Neumann KH 120 A - Active Studio Monitor

These monitors changed my life! For the first time in decades, I now have honest sounding monitors so my mixes translate brilliantly from the studio to the living room, car and personal media players. If your mix sounds right on these monitors, you can be confident that it will sound right on any playback system! Thank you, Neumann!!!!

These sound absolutely fantastic. Bought these for my home studio. Perfect. Exceeds expectations.

To try them is to love them. For sub-bass reinforcement (below 60Hz or so), check out the KH 810.

These are great sound speakers with lots of volume.

At over 60 years of age, I've owned plenty of audio equipment in my time, but very few products have made such an impression on me that these speakers have. I recall a similar total satisfaction decades ago when I bought my first superbly engineered SME tone arm. Another time was soon after when I had a pair of Stax electrostatic headphones. A couple of fine amplifiers also have a special place in my recollections. Now, all these years later, I've found another sound device that exudes the same sense of "rightness" and makes me feel I own something very special in terms of both performance and quality of manufacture.I won't go into a lengthy analysis of the sound because differences in taste, listening environment and the types of music involved all make everything so variable from one listener to the next. Rather I urge you to include these on your audition list so you can discover them for yourself. Never buy monitors on someone else's say-so without a well-arranged audition.What I WILL say is that for the acoustic music I listen to, the quality of sound I'm getting from these VERY small speakers is staggering. And not just for my home studio/editing work (hobbyist-level) - I am also loving the presentation of these speakers for pure listening pleasure (in their near-field setting). Plucked strings sound fantastic and small groups of players are presented magnificently within the soundstage. I listen to a considerable amount of "early music" and instruments like harp, lute, theorbo, viol and harpsichord sound fantastic. Jazz too. Orchestral is rendered superbly, but I notice that pinpoint positioning of speakers and listener seems all the more essential to get the very best from denser orchestral recordings. When positioning is right, everything just snaps into place with terrific spatial realism. The detail is exceptional, but never harsh. Voice is marvelous to listen to. The lows are rich and easily surpass the level of quality and quantity I've experienced before from such a diminutive monitor (or any speaker of similar size for that matter). My listening and editing is done via an Apogee Duet (Mac/IOS version) connected by Mogami TRS/XLR cable.The clean-lined metal design oozes quality and reflects typically fine German industrial craftsmanship. Even the light bearing the logo on the front (adjustable) looks classy.I strongly recommend that anyone considering a pair of small monitors adds this to their audition list. I have owned competitive units from Focal (notable for me because of its problems as much as its good sound) and Adam (and I have auditioned other good speakers like Genelec, Mackie and Dynaudio) and while all of them have their own attractions depending on the listener's tastes, needs and listening set-up, I can only tell you that to my ears, the Neumann KH120A is by far the best I've owned or auditioned in this price category.Update: The only drawback I can think of is the VERY high cost of Neumann mounting adaptors and accessories for these monitors. Ridiculously high.

The KH120 monitors are superb. Imaging is fantastic, you can't go wrong with these Neumann.

I've been using a pair of these to mix electronic music and also for listening for pleasure for around a year in a medium-sized, minimally-treated concrete room. My simple assessment is that these are about as tonally accurate as speakers get, from top to bottom of the frequency spectrum.There's no low-mid bump or midrange thickness or artificial high frequency sparkle, so they won't be to everyone's taste as a listening speaker, but they do make an excellent monitoring tool, and I particularly enjoy listening to well-recorded acoustic music on them.Bass extension is excellent for their size, although maximum SPL is somewhat limited, so I wouldn't recommend these for anything larger than a medium-sized room.Their level of detail resolution is impressive, and imaging is excellent, particularly side-to-side but also front-to-back. There are other speakers that do these things better, but I haven't heard them at this price point.I've owned a fair amount of audio equipment, some costing far more than these speakers, and I have to say that I haven't been able to achieve this level of accuracy for this amount of money before.

I have tried MANY different monitors in this price range over the years-Nothing would translate to other speakers quite like my mixes sounded. THESE have been absolutely perfect in every way. I was hesitant to purchase monitors with a smaller woofer than I have ever had but the bass response is just unbelievable. I don't know how they did it, but it is amazing. These speakers are loud and clear. Worth every penny.