Monoprice Premium 5.1.4-Ch. Immersive Home Theater System

Ordered this from Monoprice directly. This is a nice 5.1.2 speaker set up I paired with a Denon AVR S760H. Interestingly, their 5.1.4 system is actually priced lower at the time of this review. I really like it, but when I hooked it up, I noticed one of the satellites had way lower volume and distorted sounds when playing test tones generated by the Denon. To rule out the AVR or my cabling, I switched the other satellite to cabling of the suspected defective speaker and it worked great. Also tried the suspected defective speaker on the other satellite speaker's cabling, as well as other other channels of the Denon. Same result. Low volume, distorted sound. Bummer. Used a voltmeter to test continuity by attaching to the wire attachment spring pegs of the speaker. Got the OL for open line. Same test on the known working satellite and another known working speaker from the set, both confirmed electron flow from one peg to the other. Also noticed no movement from the main cone of the speaker when audio played, while the known working one was indeed moving. Conclusion: Got a defective speaker. Monoprice customer service was responsive via email. However, wasn't pleased with the RMA option presented. They were out of stock on the system and didn't have any individual speakers to trade out. Only thing offered was box the whole system up and return it for credit. Dismantling the 8 piece setup, repackaging, and hauling the 43 pound system in to ship back just seemed excessive for one small piece of an otherwise nice system. And who knows how long I'd be without any speakers. No issues with getting in touch with Monoprice. They were very responsive. No knock there. Just felt the juice from the whole return process wasn't worth the squeeze. So, ordered a pair of cheapo rear speakers with good reviews on here to take the place of the Monoprices. They'll hold me over until I slowly obtain audiophile level speaker equipment. Those speakers got here less than 24 hours after ordering and were great. Since I decided to not RMA the whole thing, I started tinkering and opened up the speakers. Zero continuity between positive and negative on the main driver of the speaker. Got the soldering iron out and disconnected the driver from the wiring from the crossover. Disconnected from the crossover, I had continuity in the driver aaaand between the wires coming off the crossover. INTERESTING! I cleaned the joint up and resoldered. Good continuity at the speaker wire attachment. Hook them up at low volume, run test tones. All great! Turned up the volume and back to square one about 50 of 100 (fairly low on the Denon). Started over. Same thing. No continuity anywhere. Resolder again. Good to go. Turn up volume, dies about same volume. Whole time, it's brother speaker, performing like a champ. I do still recommend this set. The two front immersive speakers with upfiring speakers included, sub, and center are a great upgrade alone from my 10 year old Panasonic HTIB. Just had bad luck with getting a defective satellite speaker. Just be aware that if a single piece is defective, the likely solution will be to return the whole kit and caboodle. Was hoping for a simpler solution for return/replacement, but not in the cards. Monoprice DID offer a reasonable solution. They backed their product, but I dunno, felt like it could have been simpler. In the process, learned a lot about troubleshooting speakers, which, hate to admit, I kinda enjoyed. So 4 of 5 stars. If all worked, easy five stars for first "big boy" step up from cheapo HTIB audio. One star knocked for defective speaker and the challenges it presented with this particular system. Had one of the immersive speakers been DOA, since these are sold separately, may have been a super easy fix. Hope this long, rambling review is helpful to anyone looking to buy an awesome 5.1.2 home theater speaker system. NOTE: This is sometimes advertised with 5 way binding poles on the speakers. All speakers (except sub of course) have push down spring connectors. They are not banana plug compatible. Bare wire, or flex pin (which I used, and work great) compatible only. NOTE: The satellite speaker mounting screw recess is M6x16, not usually included with "universal" stands. Big box hardware stores usually have plenty. NOTE: Due to the stacked speaker wire inputs of the immersive speakers, mounting on "universal" speaker stands via the mounting screw recess may be challenging. These speakers may best be mounted on compression bracket stands as there are no bottom surface mounts.