Help me choose a speaker setup!

I've heard good things about Audioengine's powered bookshelf speakers. Those, plus a good DAC with RCA outs (Nuforce Icon HDP, maybe) might be just the thing... I believe the whole shebang would fit your budget.

Hello!

 

I am happy that you looked at the audioengine speakers, because that gives me somethign to contribue!

 

I have the audioengine A5's. They are freaking amazing. The highs sound great, the mid range is nice and fast. They are really heavy and I do have a set of problems with them, though. Now the sound quality on them is fairly good compared to my past experiences in sound quality. Previous systems include a Bose home theater (my parents' system. Bass sounds like crap, but anything treble or midrange is nice. Voice is overpowering during movies. its not a good system, but for casual listening or the occasional DVD that they watch it gets the job done, and its still going strong since 1997 when they bought it.)

I have the logitech z5500's, in which I found gaping holes in the bass response until I moved it to a different room. That thing has a longthrow subwoofer, so if you really want some proper bass out of it, put it 8-12 feet away form where you will be listening from. My room was a 9x9 cube, so no matter where I put it, it would pump bass into random adjacent rooms of the house while keeping giant holes of no bass response whenever it reached a frequency of perfect destructive interference. Also it was a pain to have all those satellites.

 

I highly recommend the audioengine speakers, but heres what i've found wrong with them so far.

 

1) they have a circuit inside that makes them automatically shut off when they are not in use. This is actually a really good feature, considering they take their audio input from either a dedicated RCA input source or a 3.5mm line in jack on top of the left speaker. For my purposes, however, I have 2 laptops and my phone, and the only method of audio output they have is a headphone jack. This becomes very troublesome because if you so much as touch that headphone jack while it is in, the speaker's circuit activates. After that it makes those loud crackly sounds when you plug it into the headphone jack. You probably know the one i'm talking about, its the one when you plug an active source into a powered speaker.

 

2) these things get LOUD. they have greate reproduction up to extremely loud volumes. in my 9x9 room thats not a good thing, but again, this is one of those CON's for me that should be a PRO for you, especially considering you have a 1000 dollar budget and you should be able to plug these into a dedicated amp source.

 

3) This is the biggest problem that may not end up being a problem for you. The midrange on these, ie frequencies from around 170hz up to about an octave up, are TERRIBLY loud. I'm about 75% sure that these frequencies are only loud because of the shape and design of my room, but you might find them rather loud in these frequencies too. It is an easy fix, though, if you have a dedicated amp to plug these into (yes, they can either power themselves or they can be powered by an amp source. I love them so much because of their flexibility). You can choose to drive them with a dedicated amp/reciever unit and also include a subwoofer. The reciever will automatically pump all bass frequencies into the subwoofer and pump all higher frequencies into the speakers. Dont get me wrong, these speakers, somehow, have a lot of thump already. But with a reciever/amp you can fine tune their performance. You can choose the cutoff frequency (freq at which subwoofer doesnt get data but the speakers do) and of course you can plug in another set of tweeters if you want the audioengines to only handle the midrange frequencies.

 

4) this is more of a neurotic thing with me but I cant stand that these speakers dont have covers. Not because I want them covered for sound purposes but because I dont trust my cat. She is the spawn of satan and i swear she knows exactly what to destroy to cause the most personal injury and insult to me.

 

Overall I cannot recommend these speakers enough. Really the biggest qualm I have is more of a problem with my room than the speakers, but the midrange isnt THAT loud that I have troubles listening to it. Its only a problem with specific parts of movies when they choose to put some droning sound effect right in that frequency range.

 

1) No. The company themselves show these placed up on the desktop. They are "bookshelf" speakers because of their size. "desktop" speakers are generally showed as being small and out of the way. While these are rather large to have on a small desk, they will be perfectly fine for you. I have mine about 2 feet away on the floor, and I am strongly considering putting them up on the desk anyways. The company even sells stands just so you can angle them upwards at a 15 degree angle towards your head if they are on your desk. That also makes cable management a breeze for tem.

 

2) You do not need a subwoofer, at least not right away. I bought these specifically because, while I dont listen to much basshead music, I do listen to music that has a very dynamic bassline (radiohead's in rainbows, pink floyd, muse, pendulum) when you turn these on, put your computer volume about 50-75% and set the speaker volume to about 25-30%. Once the skin on your face grows back from the sheer force of the speakers, go ahead and reply so we know you're ok :P...

 

The beautiful part about these speakers is that they were designed to be expandable. 2 sets of the A2 speakers, a single P speaker, and a subwoofer can all get plugged into a third party reciever and, without power to the speakers themselves, the speakers can be driven. My subwoofer in the bose system downstairs is the same, it can either power all the speakers itself via its built in circuit, OR it can accept input and power from a third party amp/reciever.

