Customer Reviews

Audioengine A5 White (Pr) 2-way Powered Speaker System

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

These speakers represent a mindblowing, inconceivable price-performance proposition for the true music lover. The clarity, neutrality, musicality, staging and transparency is simply unreal for a <$400 speaker. If someone had told me these speakers were 5 times their price as I listened to them, I would have believed it.

2 caveats for potential buyers: if you are looking for asocial amounts of raw power and over the top bass, this was not designed for you. This is for music lovers that appreciate a crystal clear, musical and neutral delivery of material. Considering their size, their ability to deliver very satisfying bass umph and play at levels that will overwhelm your ability to discern detail is pretty amazing, though.

For those who utterly need more bass, AudioEngine was thoughtful enough to provide a subwoofer port, and I can tell you it works, but if I had to do it all over again I'd save myself the subwoofer expense. It has to be turned way down in volume and truly kept under 60Hz to not spoil the Audioengine's balance delivery.

And I don't praise the AudioEngine speakers too easily: I regard myself as a bit of an audiophile snob, listening to my music at home through a $25k stereo consisting of Accuphase CD and amplifier and B&W speakers.

I got a transfer that has me living in a one bedroom apartment for the next year or two. No way the big stereo, speakers (and over 2,000 CDs) could come with me. After doing some research and asking some people whose opinion I respect on less snobbish audiophile forums, I decided to buy the AudioEngine speakers. The setup is remarkably easy: my entire collection resides on a redundant network drive. I stream it wirelessly to a small box (the Slim Devices SqueezeBox) that does the DA conversion at very high quality, and it gets fed into the active AudioEngine speakers. The total cost of this minimalist and clean setup (perfect for a one bedroom apartment that I like neat and open) is of less than $700 for electronics, plus a few additional hundred for stuff that filters and cleans power, plus good quality cabling (but nothing esoterically expensive). The result? Pretty amazing. Do I still miss my home stereo? Yes. But it's amazing how close this gets, and how satifying this is, at a fraction of the cost.

This is a great time to be an audiophile.

Thank you, AudioEngine!

Bottom line: if you use an Airport Express and want to deliver astonishing quality wireless music throughout your house, then get these. They are thoughtfully designed to accommodate the Airport Express in a port on the back. Their industrial design is reminiscent of the iPod Hi-Fi, but delivers a more robust, fuller spectrum sound, in my opinion. Also, being separate speakers, you can place them some distance apart for much better stereo separation. Given that they are roughly the price of the iPod Hi-Fi, deliver better quality sound, and have a nice Apple-esque/Braun design aesthetic, I highly recommend these as probably the best powered speaker solution available for Airport Express / iTunes users. Couldn't be happier.

I owned Thiel speakers, NAD monitor series preamp and an Acurus amp but needed to consolidate due to new living situation. Sold my previous gear and bought these based on the glowing reviews. Literally every review said BUY THESE! LOL. So I did and am very pleased. For a tenth of the price, I am listening to alot more music and loving it!

I do recommend an outboard digital audio converter ( DAC ) rather than the headphone output of your computer. These are good enough that it might be worth if for you.
I hear the Apple airport express does a decent job with this and is better than the headphone jack.

Lots of other details in the other reviews so I won't go into it.

They of course are in a different class than the high end audiophile systems, but that's the beauty of these speakers. They are VERY good and not just for the price, which is ridiculously cheap. They are just a fine piece of stereo equipment. I hear detail I haven't heard before.



Get them. They can be returned for free refund.

I actually found these speakers with a Google Image search for for white speakers with gray accents. I was going for a certain "look" in a room, so imagine my astonishment when the best looking choice turned out to be very well reviewed for sound quality, and (relatively) inexpensive. So I bought 'em.

In the past I've used Genelecs and Mackies as powered monitors, which are of course in another league...but priced in another league as well ($600+ per speaker). On the AudioEngine the amplifier lives in the left unit, so you're not getting two powered monitors; you have one powered monitor that can optionally provide signal/power to a passive right speaker. There's no balanced XLR input or even independent 1/4" jacks, you've got a 1/8" stereo input--and that is it. In the past I've enjoyed the greater flexibility of high end monitors, but for this case it didn't matter. I read all the details on the website so I knew what I was getting. I was happy to get a pair of great looking and great sounding speakers that had made these tradeoffs.

What I didn't bargain for was how the AudioEngines handle their power-save mechanics. It is a documented issue that if you don't play loud enough sound for 15 minutes or so, they will make a loud "pop" as the internal amplifier shuts off. After this has happened, you have to feed it a signal of "sufficiently loud" strength for them to come back on again. As someone who occasionally listens to very quiet classical audio at night, I'm annoyed that they decide to turn off in the middle of it...and that I have to manually pump the volume to wake them back up again. The pop itself sounds like it could be a malfunction, and the two-prong power plug these speakers use show they aren't exactly up to date on electrical grounding practices.

