Alesis M1-Active MkII Main / Stereo Speaker

Bought these used and have always been impressed with the sound clarity.  They seem better than a pair of old paradigms and a pair of klipsch kg.5s that I have.  Both in terms of sound quality and looks. 

I did, however, turn them up too loud and blew both woofers.  I was surprised considering I didn't hear any distortion before they blew.  The cost to replace the cones was about $75 each.  The tweeters remained undamaged.

Despite the sound quality it would be nice to have a bit more low end bass response.  Of course, this can be partly achieved using an equalizer but you have to be careful not to cause distortion or blow the woofers.  I have heard better bass out of cheap computer speakers unfortunately.

You absolutely have to have a sound card with a full range equalizer or mixing board to get any kind of decent "listening" sound out of these.  Otherwise they're just too darn flat.  However, if you're a professional (I'm not) I guess that's what you want.

Lastly, it's pretty damn awkward to have to turn each speaker off manually from the back.  One would think they'd go into a stand by mode or, at the very least, have buttons on the front.  Plus, the volume knobs on the back are difficult to set equally on each speaker.  I just turn them up all the way and control the volume with the mixer software for my sound card, but I always wonder if they're turned up too high since they heat up pretty good.