuit suddenly occurred 2 months after purchase - I can only speculate. One possibility is the dreaded "tin whiskers" problem that has been plaguing electronics manufacturers for years. You can read about it here: http://nepp.nasa.gov/WHISKER/
Since lot's of people are reporting random failures of these speakers, this is a possibility. There are a couple ways to remedy this, but they all involve tweaking the manufacturing process of the circuit board, and this might not be an option because it would impact the cost and profit margin on these speakers. The other possibility is that the assembly quality control is not good enough on these circuit boards and they are not adequately stress tested / verified before being put into the finished product. Again there is a cost issue and I'm just speculating.
Overall I must say the speakers are an excellent value for the price. The speaker box construction is solid, the speakers are decent, and the electrical design is good enough - simple and effective. I am impressed with this product, and it is unfortunate such a great product is subject to such a high failure rate from what looks like a manufacturing/quality issue and not a design problem. I just hope M-Audio can remedy the issues long term as I'd like to see them continue to develop quality products.
19 of 19 found the following review helpful:
Good sound on a budget Sep 07, 2008
By Kevin McMurtrie
I looked at many options for covering a 40Hz to 20KHz range in a home studio. That's the frequency response of the PA equipment I'm producing MIDIs for. All things considered, the Studiophile BX8a met those needs at the best price. There's no subwoofer to buy. This one box is it.
The frequency response is very smooth but not reaching as low as I'd like. Bass clarity is moderately good, perhaps hampered by the ports facing my wall. The rest of the frequency response has excellent clarity. I can now hear mixing and EQ problems that I was missing before. It helps get the production right the first time.
I have only a few gripes. The power and gain controls are in back where they're difficult to reach on such a deep speaker. There's no protective cover for these very fragile, close-range speakers. Both speakers have some background buzz regardless of gain and input.
14 of 14 found the following review helpful:
 Great Sound - While They Worked Feb 27, 2009
By Michael D. Blair
These sounded great for the first day but then one of the speakers developed a crackling sound - sounded like it was coming from the high frequency speaker - I e-mailed M-audio to get their support and to this day (e-mail sent 3 weeks ago) have not heard from them. Ended up sending them back to Amazon for refund. Amazon was fantastic in their support - credit came quickly.
10 of 10 found the following review helpful:
Good value for the $$ - but high failure rate Mar 24, 2009
By Bernard Reagan
I ordered the 8a after living with the M-Audio AV40 monitors and loving the sound, but wanting 'upsize' it with a bit more bass. These speakers deliver the bass in spades, but minus the directionless and china-rattling vibration that accompanies sub-woofers. I've only had them a few days, but even not fully broken in they sound great. I'm hesitant to award 5 stars only because others have reported reliability issues, so I'll report back in a few weeks and amend this review appropriately.
After waiting a few days for break-in, I started trying to identify the reason the sound seemed off-center, even with careful setup measurements. Turned out no upper frequencies were coming from one speaker. Could have been the HF amp, crossover, or a blown tweet. I hated having to return, but Amazon gets a gold star for making it easy to get a quick refund. Very rare these days
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
High failure rate, evasive warranty repair Sep 08, 2011
By rmbunxs
Read this and other reviews before buying anything (but specifically these monitors) from M Audio.
They look attractive and sound great, but others cite a high failure rate (now including myself).
Mine are less than 9 months old and are malfunctioning. The parent company of M-Audio, AVID Audio, is difficult to reach for warranty repair. It took me 5 web-pages to get a phone number (not toll free). I called that number and discovered there is no option to speak with a person unless you have a mysterious code. I then called the original merchant. They were not surprised I was having trouble getting ahold of AVID, but after hammering them a bit, they reluctantly gave me a number that got me through to a real, live person. The AVID person was obviously not happy that I had successfully circumvented their "customer screening process", but they've kindly agreed to "take a look" at the defective monitors.
I must ship the 60 lb. package to them at my own expense.
Depending how much that will cost, I may just cut my losses and get some reliable monitors from a company that stands behind their product.
The whole experience smacks of a company building an inferior product and actively attempting to evade its warranty promises.
I would recommend looking at another manufacturer.
See all 26 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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