I've learned to live with the power save pops, and don't regret the purchase. Anyone complaining about the sound quality who's mostly playing compressed MP3s or streaming YouTube needs a reality check...the sound is perfectly acceptable and biggest issues are probably arising from the DAC in your line out. I use a Novation X-Station's audio output to feed it, which is better than the built in port.

I'm a mid-level audiophile, and I tested as many powered 2.0 speakers that I could find to replace my broken Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 THX Certified Computer Speaker System (Black) (by the way, excellent sound on the Klipsch but the quality isn't so great). I loved the full sound that the Klipsch provided, but didn't want to have a subwoofer to put under my desk anymore.

I demoed a bunch of competing products, here's a capsule review:
M-Audio Studiophile AV 40 Powered Speakers: Awesome, these are the best ones that I tested and the ones that I bought. Warm sound, bass boost switch makes them sound much larger, but you can turn it off for flatter sound. Quality construction. Not as sexy looking as the others, but tons cheaper and better sounding. You should get these.
Audioengine A5 Powered Multimedia Speaker System (Black): Sounded good, but cost $200 more than the AV 40. Weaker bass, excellent vocals. Big box.
Audioengine 2 - PC multimedia speakers - 30 Watt (total) - 2-way - satin black: Weak, muddled sound. I was very disappointed given the positive reviews on the web. Look very nice though.
Yamaha HS50M (Active) Pair 2-Way Monitors: Very flat sound, but not as warm as the AV 40. Targeted for the musician with TRS inputs.
Bowers & Wilkins MM-1 Active Multimedia Speakers: Expensive, very muddled bass. Look nice, but the drivers and enclosures are too small to make good sound.

I won't comment on the Creative and Logitech PC speakers out there as I didn't test them and based on prior products from each company I don't think they compete with these quality speakers.

Background you can skip
**** This review is for the A5 and A5+. I have a multi room setup and in some cases I used the A5 due to discounted pricing. ****
I realize that these have received many and consistently positive reviews all over the internet. And there is a reason for that: in its price range these are probably hard to beat. I thought, rather than adding more glowing reviews about the sound quality, I'd review my experience with setting these up in a Apple environment.
Now before I get tons of hate mail about my Apple equipment: this is not supposed to be an Apple ad. It is merely meant for those that are looking to use some of the Airport/Airplay capabilities that come with iTunes, iPhone, AppleTV, iPod and iPad/2.
Here is our setup in our home: most of my kids have iPods. My wife and I have iPhones. We also have iPads. We have a formal living room and a family/entertainment room with AppleTV and naturally we have iMacs on which we run iTunes. My iTunes library is sizable, at around 90GB since I digitized all CD's and and records I had over the years. We have this iTunes database on a Synology DS411+ from which we stream and it is shared in the home.
In the family room I have an reasonably high quality stereo setup: Magnetostatic speakers and a amp/pre-amp (won't drop brand names) and CD player etc. Reasonably high end (better than my ears can detect anyways). I installed a Airport Express and used a 3.5mm to RCA cable to feed the AUX input et voila, I can select the Airport as an output location from iPod/iPad/iTunes etc.
I could also use the AppleTV as an output location but that would require me to use the TV when I only wanted to stream music.
This setup led me to think about getting music expanded to other rooms in my home. Many of the systems out there from Bose and Sony seemed to be very proprietary and completely overpriced for the sound quality they delivered, nor did they integrate very well.

Looking for a multi-room setup
Then, during a search for a better solution I ran into these in an audio store which happened to be willing to part with all their demo pairs at 50% off. After listening to them I decided these were right for me:
- They had an Apple specific solution that only required me to BYOA, Bring Your Own Airport Express. Those Airports were the perfect solution for me: each pair could be selected in iTunes independently or I could select a whole series of them. An online article suggested you could not stream to multiple AE's at the same time unless you did a workaround (see article URL at bottom) but with the latest iTunes you can select several, all or one output. No work arounds needed.
- They came in white, which I prefer in my home given the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) and Bamboo rather than the standard black only.
- They were small enough as to not draw too much attention.

Anyways, back to the Airport Express setup. It works well. The sound quality is fine and only limited by the quality of your audio files. It also plays in sync (no echo effect) when running multiple rooms at the same time. We, however, tend to use it in the rooms we are in at the time but have done a multi room party with it where people were asking where we got the awesome audio setup.

Since the success with this we have expanded to the master bedroom and the kids rooms so that they can play their iPods without having to buy a whole stereo system.
Not sure what else to say than that this is as easy as it can get for a multi room streaming solution and the sound quality is second to none.
I have heard the Bose lifestyle solutions and mine blows it away with these little critters. I paid half but that the MSRP these are still very very worth it. And Apple sells the refurbed AE's for 69$ so you can't go wrong. Do make sure you do get the 8.11n Airports.

