If you’re short on time and just want the highlights of this article, here it is:
The Audioengine A5+ 2-Way Bookshelf Speakers are a great choice if you’re looking for an affordable yet effective audio setup. The speakers offer up to 100W of total RMS power, with a 5″ aramid-fiber glass composite woofer and a 0.75″ silk dome tweeter providing full-range audio. The cabinets also have 0.5″ thick high-resin MDF walls with extensive internal bracing and heavy internal sound-damping material, reducing unwanted resonances and distortion.
The speakers come in several attractive finishes and have plenty of connectivity options, including a USB port that allows you to power an optional wireless module or charge your smartphone or tablet during playback. The amplifiers are a conservatively rated class A/B analog monoblock design, located in the left speaker.
Overall, the Audioengine A5+ speakers offer good sound quality and plenty of features, making them ideal for anyone looking for a simple yet effective audio setup. If you’re looking for more powerful sound performance, you may want to look at other options.
Quick link:
Now let’s get to its bolts and nuts.
Audioengine A5+ Review: Sound quality
Let me tell you something right off the bat.
The sound quality performance you'll end up getting from a speaker will always depend on your room acoustics - particularly room dimensions and speaker positions.
The impact of the combination of these two is actually so strong that in most cases, it doesn't even make sense to utter a single word on sound quality without speaking of them.
This is also why it's not unusual to see completely different reviews of the same speaker.
In one case the speaker might be placed in a sweet spot inside the room and hence the user might be satisfied. In other cases the same speaker might be ill placed and hence user might even have returned it.
- Check out the great deals at B&H Photo Video: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Great-Deals/
The point most people miss here is that it mostly isn't even about the engineering behind the speaker itself. It's about where you place the speaker inside which room.
So, in order to solve this problem, I've partnered with Acoustics and Audio Engineering PhD Andrea Cicero from AC Acustica and created Soundton - a simple, 2D, browser accessible online speaker placement calculator.
With Soundton, now there's a way to figure the sound quality of most speakers before you buy them.
Read more about its working principles at soundton.com.
The end colormap provides you the locations with the best (green) and worst (red) acoustics.