I’ve used iLoud Micros before, and I was blown away by the sound quality. Sure, they’re not super bass-heavy, but they extend low enough that you can still work on your mixes. The focus is more on the mids, and as one of the producers I follow once said, “If you get your mid-range nailed down, the rest of your mix will fall into place.” I still highly recommend those monitors, especially if you have a smaller workspace and don’t have the room for a bigger set. So when I got these, I had high expectations for the sound I would get from them. And I was not disappointed! Small, but impressive, in both cases! One thing I should mention is that I haven’t set them up with the Automatic Room Correction feature yet. So this is just the sound straight out of the box. One thing I will say right off the bat is that these are not meant to be blasted at full volume. If you do, the sound will start to distort. These are nearfields after all, which means they are designed to be listened to at close range, typically within a meter or two. The idea is that you are hearing the speaker directly before the room has much chance to color the sound. If you like it loud, get bigger monitors. Not that these don’t have a respectable volume level; you just can’t push them as hard as you can with other monitors. If you need deeper sound, invest in a sub; these do have an 80Hz LFE setting for subwoofer integration, which I will explain shortly. Speaking of frequencies, let me break down some of the specs in plain terms for those who are new to this. These have a range of 50Hz to 24kHz (±2dB). That is the range of sounds these speakers can reproduce accurately. The ±2dB part means the volume stays within 2 decibels of flat across that whole range, so nothing is dramatically louder or quieter than anything else. In practical terms, what you hear is a pretty honest, even picture of your audio. The lower number covers the bass end, the higher number covers the high end. For reference, a kick drum sits around 60 to 100Hz, vocals typically live between 300Hz and 3kHz, and the very top shimmer of a hi-hat is up around 10 to 15kHz. So these monitors are covering all of that and then some. They are 100 watts each, powered by 2 class D amplifiers. Class D is a type of amplifier design that is very efficient with power, meaning it generates very little heat and wastes very little energy compared to older amplifier types. That is why you can have 100 watts in a speaker this small without it needing a big cooling system or a heavy chassis. Of that 100 watts, 70 goes to the midwoofers and 30 goes to the tweeter. This is called bi-amping, meaning each driver has its own dedicated amplifier rather than sharing one. The benefit is that each driver gets exactly the power it needs, and they do not interfere with each other, which results in a cleaner and more accurate sound. You can extend the low end down to 40Hz via the LFE button on the back, though at that point you are mostly just enhancing the deep bass rather than getting a flat response down there. Now, the crossover. Each of these speakers has two sets of drivers: the midwoofers, which handle the lows and mids, and the tweeter, which handles the highs. A crossover is essentially a built-in traffic director. It splits the audio signal and sends the low frequencies to the woofers and the high frequencies to the tweeter. You do this because no single driver can cover the full range of human hearing accurately on its own. The crossover frequency is the point where that handoff happens. On these monitors, that point is 3.1kHz, which means everything below 3.1kHz goes to the woofers and everything above goes to the tweeter. The crossover type here is called linear phase variable, which is a fancy way of saying the handoff is very clean and the two drivers stay in time with each other, so you do not get a blurry or unnatural sound around that crossover region. That matters a lot when you are mixing and need to trust what you hear. The bass reflex port you will feel at the top of the back panel is a tuned opening in the cabinet. Rather than sealing all the air inside the enclosure, the port lets some of it escape in a controlled way, which extends and reinforces the bass response. Without it, the low end would drop off much sooner. It is why these can reach down to 50Hz despite being physically small speakers. Maximum sound pressure level is 103dB. SPL, or sound pressure level, is basically a measurement of how loud a speaker can get, measured in decibels. To give you a sense of scale, a normal conversation is around 60dB, heavy traffic is around 85dB, and a live concert is typically around 110dB. So 103dB from a compact nearfield monitor is genuinely impressive. For reference, most professional mixing happens somewhere between 70 and 85dB SPL. You do not need to crank these to mix on them, and honestly you should not. Your ears will thank you and your mixes will be better for it. I like how the drivers are arranged with the 1-inch silk-dome tweeter in the middle and the polypropylene 3.5-inch midwoofers flanking it above and below. This is a design layout known as D’Appolito, or MTM, which stands for Midwoofer-Tweeter-Midwoofer. By centering the tweeter symmetrically between the two woofers, the high frequencies arrive at your ears from a single focused point rather than from an offset position. At close listening distances, which is exactly the nearfield context these speakers are