Good luck if you decide to follow suit.

URL I discussed above: http://airplayspeakers.com/confirmed-airplay-cannot-stream-to-multiple-speakers-from-ios/#.Tw-hFZgoa-I

So I am really into music (remixes, mashups, ect). I also like jazz, classical, and many other styles.

I had LG speakers that were about $80. They were pretty good, but the sound always sounded...muffled. I looked online, having very little experience dealing with speakers, and found that the Audioengine 5's were rated very highly by CNET.

Although I am not an audiophile, I play an instrument and listen to music a huge amount. I've heard many speaker systems, and I've never heard the quality that I get from these speakers.

It's hard to explain, but it feels like these speakers make it so that the sound is being produced between them; the center between the two speakers (when they're pointed at me on my desk) is where the sound is originating from. This is very different than just hearing sound coming from a right and left speaker.

These speakers also ROCK at low level volume. I've gotten so many compliments on their sound!

The only thing is that the bass is pretty low on these; I may look into a subwoofer. But there IS bass and you CAN feel it when you're not at the desk or whatever. It's actually perfect for me because I'm in an apartment, and bass is often the cause of noise complaints, not the actual volume of the speakers. But the bass is pretty good...I just like A LOT of bass in my techno.

Also I saw the return policy on the speakers, and you can return them if you don't think they're good. So really, there's no reason not to try these things.

As others have said, you should play music on them for about 24 hours before you make your decision.

Beautifully constructed, and the sound is even better. These blow my old setup away, and it was a comparatively-priced ($400) Logitech system. If you've invested hundreds and hundreds of dollars on your computer system and you spend hours and hours working at that computer while playing music, you absolutely, positively need to invest in a pair of these speakers, which will not only outlast your current computer, but probably the next one and the one after that. It's a no-brainer.

You'll be listening to song after song from your library thinking you're hearing them for the very first time. You'll hear things in your music you've never heard before. Sonic detail is amazing, with full midrange and a nice low-end kick. Rare for speakers this size. And they can go LOUD without distortion. They sound so good I got inspired to re-rip my lossless archive to 256 kbps (AAC) from the 192 kbps I have been listening to.

I went with the glossy white. Black speakers are a dime a dozen, and the glossy white finish really adds a high-end boutique look. Bonus: you won't see dust on them. :)

I only wish I had bought a pair of these years ago. I'll probably be picking up another pair for the bedroom to hook up to an Airport Express for streaming audio, and maybe a set for my wife's office.

Money well spent. Be aware these are a bookshelf-sized speaker. Make sure you check dimensions on your desk to ensure you have the space. And if you don't have the space, make some!

Kudos to Audioengine for this top-notch product.

These are absolutely excellent speakers. I own a $10,000 hifi system with Thiel speakers and Ayre amplification as my main system and use the Audioengines as a secondary system. I wirelessly stream iTunes to the speakers via an Airport Express, which I have plugged into the back of one speaker. The sound quality of these speakers would easily justify a price tag 3x higher than what Audioengine is charging. Very balanced sound with strong, but well controlled bass. The highs are smooth and reasonably extended with a rich midrange. It's a cohesive sounding speaker with excellent volume and dynamics. I am amazed at the power of these speakers, as well as how controlled they are at higher volumes. The build quality is excellent - my only criticism would be the usb/headphone port that's placed on top. Though convenient, it's not attractive. Otherwise, the gloss white paint works and the speakers look great and are small enough to disappear in the room.

I'm a picky listener and the Audioengines are one of my favorite speakers of all time . Hugely recommended.

I've had these speakers for about six months now, and I finally found the time to write a review. The sound these things produce is incredible, but first let me say don't expect a house rumbling bass. These don't replace a sub, but you can easily buy a good Polk sub for about $60 if your really craving that extra thump. Still, without a sub these produce a very satisfying bass, crystal clear treble and a just overall a crisp clean sound experience. They go loud...VERY LOUD. I have never turned the volume notch on them more than half way because A) It's loud enough, and will piss of my neighbors, and B) I'm scared to blow these babies. If you're really into music or video editing like me, these speakers are a must. Set up is a breeze, and audioengine provides a very generous amount of speaker cable to spread the two speakers. Design, build quality are perfect. They even nailed the packaging. Both speakers come in soft cases cloth cases.

If I had to make one complaint it would be that blue LED light. These speakers are located in my bedroom, so at night when I sleep, the light can be a little bright. Not so bright to where I can see it through my eye lids, but just enough to where it lights up my room a little, and hurts my eyes when I look at it. But this is a very minor complaint and something I can easily live with by turning the speakers off, covering my face with a pillow, simply sleeping on my left side.

Overall, these speakers rock, and I get tons of compliments on them. Well done Audioengine.