Audioengine A5+


I recently purchased a pair of Audioengine A2 speakers for work that quickly became the catalyst for purchasing a pair of the A5+ speakers for our family/play room. We just use an iPod or iPhone source, but I have connect the speakers directly to my Pioneer Elite SACD player several times in my main listening room (living room) and have been blown away with the result. On certain recording I am certain that I could fool most people into believing they were listening to my Focal 836v speakers as long as it wasn't an A to B comparison where the difference becomes very obvious. On other recordings they don't hold up as well and sound strained at louder volumes. I had a friend over and was listening to Saint-Saens Symphony No.3 "organ" and he kept looking at my receiver to verify that the little speakers were honestly responsible for everything he was hearing. The low organ note reproduction is really impressive in my room. Overall, this is a re,cording that is too much for them at volume, but on certain passages they perform almost beyond belief. I could easily consider them in combination with my SACD player to be a true audiophile system.

One of these days the smaller A2 speakers will come home from work for a date with the Pioneer Elite just to see what they sound like with a real source.
mceljo

Showing 2 responses by mceljo

One thing that is unique to the A5+ speakers is the 25mm thick cabinets. That's 1 inch thick.
I have the A5+ speakers connected to my iPod via an Apple 30-pin to RCA cable that allow a USB connection for charging. The A5+ speakers have one RCA and one mini plug connections along with a USB port for charging. The difference between Apple lossless on the iPod and a direct connect to my SACD player is significant, but the iPod sounds great for anything but critical listening and if I'm going to do that I have my main system in the next room.

I had the A2 speakers in the same room and they are not quite enough for a larger space. They were able to fill the room with a nice background volume, but in comparison the A5+ speakers are significantly better. My wife's reaction to the A5+ speakers was that they were not as big as she expected and I had even built a mock-up to set on the shelf.

For a living room you really need the A5+.