20 Most Recent Mackie MR5 MR5 Reference Monitor Questions & Answers

Check the input level. Sounds like the signal is being clipped.

If there was no signal going through them, they shoulldn't overheat. However, if while they were on the AC line had a power surge, it's possible it took them out. It's time for the repair shop to see what's up.

Sound like either the crossover or the driver has blown or, if you're lucky there is a loose connection internally if you have only checked external connections.

It seems likely that the pot (volume control) is dirty. with a slider you can normally get fluid down the side of the knob, your's is a rotary control and you sometimes can do it round the shaft of the pot but more often have to spray it in where the connections go into the pot. You'll need some contact cleaner spray which you can get online or from an electronics store, get it onto the pot track and then take the pot to each end of its travel a few times, this'll probably sort it out until next time. If you're taking it apart it might be worth just getting a new and better pot and soldering that in if you are hand with a soldering iron. The ones in Mackies nowdays are pretty sh1t.

IF that speaker runs noticeably hotter than the other channel speaker, you need to take it to an authorized repair center. Your monitors are apparently active types, so unless you are a trained audio technician, you should refer service to the pros. Apparently, the problem is in one of the power amplifiers in the affected monitor.

try hooking headphones to the output and see if the crackling is still there.

then, try it with the speakers, at a lower computer voume level and higher speaker volume level. perhaps the headphone output is too loud and distorting in the speaker inputs.

Swap speakers to find if the problem is the speaker. If the problem follows the speaker it will require repairing.

Check for a defect on the solo switch. The rude lights when ANY solo is on. Sometimes the switches stick mechanically and don't fully come up.

Forst thing is to put a known signal into the speakers, say from a CD recorder to isolate a possible mixer or other source being marginal.

If the sound is still bad, verify that your volume settings are reasonable.

DO NOT crank the gain on these speakers full and then throttle the signal to them as that cause poor signal-to-noise ratio.

If you have driven these speakers very hard (these are only INTENDED for lower level monitoring within the engineer's booth), you MAY have damaged the speakers. It htat case, repair will be necessary.

Try to determine if the lows or highs or both are bad sounding.

These parts can be ovtained directly from Mackie. Please call them and have both the model number and serial number of the MR5. There are differences sometimes in the "runs" which use different actual speaker drivers. having the serial number will insure that you get the proper replacement driver.

You can locate a service center here:

http://www.mackie.com/scripts/service_centers/search.asp

Dan

The woofer would only blow if it was overloaded with too much signal. The common cause of this connecting a speaker of lower power than the amp or ohms than it. The simple way to cut out rumble is at the amp by reducing the bass, however most amps will cut all the bass and not what you want. Another way is a filter designed to cutt bass or low sounds. However your best bet is to use a Graphic Equalizer to control the tone, most have a 31khz control which will cutt the rumble you describe, but keep the wanted bass sound.

I would contact Mackie and see what they say. The MR5 is already protected internally by the built in amplifier circuitry as far as I know.They can be reached here:http://www.mackie.com/support/index.html

First thing is to run a known signal from a simple device like a small CD player to verify the problem.

If these are driven from a mixer, the EQ could be set to kill the highs.

Assuming it isn, something simple like an EQ setting, probably the units will have to be serviced. I know you would already have checked the EQ on the back of these things as a first step.

Remember to ALWAYS power these from the same source as the devices connected to them to avoid ground loops and damage.

Supersonic feedback can fry these. Oscillations higher pitch than you can hear can put too much power into the tweeters of these.