Price be damned (I won a choice of new toys) I bit the bullet and picked these up in black.
Let just say I am in love.
These tiny little gems impressed me from the minute I started unpacking them. The packaging itself was not awe inspiring but the contents and the individual attention each item received was top notch. All of the bits are in their own little soft cloth drawstring bags.
Desktop history, skip to #5 if you don't care.
1. (bachelor era):
Several years ago (circa 95?) I hand built an 8" - 3.5" -.5" 3-way bookshelf'ish set of speakers. The 8 is an old CerwinVega red surround pulp cone driver, no idea of the model# but I always liked it's sound, very musical and fast without exaggerating the lows, the mid/high was presented from a very uncommon I have JBL GTXi component set that uses a glass filament tweeter mounted in the center of the mid itself. You might scoff at the brands used but I assure you, the choices were not random. I then took to building the cabinets, no small task assembled and loaded each speaker in 30+ pounds. The MDF was finished using a high temp (450F) applied industrial sealant which has been used for truck bed liners or construction coatings, it takes a beating and is very acoustically dead. I assembled crossovers by hand using ear and RTA to get the exact sound I wanted. This was powered by a Carver ZR500. In short it sounded amazing and took up a lot of desk space.
2. (shared living quarters):
I picked up a pair of Audiosource 6.5" outdoor speakers which I don't believe made it into final production. They essentially were the RSd 6.5 components in a durable plastic enclosure. These were powered by the ZR500, sounded pretty good, got loud, lost a good amount of detail and low range.
3. (more consolidation):
I picked up a small T class amp 25x2 (I believe Nico did a review on a similar one) I was very impressed, this replaced the ZR500 on my desk. We're talking a 2" x 1" x 3.5" box replacing a full 1U rack mount amp, this frees up a lot of space. It was enough to play the Audiosource 6.5's to reasonable levels but did not seem to get the lows out of them that the Carver did, just a small power supply discrepancy
. Not too bad though.4. (F-it, I have a family era):
I was given a brand new pair of Bose desktop speakers, I think they retail around $150 and I really could care less about the model number and I think you shouldn't either. These replaced the T class and 6.5's, and I used my Sennheiser and/or Shure headphones for listening to anything of worth. Bose will work for sharing phone cam vids on Youtube.
5. (winner):
I happily unpacked the gems I started describing above and literally threw the Bose units in the trash without hearing the Audioengines. I used the USB connection and omitted the mini jack when connecting up to my PC, I figured any manufacturer or worth would use a good DAC in their amp. I was not disappointed, the PCM2704C in use is fabulous. The little ported enclosures provide surprisingly good low end, I mean I was stunned. With the amount of speaker movement I had going on at first listen I was very glad these buggers are as heavy as they are otherwise they'd be walking all over, but with the combination of weight and the anti slip/noise foam that lines the entire bottom they stay right where you put them. The range of sound that come from the little black box is truly astounding, the imaging is superb, and the space they take up is well spent.
Compared to all of my prior options 10/10 would do again. The A2+ will not rock your house party but you can easily get the volume to levels easily heard through a few rooms and well above what you'd want to be sitting a couple of feet from for prolonged periods. If sound quality is preferred over sound quantity and space is a premium, do not hesitate these are an amazing sounding desktop speaker.
