Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards My new Privia PX-870 has arrived!!

I think so... weren't they called the New Brunswick Hawks?

Glad to hear you're all taken care of; enjoy your new Casio!!!

Thanks, djvu10! And my beautiful Presonus Eris E5 XT studio monitors were just delivered late this afternoon! I will write more tomorrow, once I've gotten them hooked up and adjusted/tested.

Sheesh, I'm having major issues with this website today! The lengthy post I made last night about my new Presonus studio monitors completely vanished, and when I went to post it again... it vanished again. Next time I checked in, both posts were visible, then a moment later they were gone again. Let's try this one more time!!

The long-awaited Presonus Eris "E5 XT" studio monitors are now hooked up to my Privia PX-870, although my wall mounting brackets have yet to arrive, but will hopefully be here tomorrow. So for the time being, I simply placed them right on the floor directly under the piano. Of course I wasn't really expecting this temporary setup to sound like much of anything, so you can just imagine my surprise (utter shock!) at how terrific my piano sounds!

This instrument sounded very nice right out of the box, but WOW, the contrast between the onboard speakers and these studio monitors is night and day! I didn't know for sure if the small-ish (5-1/4") woofers would be capable of providing enough of a bass improvement without also having to add a subwoofer to the mix, so I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that I most certainly do not need to add a sub! There's a vast improvement to the lower register; not muddy or boomy at all, and sounding remarkably authentic... it reminded me right away of my last Festival Of Stars event I was ever part of, playing in a large concert hall on a gorgeous 9ft Steinway. I am so impressed, that I can't stop talking about it! For about $400 ($300US) for the pair of E5 XT's, I now have a piano that, quite unbelievably, sounds like a million bucks!

I imagine that these monitors will sound even better still, (is this even possible!?!?) once I have them mounted at ear level, hopefully within the next day or two. I cannot recommend these monitors highly enough! I did a ton of research prior to buying these, and everything I learned pointed to them being a big improvement over the old E5's, (which themselves are pretty great) but many were quick to add that there's just no way that a 5.25" woofer could ever provide enough bass. But I just wish that I could invite everyone over to our house for a little recital, because I can assure you that there is just no need at all to improve upon the bass that these little gems are putting out! And then there's that beautiful midrange which sounds utterly breathtaking! And the high notes are every bit as clean/clear and "tinkly" as I remember them sounding on that lovely Steinway years ago!

Well that's about all for now, as I must return to my piano!... but I just wanted to let you all know that if you ever wish to improve upon the sound of your DP without breaking the bank, these Presonus monitors will definitely do the trick!!

You should report your forum issue in this thread here. There are a lot of different issues. Yours sounds new.

Done. Thanks Tyrone!

I've had similar good results with small monitors on the floor. Enhanced bass, with mids and highs "diffused" around the instrument similar to what I get sitting down at an acoustic. I realize this isn't the ideal setup for everyone, but it can be quite nice!

Yep, I put a couple of decent sized bookshelf speakers on the floor underneath my PX-830 on each side, and it did wonders for the sound.

I only sat them there on the floor in order to plug them in to ensure they were working ok... and they sounded absolutely brilliant right there under the piano... go figure! And I honestly didn't expect them to sound like much at all, positioned under the piano like that. I always had the impression that studio monitors were best positioned at ear height.

So now I'm really interested to see how well they will perform once I get them on the wall! Yes, I know this may not be the ideal place to mount them, but due to our limited space, it's about the only other place they can go. (no room for stands) But at least they won't be right up flush against the wall, (will be several inches out) so they might be ok like that. And the ports are located in front, if that helps. Plus there's plenty of adjustments on the rear to fine-tune them.

I've been experimenting today with listening to the monitors by themselves, and also with the onboard speakers left on. I prefer the quality of the sound when the monitors and the piano's speakers are on, though even just the monitors by themselves still sound pretty amazing! I will experiment again once I get them mounted, but I'm thinking it may still sound best with the piano's speakers left on; I'll let you know my findings once I get the monitors in place. I honestly can't really see how they could possibly sound any better than they already do, but we'll see!!

Nice, me too was thinking about buying those speakers. Have you tried to place them on the piano cabinet?

Magicpiano, I'm a bit reluctant to try that, as the top of my piano cabinet is a mere 5 inches deep, and the monitors are 9 inches deep... with my luck these speakers (at 11 pounds each) would crash to the floor... or worse yet, fall right onto the keys! I was hoping that my wall mounts would have arrived in today's mail, but stormy weather/high seas has caused many cancellations of the ferries traveling between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, so our mail service has been disrupted several times in recent days. But with any luck my mounts should arrive on Monday, allowing me to place the monitors up and out of harms way!

Mmmh... So they are about 2-3cm bigger than the Eris E5 (no XT) but they are both 70W. I wonder if I would feel a significant difference between the two E5 (normal and XT) when used with some piano sounds. From the specs the XT have a slightly better bass response (min.freq.: 48Hz the XT, 53Hz the standard E5) but I'm more interested in the quality of the middle/high frequencies for the piano sounds.

The Presonus website lists both the new and old models as being rated at 80 watts. (35W HF + 45W LF) I chose the XT after learning that they are supposedly much-improved over the old E5, with cleaner/deeper bass response, AND a better-controlled (much wider) "sweet spot". So, the middle and high frequencies are also bound to be improved with the new design.

