Audioengine A2s. Thoughts? - Page 2

I briefly heard the A2s at the Los Angeles audio show and was not impressed when I compared them up against the Napa Acoustics NA-208S paired with NA-208A which came to around $600 granted thats a little more money then the A2s I believe, and to each his own. But I felt that the Napa Acoustics system competed very good with some of the $2000 systems there. I was extremely impressed and I honestly want to buy one but don't currently have the funds haha.

Yes it is unfair but if you can stretch you budget I would go for it. I was surprised by how much bass they had without feeling overwhelming. I thought they had a sub hidden in the room but they of course did not. They are very tiny speakers too. I don't know how they do it.

I think might just do that.  It's best to hear it personally, I suppose.

The 2.75" woofer on the A2s is very impressive in its reach.

 

I used to grab the A2s and an iPod to toss in my backpack on trips. Terrific sound for the size

Well for about the same price i would go efficient bookshelf + 50w/chn T-Amp?

 

Infinity Primus P162 $150

http://www.crutchfield.com/p_108P162BG/Infinity-Primus-P162-Black-grille.html?tp=186

 

Reviews 

http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1007inf/

http://www.soundstage.com/equipment/infinity_primus_p162.htm

 

Dayton DTA-100 amp @ half price $50

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=309-383

 

Edited by trog - 8/29/11 at 11:02pm

Ive got the A5's. I wanted something that could really get loud. The only beef I have with them is not really their fault: They simply dont have enough power to move the air in my room at low frequencies. I can see the speaker producing the low frequency notes in question and if I put my ear up in front of the speaker I can clearly hear the note coming out (especially now that I have my AMB Gamma 1 F++/Gamma2 functioning) but if I move away, I cant hear the note at all.

I need to get a subwoofer for that low of a note to be heard in my 10.5l x 10.5w x 8h foot room. The Audioengine subwoofer comes to mind but it is rather expensive considering its specifications, and I was hoping there was a better sub I could get for that much money, or a comparable sub for less than the Audioengine subwoofer.

 

I have one word to say with audioengine 2..."terrific" <---- sometime u feel its incredible, sometime fantastic, sometime powerful(for it size), sometime warm/musical....but sometime also can become fuzzy...from this what i can say...this speaker is very know how to create environment for what kind of music it play....i think this is called as ambience...

 

Almost all sound reproduction from bad to high quality of file music and type of genre music should sound good with them...except for some situation...when too many heavy and light music instrument played together...it cant create great separation of them....make it sound a bit fuzzy....and other problem is distortion when the music have very deep and powerful bass such as hip-hop....<---- but those situation rarely happen and for short period only...

 

Surprisingly ; techno,hardstyle,trance, and house music that coming from electro genre sound impressive with them....it make me blew away with this type of music....it can change my room become mini clubnight(but this is only my perception that never go to club....however atleast i can feel it i guess...)

 

General sound reproduction of this speakers can be describes as relaxing....either not too sharp and not too muddy....that y it always sound good watever music we play in them....and that also y this speakers is very suitable to be listen for long period.....then fell love with them when realize that we spending almost of our the time to hear music.....

 

But if u really want top audio quality from audioengine 2 u need to fullfill a few steps :-

 

1. Burn in 1-2 days and even much longer...more long more good because audioengine 2 is making from very high quality compenent that seem like last forever(need patient behaviour)...

 

2. Find something to make sure it stand high enough, tilting it back and also turn it to ur ears...

 

3. Crank the volume until 3 o'clock(this instruction wrote in construction book that came with audioengine 2)....this is because audioengine 2 very need power from it implifier to make it shine and can give more vibrant, richness and clarity with crisp(but not fatiguing) performance....

 

4. Get a good dac/sound card to make sure audioengine 2 push out what it has until reach it limitation....

 

Here u can see that audiophile also praise them :-

 

http://www.hifivision.com/articles-guides/12990-stereophiles-recommended-list-2010-a.html

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-20099395-47/top-10-great-sounding-speakers-from-$30-to-$400/

 

cheers!!!

 

 

 

Is there a similar instruction set for the A5's? I cannot turn it to the 3:00 position.....it would most assuredly blow the speakers. I've never brought the A5's volume knob past 11:00, and that was only for a second. Usually I only listen to them at the 3:00 position. I have amb gamma 2 F++ going to Fiio E11, which then goes to the speakers. This is necessary because otherwise the line out volume from gamma 2 is WAY too high, and A5's have headphone-level input instead of line-level input.

You shouldn't use a headphone amp with speakers, remove the e11 you should use the gamma 2's lineout and control the volume with the speakers volume control, or use a passive volume pot or mixer.

The Gamma 2 has a line out and I'm currently in the process of finding out if MisterX built mine with a headphone-level one and a line level one. If I use just the gamma 2 line out to the A5's, the input volume is way too high and I cant put the A5 past 20% volume. I need to manually control everything via software volume control instead. The A5's right speaker is passive and the left one loses power if I put the volume on the A5's too low. This means that I cant really use the A5's while doing something like being online, since different flash players have different volumes.

I need a headphone level volume out on the gamma 2 to go into the headphone level volume in on the A5's to be able to control volume at all. Furthermore, the Gamma 1 or 2 website specifically states that it isnt recommended to use the DAC without an amp or volume control. I was looking up volume controls but found that randomly adding a pot often causes channel imbalance and sound quality loss, so I just use the E11 as a volume control for the time being.

I still need to get around to testing the Gamma 1's line out vs the gamma 2's line out. Since misterX basically built this thing for me, I dont know which capacitor he used for which output. I'm quite sure he used 470uf for the gamma 1 and 27uf for the gamma 2. As I said, I need to figure this out and test it.

While we're at it though, can you suggest some examples of products I can use as a hardware volume control? I would really prefer to leave software volume control alone because of the aforementioned "overall volume of all apps" thing. Either that, or I need a way to make the computer consistently call the USB DAC the exact same thing. Sometimes its 3 USB AudioCodec and sometimes 4, sometimes 5. because of this, I can either set it as the default output device or configure each program to manually use it as the output device.

AFAIK, foobar doesnt have any wildcard matching for output and I have to manually set the output device every time. Also, VLC has the same issue. I can set the device but it wont automatically look for a different sound card.

I'm trying to get sound working properly in linux (figuring out how to set the DAC as default 1 and using onboard sound as fallback. This has something to do with Udev and alsa commands). Until then, I need a working solution for windows, and AFAIK a headphone amp in front of the dac is the only way to control the volume, since windows ignores its own volume level for the dac, even the mute function.

Using the E11 as a volume is degrading the sound quality badly, all that added THD & noise it's a headphone amp designed to drive headphones not be used as a volume control for speakers.

There are various passive pots avaible on ebay, or mixer wise the Behringer XENYX502 costs little and has good quality pots.

This is directly from the Y2 under "initial check".

What is a high quality pot, how do I figure out what defines a high quality pot or not, and what do i do with it once I buy one?

That behringer looks quite promising....Does it have headphone amplification or will I need to still amplify headphones coming out of it? I'm a bit confused as to how to implement that, though at 35 bucks I'm strongly considering picking it up. I feel like its greatly overkill for my current setup. I honestly need a single channel volume control...I feel like im being flooded with volume knobs. I have the laptop itself, my subwoofer has its own reciever with its own volume knob, audioengines have their own knob, E11 has one too. Then this thing adds like another 5 or something.

Can you ELI5 THD for me (explain like i'm 5)? I get the driving headphones thing, and thats what I originally got the E11 for, controling volume to my headphones out of the gamma 2.