Mackie HR824mk2 8.75 inch Powered Studio Monitor

Back in the ’90s, the HR Series studio reference monitors revolutionized studio monitoring. With their incredible sound quality and affordability, they earned a wide and loyal following, fast becoming the industry standard. It was through Mackie's innovation, and commitment to great sound, that they managed to redefine the studio monitor. With that same ingenuity at work, they’ve reinvented their HR Series to bring you the new studio standard: the HRmk2 High Resolution Active Studio Reference Monitors.

The HRmk2s surpass the legendary performance of the classic HRs to deliver even better sound quality, in a stunning new package. The precisely engineered contours of the cast aluminum Zero Edge Baffle™ minimize diffraction for a crystal clear image of your mix, and control sound waves so you get detailed lows, full, articulate mids, and shimmering highs—whether you’re on axis or off. Working in concert with the baffle’s contours, the unique passive radiator design delivers astonishing bass extension that’s super-tight and always distortion-free. Wide, even dispersion of all frequencies, as well as incredible depth of field, allow you to accurately hear your mix, transforming your studio’s sweet spot into a full-on sweet zone. And the high-gloss piano black wood cabinet not only looks hot, but adds just enough warmth so your sound is true, not sterile.

Mackie's HRmk2s were created with High Definition audio in mind—with such unbelievable sound quality, there’s little wonder why the HRmk2 Series was approved for THX pm3 compliance on its initial trial. THX pm3 Certification means that the HRmk2s have met the stringent standards set by THX Ltd.for outstanding performance, and that these monitors can be used with confidence by anyone seeking THX Certification for their studio, or striving to maintain THX standards.

Mackie thought of every last detail, from consistency in sound from one HRmk2 monitor to the next, to an aesthetic design that unifies the whole HRmk2 family. Building on—and evolving from—our classic HR monitors' legacy of excellence, HRmk2s deliver superior performance and design, making them a truly pro monitoring solution for today's studio.

Zero Edge Baffle

The new one-piece cast aluminum Zero Edge Baffle™ features precisely engineered curvature that minimizes diffraction for a crystal clear image of your mix, and effectively controls sound waves so you get detailed lows, full, articulate mids, and shimmering highs. The integrated Optimized Waveguide accurately and efficiently controls dispersion characteristics of the sound on and off axis, resulting in a wide sweet spot with smooth transitions from lows to highs. More inert than a wood or plastic baffle, the Zero Edge Baffle’s cast metal surface reduces surface vibrations during playback, thereby minimizing distortion to the sound’s waveforms; the result is improved time-domain characteristics, which equates to dramatically enhanced depth of field.

Thanks to the design of the Zero Edge Baffle, the HRmk2’s imaging is stunningly accurate, with wide, even dispersion, and three-dimensional sound, delivering a much broader sweet spot than any other studio monitor on the market—so broad, in fact, that we like to call it a sweet zone.

Passive Radiator

When you mount a loudspeaker in a box, there are two things that you can do with the radiation from the rear of the cone: use it to enhance the low-frequency performance of the speaker system (bass reflex system) or soak it up (acoustic suspension system). A bass reflex system uses the rear radiation to extend the low-frequency response; most systems provide holes (ports) in the front or back of the cabinet to release the rear wave. The HRmk2 is a bass reflex 6th-order system. Rather than use ports, the vent takes the form of a passive radiator, a mass-loaded flat piston coupled to the air trapped within the enclosure. You can’t see the passive radiator because it is located at the rear of the cabinet, behind the power amplifier assembly.

The passive radiator replaces the port found on most speaker systems. Simple ports or ducts must have sufficient surface area to prevent the velocity of the air within them from exceeding 5% of the speed of sound, which keeps the vent from becoming audible (breathing and wheezing sounds) at high signal levels. This requirement for sufficient surface area creates a design problem when using ports—finding enough space in the enclosure for them to fit.

One primary advantage of a passive radiator is that it can reproduce low frequencies with lower distortion and at a higher sound pressure level (SPL) than a simple port or duct. Our unique passive radiator design uses a flat diaphragm, providing exceptional stiffness to the radiating surface. The elliptical shape of the passive radiator takes up nearly the entire surface area available on the rear of the enclosure, allowing the passive radiator to move more air than a port. And as a result of this design, our HRmk2s deliver superior bass response, with virtually no distortion.

Amplifiers

The HRmk2 Series monitors are a true Active design, meaning they contain separate onboard amplifiers for each driver, plus onboard active crossovers and time-correction circuitry, which helps ensure highs and lows reach your ears at the same time. The HRmk2s also have protection circuitry built in to protect from damaging input levels. With the same class A/B amplifier design as the original HR Series, the HRmk2s retain the much-loved character of our classic monitor, and carry on the Acoustic Space circuitry of the classic HRs, which allows you to tune the monitors to your room.

