Recording - March 2016 - 40

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

KRK ROKIT 4 G3 Powered Studio Monitor
A monitor that's handy pretty much everywhere... that can fit pretty much anywhere
KRK speakers have been featured in our pages a lot over the
years; the firm makes monitors for every application, from the
huge and expensive Exposé E8B to the compact and powerful
VXT monitors. While those speakers have made a name for themselves, perhaps the most attention in recent years has been
drawn by KRK's very affordable ROKIT series. ROKITs grace thousands of home studios around the world, and KRK continually
improves upon the line with succeeding generations of upgrades.
The current ROKIT G3 (third-generation) lineup now has five
speakers, from the powerful ROKIT 10-3 G3 midfield monitor
down to the smallest and newest of the line, which we're
reviewing here today: the ROKIT 4 G3.
The speaker
The ROKIT 4 G3 will look familiar to everyone who's seen
or worked with KRK speakers before; the classic yellow
aramid glass composite woofer is a standout trademark feature. This 4" woofer is paired with a 1" silk-dome tweeter in a
rounded, front-ported MDF enclosure (8.31" x 6.09" x 8.82")
that's compact but hefty (nearly 9 pounds each). The monitor
enclosure is available in black, white, or silver finishes.
The ROKIT 4 G3 is biamplified, with a 10W amp for the
tweeter, 30W for the woofer, and a crossover frequency of
2.3 kHz. It claims a frequency response of 51 Hz to 35 kHz
(no tolerances given) and a peak SPL of 100 dB.
The rear panel has an unbalanced RCA input, 1/4" TRS and
XLR balanced inputs, and a conventional grounded IEC power
socket with spare fuse. There are two switchable tone controls:
HF Level Adjust (-2/-1/0/+1 dB) and LF Level Adjust
(-2/-1/0/+2 dB). These allow the user to adjust for placement
near walls or in corners, depending on the room. A final knob
sets Volume between -30 and +6 dB; this is a finely stepped pot
for easily reproducible settings, a nice touch.
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RECORDING March 2016

There's one other under-the-hood feature worth mentioning: AutoStandby, where the speakers go into a power-saving idle mode
after 30 minutes. Note that if you're used to listening at very low
levels, you'll want to turn the volume down a bit on the monitors
themselves. By feeding them a good hot signal and attenuating it
on the speaker, you won't run into a problem I had at first where
the speakers would go into Auto-Standby even while playing soft
music.
The sound
I spent several weeks with the ROKIT 4 G3 monitors set up in
my office at Music Maker Publications, in the secondary listening
position at my main writing/editing computer. In an aligned triangle roughly 40" on a side, they functioned beautifully on
everything I threw at them, from classical to Americana, from
jazz to hard rock. I ended up leaving them set flat for EQ, as is
common for this listening position in my room; there was a temptation to bump up the LF Adjust a little bit, but that produces
emphasis in the low mids as much as it extends the real lows.
With a low frequency limit of 51 Hz, the ROKIT 4 G3 really
wants to work with a subwoofer for the lowest lows; the rolloff
at the low end is very graceful rather than abrupt, and the listener can be fooled into thinking there's more down there than
there really is, leading to mixing bass-heavy. If you don't have
a sub, you'll want to check your work on speakers or headphones with more bass extension.
Once you get above 55 Hz or so, though, the ROKIT 4 G3 is
an impressive little monitor all around. Designed for use in the
extreme near field, its amplifiers get plenty loud enough for listening at reasonable yet safe levels. Low mids and mids are clearly
presented with a lot of detail and separation between instruments
and a surprisingly wide sweet spot for such a small speaker.
Stereo imaging is quite good, with soundstage placement easily

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - March 2016