So I think it's well worth paying the extra amount for the XT model. Otherwise, you just may discover that the E5's won't provide quite enough "oomph" to the lower register as well as to the mids and highs, and then you just might find yourself searching for a deal on a sub, even if you didn't think you needed/wanted better bass response. So, then it would be cheaper/simpler in the end to just buy the XT's and be done with it.

The one area in which I found my PX-870's onboard speakers lacking, was with the lower register. A "real" grand piano's lower notes have SO much more bass in comparison. With the E5 XT's, your digital piano will sound much more "authentic"; better than you ever believed possible. There's a YouTube video that compares the sound output of both the E5 and E5 XT, and the difference is quite noticeable, and not just in the lower octaves.

PS: I have watched a few online reviews where Presonus reps state that the new E5 XT goes a full 10Hz lower than the old E5, yet on their website it says just 5Hz lower. So it seems that someone must have their wires crossed; just not sure if it's the website specs that are wrong, or the company reps.

The area where my CN37 is lacking more is in the high frequencies area. It has 4 speakers, two facing down, another two facing up, but they are very middle-rangey so all you get is a boxy sound with no detail.

I found this nice video that compares the old E5 to the new E5 XT:



For what is worth a video, if you have very good headphones you should hear the differences. What I hear there is just what I was expecting. The XT have a little more bass presence (but, really, just a little little more... Nothing significative...). What I noticed more is that the high frequencies in the XT are more pronounced. I think that's the result of the new EBM (Elliptical Boundary Modeled) wave guide design.
But I have to say, the standard E5 don't sound bad at all... I think they are a little more flat and balanced compared with the XT. The standard E5, of course, have a lower price too (we are talking about 210 euros vs ~300 of the XT for the couple). I'm very confused on what I should choose...

With both the Bang & Olufsen H2 and Sennheiser HD-598 headphones, I can definitely hear a substantial improvement in bass, and also a much more "realistic" midrange and clear highs as well, in the comparison video between the E5 and E5 XT.

You can't go very far wrong with either model; they're both excellent monitors. So you just have to decide if you want the best sound or the lowest price.

I didn't notice that at the end of that video there is a graph with the frequency response of the two speakers:



As I suspected (so my ears and my headphones are not so bad yet ), the E5 are more flat on the very high frequencies. On the low freqs, of course, the XT are better (much better I have to say, looking at that graph).
From what I see, it's like the XT did some equalization to the sound so that the high freqs are enhanced (maybe in a little unnatural way... I'm more oriented to a flat sound that recreates the original recording... But I guess you can always lower a little the highs with the rear knob).
About the low freqs, I see the XT can go about 10Hz lower than the standard E5... Maybe this improvement is somehow diminished by the stronger very high frequencies (those above 10K Hz) so I didn't feel a big difference.
Anyway, they are very good speakers for the price and I think they would both sound better than any internal piano speaker (also in consideration of the fact that you can position and adjust them in a way so that they will sound better in your room).

So I have finally gotten around to mounting my new Presonus Eris "E5 XT" active studio monitors onto the wall behind my piano. I used quality (Rockwell RHSB8) mounting brackets, and it was an easy, clean install, taking perhaps 15 minutes from start to finish. I had just enough space on either side of the TV (which sits directly above the piano) to mount these speakers, and although my little corner music nook is pretty snug, with the monitors now in place I think it looks really cool! (if perhaps a wee bit "recording studio-ish") I will try to take a couple pics of my setup tomorrow and will post them on here.

And WOW, the sound!! I've always heard how it's such a bad idea to mount monitors on the wall, and especially in a corner, but I've got to say that this instrument now sounds so amazing... surprisingly authentic! Of course I thought it sounded very nice straight out of the box with its own onboard speakers, but Holy Cow, these E5 XT's really do bring out the very best of my PX-870! I couldn't really ask for anything more... I now have all the bass I need to make the lower register sound like the real deal, and the mids are so clear/clean, with the highs so lovely and "tinkly", and overall sounding much like a very good acoustic piano. The monitors on their own do sound really nice, but I prefer to include the piano's onboard sound system (40 watt amplifier/4 speakers) in addition to the monitors... and the results are outstanding!

There is certainly no need to add a subwoofer to this setup. As it stands, I have just the perfect amount of bass to allow me to actually "feel" the low notes without them sounding phoney. I cannot recommend these Presonus Eris E5 XTs highly enough! Money well spent! Photos coming soon.

Yes, me too I think it should be good to overlap the monitors sound with a little of sound from the internal speakers too, so that the overall effect would be more full and "spatial". If we think about it, in a real piano the sound is coming from many directions, not just from the struck strings: there are the vibrations from the large soundboard and from all the wooden body of the instrument...

Agreed. To my ears, the sound becomes much more full and natural when I combine both the monitors and the PX-870's onboard speakers. The piano's upward-firing tweeters really add to the overall sound, just as the downward-facing woofers aid in making the overall sound more rounded/spatial.

Do you find that using the onboard speakers adds a small amount of haptic resonance through the keys? I used this method with my PX150 and monitors with Pianoteq and definitely felt more enveloped in sound.