Review on 🔊 Enhance Your Audio Experience with Monoprice 2 Way In-Wall Speakers - 6.5 Inch (Pair) - Caliber Slim Series by Jason Vigil

I've been a Monoprice customer for a long time. Your products have always been well-regarded and reliable, so I took a chance and bought two pairs of these 8 inch in-ceiling speakers. The Monoprice website has a large number of 4 and 5 star reviews, with absolutely no 0 to 3 star reviews. The backstory of the configuration this review is based on, two speakers went into an 8 foot, carpeted, 225 square foot bedroom ceiling and the other two went into a 77 square foot bathroom with a tiled/stucco vaulted ceiling. The iPod handles a large number of well-encoded, high-bitrate MP3 files that look familiar from my reference system. However, when tested, they were connected to my old Onkyo receiver, which was connected to a "big" speaker. I tested the speakers in a target environment first before cutting holes in the ceiling and I'm glad I did. nonetheless, they have been retracted (harsh treble potential) and should be used outdoors without the aid of front-rear driver separation (no low frequency support). I wasn't expecting a ton of bass below 200Hz outdoors. I didn't expect a perfectly balanced and blended sound from a two-way speaker between woofer and tweeter. However, I was expecting a fairly "acceptable" sound, even straight out of the box. Unfortunately that didn't happen, and I'm not an audio snob. I endorse a speaker if it sounds reasonable for its price. My first impression of these speakers was not very good. You could easily convince me that I'm listening to a factory speaker from a budget car stereo. There was a lot of pressure around the top of the bass vocal range, a wide valley between that range and where the tweeter's frequency response started to take over, and another gap above where the tweeter rolled off. I still have pretty good hearing (thank goodness) and am still sensitive to higher frequencies. There was simply no airiness in the high frequencies and definitely no blending of the two components of the speaker. Reducing the crossover slope from -12dB to -6dB helped offset some of the midrange emptiness, but didn't bring it back to average for a midrange. In addition, the top end was quite stiff. This may not be a fair claim considering the speakers were brand new with no break-in period, but I expected better. I was expecting 3.5-4 initial stats based on hundreds of 5 star reviews for this product. I give these speakers 2 stars for the time being, because they just don't convince me, even considering their price range. I would never say that a more expensive speaker sounds better just because of its price. I am open minded and strive to provide quality reviews so that others can make better purchasing decisions. I'll break them down over a few days and re-evaluate objectively, but will send them back and spend a little more next time if the results don't change significantly. As the review is titled, I really wanted it that way. Monoprice has never let me down and I will continue to look to them as a trusted AV equipment supplier. Let's hope they fix the kinks with this speaker wire. - Mike.