 

Basically here is what you should do with the A5's. get them, listen to them, and see how everything is. I guarentee that for the time being and for at least a year, you will be more than fine with the amount of bass and sound quality these speakers have under their own power. After your mana bar refills itself (aka the bank account) start looking at a subwoofer and av/recieer amp combo unit, or an amp, a reciever, and a subwoofer that are independant. Onkyo just rediscovered the fidelity of 2.0 and 2.1 systems, so they are coming out with a lot of high end nice 2 speaker setup stuff. Even multiband stereo channel equalizers, so you can set different sources to be amplified differently.

 

The speakers will power themselves for now, once you get the sub and amp/reciever you can turn off power to the speakers and instead use just the amp to drive them and the subwoofer, along with control the frequency passing between the sub and the speakers.

 

3) a DAC is a Digital Audio Converter. You are in the computer audio section, so I'm assuming you arent taking CD's or anything and rather you are pumping music form your computer into the speakers. RCA inputs are those little blunt plugs you can use to connect things instead of using speaker wire. they look like the yellow red white connector that goes into oldschool tv's....or that the nintendo wii uses. If you have a DAC, you can basically bypass whatever sound card your computer has (useful if it is an integrated sound card like on a laptop or a cheapo desktop) and instead use USB power and data to pump audio signal in lossless digital format directly to the DAC. the digital audio converter can then convert the digital signal into an analog signal and pump it out through its RCA Output or line (3.5mm headphone) output and into the RCA of the speakers or the line in of the speakers.

 

 

Just to recap, here are your options with the speakers:

 

computer/source --(headphone cable 3.5mm connector)----> Speakers  (this is my current setup

 

computer/source ----(rca or headphone or usb or other digital(depending on comp outputs)----> DAC -------(RCA or 3.5mm)-----> speakers

 

computer/source-----(rca/3.5mm/usb/digital)-------> reciever/amp/reciever+amp ------(RCA or speaker cable) ------> Speakers/speakers+subwoofer

 

The speakers are basically expandable to use either standalone under their own power or unpowered via external amp/reciever. Thus, you can also expand them with a subwoofer or even more speakers. It all depends on the DAC or the Amp/Reciever you get.

 

Dubstep has really low strong frequences you will need a proper sub the a5's 5inch drivers probley roll off around 60hz, also by play "up loud" do you mean party volume levels?.

Dont worry about the 5 inch drivers. They are made of i believe Kevlar. You wont be blowing them very easily. And they dont roll off around 60 hz. I have a dell laptop with such a craptastic sound card that I had to open the whole thing up and insulate the sound card with electrical tape to prevent it from picking up a signal from where it was grounded. (everything is grounded to the laptop chassis, which actually causes the current to go back up through the sound card's ground and infect the signal badly).

 

Even through this subpar soundcard which itself can only handle frequencies as low as 35hz before it starts warbling and whooping, the speakers are completely clear the entire way down. I have tested it with different sources and the speakers are more than capable of playing sounds below 50hz. You wont be getting these sounds to be loud in the first place because thats where the human ear starts dropping off too so there isnt a good way to test it, but these speakers will do what you need, guarenteed.

 

Furthermore, dont invest in everything in one fell swoop. IMO it would be smarter to get the speakers, test them out. THEN see if you need a DAC (which I say you should get, if you arent planning on getting a reciever instead). If you have even a normal run of the mill dedicated sound card, you do not need a DAC or an amp just yet. If you are using integrated sound, you would be better off getting some small DAC like the ibasso d10 or a dedicated usb sound card of some sort. Something by MAudio perhaps. if you want an internal sound card, go for creative's X-fi flagship. that is one nice sound card.

 

again, dont go over the top, test each part piece by piece to see what suits your needs. Theres no sense blowing 5000 bucks on a whole setup when you get the same results from a 700 dollar setup.

 

Could you detail your computer hardware a bit more?

you'd need something 10"+ ideally they range from $200 to $1000+.

Edited by 06S2k07Si - 3/1/11 at 4:01pm

Yes, the A2's would be a little weak. Those would be what i'd call "desktop speakers". The A5's though. those are hardcore sexy. They dont look as flashy as the swan speakers, but i'm pretty sure that they(the a5's) are much more cheap. Personally, I prefer the A5's because I dont have a very flashy room. Not to mention, they are flat black speakers so I they dont stick out like a sore thumb. I'm still gonna try to work out some better way to have them hooked up rather than have them sitting within kicking range but  for now they work like a dream right where they are.

I didn't know about Swan, but I see they get very good reviews, too. Lots of good, affordable audio products seem to be coming from China these days.

if u dont want to bother with an integrated amp def just get the a5 + decent sound card

 

or else 1k gives u quite a bit of options to buy a pair of bookselves, soundcard, 2nd hand integrated amp

I'm tellin you man. The A5's are probably the last set of speakers I'm gonna be using for the next 10 years or until something bad happens to them. After that i might even get me another set of em. They're that good.

 

For a DAC, I cant really recommend anything because I dont know anything about it. Same for subs, but dont buy a yamaha or bose sub. Perhaps JBL for a subwoofer. You wont need it with the A5's though unless you are really wanting to go all out, in which case 1000 wont cut it for you.