Swissonic ASM5

- Unboxing...

I bought these speakers as they were extremely well priced for their on-paper specifications and were also of the perfect size to act as compact rear-surrounds for my 4.0 setup.

Upon receiving the speakers, I was pleasantly surprised by the abundance and quality of the packaging. The speakers and their box were contained within another box, leaving the important packaging in perfect condition which is always nice to see when trying out a new product.

The speakers come with the standard IEC (kettle lead) cables for connecting to the mains, a pack of four adhesive-backed pads for the bottom of each speaker and a concise instruction/quick-start manual.

When taking the speakers from their packaging, I was pleasantly surprised by their build. They have quite a substantial weight to them for their size and price, and just feel solid to hold. While this may not affect the sound all that much, it's something I like in a monitor.

- Now, on to the speakers' performance...

So... ?170 for a pair of active monitors - can't expect a whole lot, can you?
Don't be fooled; they don't sound great for a speaker of this size, but they sound great for the price. When compared to the likes of the JBL LSR 305s, they're a fair bit behind in almost all aspects, but they are almost HALF the price.

The imaging is pretty decent and when they begin to get loud, the bottom end starts to roll in and provides a nice, full sound for such a speaker.
The highs, I'll admit, lack quite a bit of sparkle, but some may prefer the more subdued signature.
The minds are where they really do shine though. Vocals and such sound great through these monitors, especially in acoustic tracks and the likes. They do tend to fall slightly short during more busy sections of a track or in genres such as Drum & Bass, PSY-trance, etc.

- The cons - they gotta come some time...

Now this... this annoyed me. So I got the speakers up and running and I was playing with the back panels. The controls are all there - HF trim, low cutoff, acoustic space - even the IO is great - balanced XLR and TRS along with RCA.

The volume pots though. Don't get me started. One of them
felt nice; it was weighty and responsive - worked a treat. The
power switch on that monitor also had a nice, heavy click to
it.
The other monitor was a different story, however. The power
switch was light and felt slightly flimsy which I can get by, but the volume pot just felt like what I did with it barely corresponded with what I heard. It was also light and flimsy feeling, making it hard to apply any sort of fine adjustment without some frustration.

- The conclusion...

All of that said, bear in mind that I'm evaluating these speakers at their price which is incredibly good for what you're getting. Once you have them set up and you no longer have to worry about playing with inconsistant volume knobs, then they're great.
If you need a low-cost pair of very compact speakers, these are a great choice and throw out enough waves to sound a hell of a lot larger than they are.

I won't be sending them back, anyway!

I bought them a couple of weeks ago for composing work mainly as the room is pretty small, the monitors should have the proper size as well and decided to go with 5", and this pair seamed like a good choice for a couple of reasons:
price point - very affordable, you don't don't have to break the bank to get them.
sound - they sound very similar to Yamaha's HS5 at lower price. They have a simmilar mid-range scoop and tight bass which makes them very good in working with mid focused instruments, voice and so on.

Cons: I wish there was a bass boost knob. Also, I did a couple of measurements using RoomEQWizard to test the bass roll of knob and from frequency response the impact of that knob is minimal.

Overall I recommend this product to anyone who starts working in studio or on studio stuff and have a small room like myself. Comparing to other 5" monitors, these have cleaner mids and the highs are more balanced.

They're definitely not the best monitors, or even the best monitors of their category, but for this price point, they punch way above their price. If you're on a budget, get these, if not, I'd get these in a single situation. If you have a small studio, these will still sound okay backed up against a wall. As for finding flaws, the biggest one I can think of is the volume pots. They're so bad it's laughable, got me wishing they had none. But as long as you don't touch them after setting them up, you should be ok.