Mackie CR3-X 3 inch Multimedia Monitors Reviews

These monitors are the right price and work perfect in my bedroom for mixing music at my console.

Quite simply the best $ I ever spent on anything audio/musical.

Worth every penny.

I am using these as monitors for my Zoom L20. Great sound and I can use them when portable.

They are a great price for how nice of sound quality that you get, and 50W for a bedroom studio is plenty of headroom when you add the sub. Can't beat Mackie

These are awesome

Wow... Sweetwater comes through again with incredible sales, service, and shipping! I have to give a huge THANK YOU to Steven Graham (my sales engineer), as we were talking about my music room with 17 instruments, my Tascam small 8 track MTR, the DP-03SD, and how I was looking for a nice basic pair of studio monitors that would work with it. I don't like using a pair of Sennheiser headphones to listen to playback and rough mixes. Steven Graham suggested the Mackie CR3-X powered monitors. They are rated at 25 watts, but yet, small and compact. The sound is amazing from these! Thank you, thank you...

2 years later and they still sound amazing. 10/10 recommend!

Bought the Mackie monitors to act as the speakers for my new computer system. When they arrived they were a bit small overall than I thought they would be, which when using these as computer speakers works out very well. They look great, classic Mackie feel to the look and design. I was a bit disappointed that they didn't come with some kind of dust cover, grate to put of speaker, but if you very careful you won't have to worry about damaging them, but be very careful when handling and setting them up as they the cones etc could be easily damaged and/or punctured.

Once I got them plug in and set up it was time to test. Fired up the computer and played some 70's R&B type music, Al Green, Hall & Oates etc to test and WOW these tiny speakers/monitors a HUGE punch! Incredibly impressed with the sound, pretty blown away by how crisp and loud they are. Had them up 25-30% and they were pumping out massive sound for the size even at that relatively low percentage.

I would highley recommed these to anything looking for a great computer speaker system for a great value.

I bought these with the "Bonus Bucks" from my last guitar purchase. I use them with a multi-effects pedal to replace a bedroom amp. As strange as it is to be "amp-less", it is a great setup for home practice, playing with backup tracks, and recording. The monitors perform exactly as expected and suit my purposes perfectly.

These monitors have surprisingly good depth and tone, for such a compact package. They will stand alongside many larger monitors and hold their own. Very pleased !!!

Ordered my speakers and literally the next day they were at my doorstep. The quality and sound from them are top notch. If I ever need speakers again I will come here. On top of that David called and checked on the package and made sure everything was fine. If I could give 6 stars I would.

These speakers are perfect. Great sounding speakers for the size and the price.

Great quality in electronics and sound, and the size is not much of a factor in the bass/mid response. I'm impressed and pleased.

I'd been looking to add some additional small monitors to my DAW workstation, and when I saw these on-sale at this rock bottom price it was an instant "Add to Cart"!

They're the perfect compliment to my Mackie CR5BT's, which have also performed flawlessly for some 4 years now. I love powered monitors and nowadays avoid passive along with an external amp, one less thing to deal with.

All four are connected to my Behringer UMC1820 interface using balanced Hosa REAN cables (highly recommended) and the sound is crystal clear without a hint of line noise. Using an oscillator plugin in REAPER, my analyzer reads them nearly flat from roughly 500Hz-4kHz, which is about what I would expect from monitors of this size.

For now, they're sitting on decoupler pads but will eventually be moved to wall brackets along with the CRBT5's. Just a personal preference, since it accommodates much greater directional adjustability.

I'm totally sold on Mackie products, every one I've ever purchased has been absolutely excellent.

I bought the Mackie CR3-X monitor speakers because I love Mackie products. I bought them from Sweetwater because they are a better store than any other music store I've been in. I will always buy from Sweetwater because of their great products, great professionalism, and great prices. Thank you so much.

I'm so glad I grabbed these. I already had the Mackie CR-X BT Sub but I was using a much larger pair of desktop speakers, which had a much larger footprint. I needed something smaller and thought I would give these as try. They sound great! I can hear all the top end sizzle and surprisingly, they don't shy away from low end. I am using the power sub sibling in a 2.1 setup and they all work great together. I'm listening to them now as I type this ;). Thanks to Mark Magdich (my favorite sales engineer) for taking care of me.

I needed a desktop solution for podcast editing. These CR3's are simply magnificent. They're the right size, and the sound quality is magnificent. Good clarity. Excellent range. Packs a wallop at 50W of power even before I hooked them up to an audio interface. I think you can't go wrong with these.

Not bad for 50 watts. Has a nice thump. Price is great. Will use these for band rehearsals. I run volume about 11 o'clock and the sound fills the room. NICE. Been using Mackie Powered PA Speakers (#SRM 450's) for 25 yrs. Also have 2 Mackie Boards. Don't think you'll be unhappy with these nice looking speakers.

Bit louder than I thought, clean as a whistle sound, might have to move them

Good construction and sound quality. They definitely thump! I use it for casual listening. Mixing and my guitar and bass plugins

Speakers fit in a Husky Toolbox.

Oh my goodness, I underestimated these when I saw how small they were, but these are great to have!! And for the price, it's wonderful. Great quality monitors.

Excellent for my small in home studio.

Nice small speakers for my small setup. Comes with RCA cable that plugs right into the computer. Very good sound for the size, impressed with the bass response.

I've had these speakers for over a year now. They are great for their price point, but if you can spend more I would recommend perhaps another set. They are loud enough for an apartment. There has been no issues with them in the time that I have had them and I jam, record, mix, play video games, I do all the things with them. They are great at their price point.

