PreSonus R65 6.5 inch Powered Studio Monitor Reviews

Was working with some discontinued ribbon tweeter monitors for over 6 years, got these all set up and instantly could tell my flaws in mixdowns. Spectrum changed and clarity improved. Unstoppable now!

These speakers are awesome I am thankful that clarity and they are loud. great chose

Upgrading from a pair of Eris E5 this was a night and day experience. The high end is super smooth and the AMT tweeter really makes a huge difference.

The bass response is great and the stereo image super wide. Sound clarity is phenomenal.

I was thinking about getting the Sceptre's, but I believe the R65 has a superior bass response and I also did not need a super ultra wide stereo image for the kind of music I make and monitoring situation.

The R65 will keep me satisfied for a long time.

Smaller than I thought they would be, but still powerfull as hell. I also have the Eris 8's and these little monitors sound just as good, while I do still need to get an SPL meter so that I can tune them to my room. I really enjoy listening to these motiors, by themselves and along with the Eris 8's. The sound quality and sonics are amazing.

A superior flat response with a awesome ribbon style tweeter. The clear crisp high and trasnients shine with this pair. I have no complaints yet and don't plan on any.
Another favorite is the auto shut off and auto on when sound is picked up. I love it!!!

I own and play a variety of high-end digital pianos and keyboards for my work which is mainly gigs and some freelance recording. I have had many monitors in my day, but happily settled on beautiful pair of Adam A7X that I use in my home studio for playback on all my recordings. I occasionally hook up a slab to the Adams for practice or creative work when I was not in the mode to wear headphones and just want a bit more sound stage presence. Adams sound great without question.

Now why PreSonus R65 then? I simply wanted a decent pair of studio monitors that were dedicated to my keyboards only so I would not have to swap around my studio to hook up a board. However, I really did not want to drop another $1,500 on Adams. Sweetwater recommended the R65 and I was hesitant going it blindly. But I knew it seemed pretty good to get two R65 monitors for the price of one AX7. The fact that I was already accustom to the Air Motion Transformer (AMT) of the Adams so I thought I would give it a shot.

The results, one word, phenomenal! These sound fantastic with my keyboards - really. Especially my stage piano's acoustic and electric voices. What makes them different, but "better" than the Adams is that R65 has a wider sweet spot. This makes it much more enjoyable to my surprise with the keyboards giving a wider sound stage and ambient presences than my Adams.

So the way I see it is;
- if your need extreme detail - go with the Adams - they will tell you the honest truth on all your playbacks. Arguably one of the best monitors out there.
- if you need a wider sound spectrum that is uncolored and very detailed, yet a bit more dynamic for your electronic instruments then R65 is absolutely a great choice. From my experience, try to hook up a pair of R65s to a Nord Stage/piano, Roland RD-anything, Kawai MP-antyhing, Kurz Forte, Korg, or Yamaha CP4... you be extremely pleased. HUGE bang for the buck.

I jumped on the recent BOGO deal and couldn't be more satisfied. I currently run these (A mon.) and a pair of JBL305 (B's). I had the JBL's for a couple of years and they were excellent in the space I was in prior (10'x9' treated room with desk close to wall). However, I just moved into a larger mixing area (20'x17' semi-treated room, desk out away from walls) and immediately started on a mixing project. The familiarity I had with the monitors in the previous room was completely wiped away. They sounded NOTHING like what I was used to. It was very frustrating. Needless to say I made multiple trips to the car to check mixes. I had to do something about the monitor situation so I started shopping around. I had my eye on these and the Sceptre's but when I got the email about the BOGO deal I got a pair of these R65's. The first thing I did after set-up and burn-in was pull up some reference tracks. It was like someone pulled cotton balls out of my ears or something. The detail was incredible compared to the JBL's. Everything in the tracks seemed to reside in a very specific spot within the eq spectrum. I haven't heard that before. I also noticed for the first time how the "big guys" used multed tracks and eq'd them differently in each section. For example, I noticed the kick drum in one particular song was eq'd completely different in the verse than the chorus. After listening to them for a couple of days with references I pulled up a track I was working on and while I did go to the car to listen I found that I was VERY close to having the track ready for mastering. I still use the JBL's in the A/B set up I now have. They are excellent for midrange -- specifically the low mid. I still am in the process of learning the weaknesses and strengths of these, but I'm in a way better situation than I was -- NO DOUBT. Here's what I can tell you from my experience:

Strengths: Excellent high end detail that sounds amazingly pleasant without being harsh or "boosted" in volume. In other words, the upper frequencies are not louder on these monitors, just more prevalent yet smoother at the same time. There seems to be multiple "slots" of eq sections in the highs rather than a generic large high end band. The lows are accurate, snappy and true. I have a much easier time mixing low end on these monitors than the JBL's -- and without a sub.

Weaknesses: The midrange seems slightly scooped until you get to a certain volume. I mix at pretty low levels and I can only work at higher volume for short periods of time. I get this weird anxiety thing going on at high volumes for longer than 5 or 10 mins. However, once you find a decent level on the louder side the midrange is amazing!!!! It is at that point that I'm making last minute mix bus decisions -- then check it at lower levels.

All in all, really glad I pulled the trigger on these! Hope this was helpful...

Great set of monitors! Crisp and clear high range and well define mid-low range. I would definitely recommend.

I received the usual quality service from my Sweetwater rep and a timely delivery as always.

I unpacked the monitors and placed them in the same place my previous monitors was and the difference was jaw dropping. Clean and clear highs without the brutal harshness of some other speakers. I ran them at unity and with no changes on the back panel and they produced a well rounded and very smooth low end.