Designed into the heart of the amplifier circuits are EQ and filter sections that allow each amplifier to be precisely factory-tuned, ensuring that what we designed in our labs is what you end up with in your studio. Before assembly, we first hand-trim the amplifiers to exactly match the amplifiers in our Golden Reference Unit. (See "Unparalleled Quality" for more on the Golden Reference Unit.) During final assembly and testing, the amplifiers are voiced to match the rest of the components in the entire monitor system; they’re hand-trimmed to compensate for very slight manufacturing tolerances between the drivers. This meticulous process results in each monitor being within exacting references of the Golden Reference Unit.

Woofer/ Tweeter Solution

Each HRmk2 monitor features a high-precision, low-distortion woofer—8.75-inch for the HR824mk2 and 6.7-inch for the HR624mk2—and a 1-inch ferrofluid cooled titanium dome tweeter. An exhaustive process, the selection of the new HRmk2 drivers consumed considerable engineering resources. Mackie's team spent countless hours in their quest to find drivers that met their stringent criteria, including the ability to be manufactured in volume with virtually no variability between units, the ability to produce the desired frequency response, and the ability to meet the tight price goals that allow us to make their monitors affordable. After having rejected multiple candidates, the team eventually narrowed down the field. With further engineering input, Mackie sourced drivers that met their standards, and successfully managed to fine-tune a system that delivers unparalleled results.

Cabinet Design

The HRmk2 monitors feature a wood cabinet, with custom internal bracing to increase its strength and rigidity in desired locations. To absorb internal reflections and dampen standing waves inside the cabinet, an open-cell adiabatic foam material is placed strategically inside the box. While an all-metal cabinet had been considered as a potential design strategy, in the end Mackie's design team used their ears to make their choice of cabinet material. And what they heard from an all-metal cabinet was a sound that was accurate, but overly sterile. Combining a wood cabinet with their metal Zero Edge Baffle adds that unquantifiable “bit of warmth,” producing sound that’s true—and never lifeless.

Paint it Black

With the potential for the speakers to be used in settings from home theatres to gaming rooms to studios, Mackie opted for a look that would be universally appealing. The high-gloss, piano black finish of the cabinet complements the deep charcoal grey of the Zero Edge Baffle, and gives the HRmk2 a modern, professional look that suits just about any environment. All HRmk2s ship with peelable, protective film on each side to ensure that they look as brilliant in your studio as they do when they leave the factory.

LED Power and Overload

Mackie's LED power indicator is a tasty shade of white—a cool, refreshing change from your typical red. Mackie took care to make sure the brightness is just right, too. The light shines bright enough so you can see it just fine in a well-lit room, and in a dark environment, it won’t distract—or blind you. We saved the red for when you’re overdoing it—you’ll see the scarlet HRmk2 overload LED when your input levels are too high.

Rotating Mackie Logo

Along with Acoustic Space Controls that allow you to adjust low frequency response to compensate for placement next to the wall, in corners, or in the center of a room, the HRmk2s come with other features that enable versatile setup. Due to their ultra-wide sweet zone, the HRmk2 monitors can be oriented vertically or horizontally, so Mackie made the logo rotate-able. No matter which way you orient your HRmk2s, they’re always right-side up! Each HRmk2 also supplies Omnimount capability, so you aren’t forced to screw into—and damage—the enclosure’s surface in order to mount to the wall or from the ceiling.

Unparalleled 

Mackie goes to elaborate lengths to ensure each HRmk2 sounds as good as their experts intended. Each one they manufacture is subject to rigorous testing and pre-screening during the production process, then calibrated and tuned with an environmentally controlled test chamber before final packaging. Their Golden Reference Unit serves as the reference point for calibration; there is one of each model in the HRmk2 family. Hand-engineered in the US, the Golden Reference Unit is the “master” for HRmk2 production units—it is the final design arrived at and approved by the HRmk2 team. The Golden Reference Unit and the test chamber are calibrated as a system every few hours, to compensate for temperature and humidity variations, and the resulting measurements are used to calibrate each HRmk2 production unit. Each HRmk2 monitor is tuned to be within 1.5 dB across the entire frequency range of the Golden Reference Unit, and gets its own “birth certificate” with a chart plotting the frequency difference between it and the Golden Reference Unit. The birth certificate is then verified and signed by a Mackie Acoustic Technician.

Our strict quality control means all their HRmk2s meet our published specifications, and that there is little-to-no variability between units. No matter if you get your first HRmk2 pair now and add another pair for your surround setup months later, you can be confident you have a precisely tuned system that has been designed to work in unison, and that every HRmk2 pair is a true “matched pair.