built for, even a small offset in driver placement can cause the high end to reach your ears with a slight imbalance, making the stereo image feel imprecise or like the sound is coming from a slightly wrong direction. The MTM layout eliminates that. The sound is detailed and accurate, and the soundstage is clear and not exaggerated. You can hear your mixes with good precision. You do have the option to flip these into a horizontal orientation in the rare cases that you would need to. They also do come with TPU bases you can set them on when you need them in the horizontal orientation. It’s not recommended in normal use, as it does change the overall sound characteristic. These monitors come with detachable desktop tilting stands that let you adjust the angle up to 20 degrees. You can also mount them on threaded stands. Just a heads up, these are the standard European threads, which is 3/8 inch with 16 threads per inch (TPI). So, you might need to get mic stand thread converters to convert the stands from the American standard of 5/8 inch with 27 TPI to the European ones, depending on what brand your stands are. A quick way to tell which thread your stand uses is to check whether the American 5/8 inch thread feels loose or will not seat properly in the monitor’s mount. If it does, you need a converter. With the monitor facing you, on the front, you’ll feel three metal grills. The two mid-woofers and the tweeter in the middle. There’s a row of five buttons below the reflex port at the top of the monitor on the back. From left to right, they’re Sens (Sensitivity), Cal (Calibration), HF (High Frequency), LF (Low Frequency), and LFE (Low Frequency Extension). Below that, there’s a volume knob for adjusting your input source from -12 to 0dB, then a combi jack that accepts either a male XLR cable or a balanced quarter-inch male TRS cable. A quick word on cables, since it matters here. Balanced connections, which is what XLR and TRS cables carry, use three conductors to send the audio signal in a way that cancels out any electrical interference picked up along the way. Unbalanced connections, which is what a standard TS cable carries, only use two conductors and do not have that interference rejection. In a home studio you might not notice much difference over short cable runs, but TRS and XLR will always give you a cleaner signal, especially if your cables are running near power sources or other electronics. The monitor does accept unbalanced TS cables, but TRS is the better choice if you have it. Below the input is an eighth-inch female input for connecting the included iLoud MTM calibration microphone for the Automatic Room Correction feature. To the left of that is a female standard USB B connection for maintenance and firmware updates. Finally, below that is the three-prong female IEC (AC power) socket, and to its left is the power button (in means on, out means off). IEC stands for International Electrotechnical Commission, and the IEC socket is simply the standard three-prong connection you will find on most professional audio equipment worldwide. It is the same type of socket you see on desktop computers and a lot of studio gear. Underneath the monitor are two female thread screws for mounting. Both are for mounting to mic or speaker stands, and the back one is exclusively where you’d mount the included desktop tilting stands. Like I said before, you can adjust the monitor with these stands up to 20 degrees, and you do that by screwing on the stand and pushing the monitor forward so it’s at an angle. A quick word about the Cal, HF, LF, and LFE buttons on your new speakers. When you press them, they’ll step through each setting. For example, if you use the LFE button to adjust the low frequency extension, it’ll start at 50Hz by default and then go to 40, back to 50, then 60, then 80, back to 60, then 50, and finally back to 40. This is also what that subwoofer integration setting I mentioned earlier is for. When you set LFE to 80Hz, you are telling the monitors to roll off their own bass at that point so a subwoofer can take over from there, keeping everything clean and avoiding overlap between the two. The LF and HF buttons control what are called shelf EQs. A shelf EQ boosts or cuts everything above or below a set frequency, like a shelf that raises or lowers an entire section of the frequency spectrum rather than a narrow band. The LF button adjusts a low shelf at 100Hz from its default of 0 to plus 2, then back to 0, then minus 3, and finally back to 0. The HF button adjusts a high shelf at 8kHz from its default of 0 to plus 2, then back to 0, then minus 3, and finally back to 0. The Cal button switches between three modes: flat, which is the speaker with no room correction applied; desktop, which applies a curve of minus 4dB at 160Hz and plus 1dB at 1.8kHz to compensate for the way a desk surface reflects sound back at you and muddies the low mids; and calibration, which applies your custom ARC room correction. If you are using these on a desk without ARC set up yet, desktop mode is worth trying as a starting point. Finally, the Sens button switches between +4dBu and -10dBV. A decibel, or dB, is a unit for measuring signal levels. The u in dBu and the V in dBV just tell you what reference point the measurement is relative to, since there are different standards used in different contexts. What matters practically is that professional gear like audio interfaces, mixers, and studio