I ran my ADAT tracks, Studio one tracks and some masters through and the stereo field was spot on. I closed my eyes and the kick and bass were dead center and each instrument was panned perfectly. I listened to Weather Report's Birdland and Jaco's signature tones were easily defined and sat wonderfully in the mix. The stereo field was incredible.

Like any monitor pair you will have to find the sweet spot and make sure your room is treated to compensate for its shortcomings, but these are well worth the deal.

Bought one and got one free . . .and I am a happy camper

I have been running my project studio for a few years now and have been through my share of monitors. I took advantage of the BOGO deal Sweetwater was running for the Presonus R65 monitors, WOW! I am a fan of AMT tweeters (I have a pair of ADAM F5's as well). I have also been a fan of Presonus having purchased many of their products over the last several years - great company, great customer service! These monitors are no different. Well built, the right amount of features, really excellent sound! I am using these in conjunction with a Presonus Temblor T10 sub and rolling these off at 80Hz and the sub at 100Hz so there's a nice overlap and no gap in response. The AMT tweeters are very articulate without being harsh or brittle, just very natural sounding. The 6.5" woofers are tight and controlled and give you an accurate picture of your mix, and that's what its about! If you're on the fence, just go for them, you won't be disappointed! Oh, and if the blue face plate isn't your thing, they supply a black one as well....

The Presonus R65 AMT Studio Monitors were recommended to me by a trusted friend.
However, I couldn't have imagined, the sonic clarity and transparency of these monitors.
Part of this is because the AMT Tweeter instantly responds to the signal without any delay,
and also, each monitor is powered by a 150 watt amp. These monitors have a lot of headroom.
I noticed that I didn't have to run the level on my Presonus FireStudio, as high as I did, when I was using KRK Monitors.


I listened to projects that I had previously worked, and noticed details that weren't
noticeable in my old monitors. I really like the Acoustic Tuning options on the back of
the monitor, that let you tune the monitors to the room that you are working in.
There is even a power saving option, that turns off the power amps off,
if they haven't received a signal in 30 minutes.

The R65's are high quality professional monitors in an affordable price range.
In a business, where attention to detail is a must,
"The Presonus R65's let you hear what you've been missing!"

These are very nice monitors.... they are a little noisier than my last ones but not that bad at all... they're a lot louder than my last ones too... great set... great definition...

These are great monitors with a fantastic frequency response and a very attractive design. Only complaints: the amps take forever to turn on/wake from energy-saving mode, and they have quite loud hiss without an AC power conditioner (this is completely unnoticeable when signal is running through them, though).

At the sale price, these monitors are a good buy. At full price, a number of other units should be considered. No hiss from the amps which is a good thing. Fairly neutral sounding bit a bit disappointed at this early point with the mids. OK units but given the tough competition these days, nothing special.

PROBABLY THE WORST PRODUCT PRESONUS HAS PUT OUT AS FAR AS SPEAKERS ARE CONCERNED. VERY DISAPPOINTED. I CAN TOTALLY UNDERSTAND WHY THEY'VE BEEN DISCONTINUED.

I picked up a pair of R65's... back in May 2018. The speakers sounded great (flat with an energetic high end), though were a bit noisy even with a power conditioner.
Unfortunately, in May 2020 my right monitor developed a slight buzz when I returned from an overnight trip. Thinking nothing of it I turned the speakers off to investigate more when I had time that evening. Sadly the right monitor would not power on again, despite different cables and outlets. After making sure I was well past any warranty, I took the unit apart to discover almost all of the capacitors on the main board had swollen significantly. It looks like the R65 places a number of critical capacitors in close proximity to transistors or voltage regulators that get warm, causing the capacitors to fail before much time has passed. My guess is that PreSonus is aware of this fault, and is the reason that these fairly expensive speakers only come with a 1 year warranty from the factory.
This has sadly turned me off of PreSonus as a brand, which is really too bad given how much I've enjoyed these speakers while I've had them. If you're happy picking up a speaker that you'll end up replacing in a few years at this price point, go for it! The R65's sound great, I just wish that they'd lasted longer.

I heard good things about these monitors. I heard good things about PreSonus. When I got these monitors, they constantly emitted very noticeable white noise. I troubleshot everything I could think of. It wasn't my signal cables, they still hissed when the XLR was unplugged. It wasn't my power setup, they still hissed when plugged into their own outlet.

What made things worse, however, was PreSonus' sluggish and unhelpful responses to Sweetwater's numerous attempts to help me out. Sweetwater assured me that PreSonus usually responds to their emails within a couple hours. We waited days for PreSonus to respond, and when they did, they asked some trivial questions about my audio setup, and then took more days to respond.

Sweetwater definitely put out the effort, they assured me that this behavior was very uncharacteristic of PreSonus, and I'm willing to believe that. As a customer, however, they failed big time to live up to standards. This might be a unique situation, and you (the reader of this review) may not have this problem should you get these monitors. Rest assured that if you do have this problem, Sweetwater will help you out all they can, even if PreSonus doesn't.

4 stars for sound quality, -1 star for the white noise, -2 stars for PreSonus' lack of customer service, +0.5 stars for Sweetwater trying their best.

If I could leave a zero star review I honestly would. I bought these speakers back in 2017 from sweetwater (great company btw) immediately one of the speakers started fizzling and cracking. Sweetwater replaced this speaker with another. Then a year later the other speaker from the original pair began chipping and phasing out with a red illuminated light. I followed tech support advice and troubleshooting to no avail. This product has a limited warranty for only one year. I expected better results from a mid level monitor with technology that resembles the Adam Ax7. I'm highly disappointed and now stuck with one working monitor and one lemon.