This work perfectly with my home set up rn, currently running my turntable and laptop through em. Good quality for the price

I bought the Mackie CRX-3's for the small table top recording setup in my living room. They are perfect for this. It's a low volume environment so they have plenty of power with no breakup, good clarity and full range response. The price is a no brainer too and Sweetwater along with my salesman Kevin Samual are the best in the M.I. business!

For such small monitors they sound surprisingly good. Just a good solid pair of monitors at a great price.

Fanatastic,,,, again ,,the professional people at Sweetwater, hook me up again.

Upgraded to these from some gaming speakers. These allow me to hear things that I wasn't like reverb tails on vocals. Great price and small footprint

If anyone travels and needs awesome set of monitors, these are the answer. They work perfectly through headphone port of a irig, ampkit interfaces so you can travel light & get incredible sound!! All youll need is iphone,ipad,etc, interface,Mackie speakers,instrument & ready for mini concert!! Thanks Ryan Wiltermood for excellent reccomendation on these monitors!!!

After getting a 4 inch set of these monitors, I bought the slightly smaller 3 in set and I can hear high notes and really low notes so much better than with stereo speakers. I highly recommend this brand at any size: I plan to get some 6 inch Mackie monitors next.

Good for the price. Decent fidelity at volume. An audible hiss when powered on, sadly.

If you're getting into home recording, podcasting, or just need something affordable at the moment, these monitors are a decent choice. There is a slight ambient hiss. So, depending on what audio is being played through them, it can be very noticeable.

If you're in need of entry-level monitors for your home studio, these are a stellar option at the price point. All features function as advertised, and the sound quality can easily fill a smaller space with room to spare. For those who critique the audible noise heard from the speakers when on but not playing sound, your complaint is not regarding the speaker, but the included wires. If you have aftermarket wires of your own, the issue of subtle hiss becomes a non issue. Even with the supplied wires, the hiss does not distract me unless I'm looking to pick the sound out or if I planned to work within 3 feet or less of the monitors.

I've been using these monitors for my home studio setup for a few months now, and I must say they don't feel like budget products. The build quality is solid, and the monitors feel heavy and substantial.

My biggest complaint would be that they don't come with a balanced line out cable to plug into the back of an interface- you can use the aux cable as well, but I had to buy a seperate line out to free up the headphone jack on my interface. (Focusrite Scarlett 8i8)

Obviously, these are 3 inch speakers- they're not going to blow you away with a massive wall of extra Hi-Fi sound. But for a small studio space, they sound great. They're slightly bassier in their EQ than I would prefer, but I suspect that's an intentional choice on Mackie's part because many smaller budget studios are used for beatmaking or electronic, bass-heavy music, whereas I'm a singer-songwriter.

Bottom line- they're not the best money can buy, but they're the best you can get for this amount of money.

Great option for inexpensive studio monitors. They have good and clear sound.
The only disadvantage is a constant hissing sound.

These are decent speakers but are hampered by a steady hissing noise no matter what volume they are on. For just $ more I strongly recommend the PreSonus Eris E3.5 which sounds great and has absolutely zero background hissing.

These do the job and are good for basic monitoring but not any real mixing. I found they are very bass heavy so my mixes ended up losing bass because I was compensating with the eq to even out the mix.

I powered these on, excited to hear them after they replaced an old pair of buzzy speakers. I was very disappointed by the pronounced hiss that accompanies any audio playback. Once audio stops, the hiss goes away after several seconds. But whenever they detect audio it kicks in and is very noticeable during lower level audio or dialog. Putting the hiss aside, the sound quality is good for budget speakers, so I'm disappointed by the poor quality of the internal electronics. I've also read there are issues with the L/R switch failing. I'll be returning.

The quality of sound the speakers produce is great while the setup is very simple, but is otherwise overshadowed by an annoying hiss sound that is constantly emitted by the speakers, no matter the volume. Very disappointed in this product and recommend looking elsewhere for speakers that are better suited for being close to.

I thought these speakers were alright, but I ended up exchanging them. There was consistent noise terminating from these speakers when listening to music & when they were on with no music playing. It was VERY distracting & I was confident that is was going to interfere with mixing.

I owned the prior version of these speakers and was very happy. They stopped working after about 5 years so I ordered a new set. The new version- which is evident from the green light on the speaker front- has several defects. First, in the old version, you could plug in from the front of the speaker without needing to change the wires in th back. Now, if I want a source different from the base, I have to unplug the wires in the back and remember to plug them back in when done. Second, there is a longer delay in the sound getting from the base to the speaker. Third, the volume settings have been changed and there are less easy ways to keep the music at a low volume but audible. PS- I have nothing bad to say about Sweetwater!

The right-left selector switch in the back is notorious for failing. Mine did.

Liked them at first. But then they stopped turning on. After messing with the power button, they eventually turned back on. I needed to hit it a bunch of times before the LED light lit up. Returning these. Not reliable. I need speakers that just turn on. Not speakers that I need to push the power button a million times unsure if they are going to work or not. Bought Edifiers and they work way better.

I have had these for about two years. One speaker cuts out if the volume is low, and will intermittently come and go. Increasing volume will bring sound back, but not reliably. Turning the volume knob on the speaker usually causes a rough scuffing noise. The speakers themselves are quite noisy - so much constant hiss, especially noticeable at low volumes.

I guess you get what you pay for, but the one side cutting out randomly was just too much for me. I'm going to give them away.

They really feel like old computer speakers from the early 2000s.

The only plus I would give is that they are very small, but the sound is so unreliable, they really are not trustworthy even for what I do - TV picture editor.

Finally replaced them with KRK Rokit 5's which I highly recommend. These KRKs are fantastic.

Less then one year old and only used a hand full of times and the the satellite main 3inch speaker started to distort terribly and cut out and it is totally unusable.