equipment typically runs at +4dBu, which is a hotter signal level, while consumer gear like phones, laptops, and hi-fi equipment runs at -10dBV, which is a quieter signal level. Setting the wrong one means your input will either be too loud and clip, or too quiet with the gain cranked. If you are plugging in from an audio interface, use +4dBu. If you are plugging in from a phone or a laptop headphone output, use -10dBV. The monitors will remember all of these settings, so when you power them off or unplug them for a while, they’ll be ready to go with your last configuration. Also, remember that these adjustments are for each individual monitor, so if you make a change on one, you’ll need to make the same change on the other. All of these settings are managed through what is called DSP, or digital signal processing. Rather than using physical electronic components like capacitors and resistors to shape the sound the way older speakers did, these monitors do all of that work inside a chip using mathematics. That is how they can fit crossovers, EQ, time alignment, and room correction into a cabinet this small. It is also why the settings are so precise and repeatable. By the way, this info was written in 2023, when I first got them. Now, almost two years later, I’ve used the ARC feature. I’ve seen online reviews that say the soundstage gets much better when you set it up and let it calibrate. When you’re done listening to them in their default state, turn on ARC to make your listening experience even better. It makes the sound more focused and detailed. ARC has been my default ever since I started using it. I have used ARC in two different rooms at this point, and man, it really does make a difference. To set it up, you’d mount the included microphone on a stand at head level of where you’ll be working. The idea is to make a triangle from your speakers, to your ears. Plug in the microphone using the eighth inch connector in the back of one of them, then you hold down the cal button for a couple seconds on the same monitor, then get out of the room as fast as you can, because in five seconds, loud sweeping tones will play, and you don’t want to be in there for that. Plus, you don’t want to color the accuracy of the calibration. Then, once that one is done, repeat for the other side. Finally, get ready to enter a more detailed world. These do come with optional software called X-Monitor that you can buy, but unfortunately it is not accessible under VoiceOver. This software is supposed to emulate different types of speakers, so you can reference your mixes on different types of monitors, phone speakers, car speakers, TV speakers, things of that nature. It also allows you to save multiple measurements for the room correction feature. If accessibility ever improves on that front, I’ll post an update. On a final note, and for full transparency, they also have MKII versions of these speakers, which came out in 2024. The MKII is a meaningful upgrade rather than just a revision. The frequency response extends to 48Hz to 28kHz at ±2dB, which is the flat, reliable mixing range. It can dig a little deeper than that, reaching 36Hz at -10dB, but at that point the response is rolling off significantly so you would not want to rely on it for critical mixing decisions. For comparison, the MKI goes to 50Hz at ±2dB and 40Hz at -6dB uncalibrated, or -3dB when calibrated. The DSP processing power is doubled and runs at 96kHz instead of 48kHz, the crossover moves slightly from 3.1kHz to 2.8kHz, and the maximum SPL jumps from 103dB to 110.5dB. That SPL increase is worth noting: roughly 7dB more headroom means these can go significantly louder before running out of steam, which matters if you ever use them away from a desktop context, like for a small session or reference playback. The drivers are redesigned with lighter, stiffer materials for better midrange clarity. Horizontal dispersion is also improved, giving you a wider sweet spot. The MKII ships with an ARC measurement microphone included in the pair version, and it supports X-Monitor software at no extra cost, which has since been superseded by IK’s new ARC X platform, a free upgrade for registered MKII owners as of late 2025. IK also released a companion subwoofer in late 2025 called the iLoud Sub, which pairs well with the MKII. It is a compact unit with a 6.5-inch aluminium driver and a pair of passive radiators, putting out 160 watts RMS and reaching down to 25Hz. What makes it particularly interesting is that it runs ARC X onboard, so it can calibrate not just itself but also any connected monitors at the same time, regardless of brand. The crossover frequency is adjustable between 50 and 150Hz, so it integrates cleanly with the MTM MKII’s LFE setting. It is worth noting that IK themselves suggest the MKII rather than the MKI as the better pairing for the sub, since the MKI’s lower SPL ceiling can become a limiting factor at higher volumes. The iLoud Sub retails at $599 and includes an ARC measurement microphone. If you are building a complete iLoud MKII setup and want proper low end for modern music production, it is a natural addition. The MKII also comes in white if that matters to you. If you’re buying new today, the MKII is the one to get. If you already have the MKI, they’re still excellent speakers and nothing here should make you feel like you’re missing out. I hope this helps! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Thanks for reading!