Cheap $88 Sony SS-CS5 Speakers - Awesome

I'm listening to the cheap Sony speakers today in my office system. The system currently consist of a RPI based music streamer, Audio Refinement Complete integrated amp and the Sony SS-CS5 Speakers. In this system, the cheap Sony speakers sound really very good.

At the moment, I'm streaming the latest album from Daniel Lanois - "Heavy Sun" and it sounds very good.

Great speakers for anyone who has a budget of less than $100 (when on-sale).

@reubent  That ARC integrated is a nice amp. Likely gets the most from the Sony speakers.

Got me to thinking about a somewhat unrelated subject regarding persons just getting into audio on a restricted budget. My advice is to purchase a quality 50-100wpc amplifier and source component then spend the rest on the speakers. The result is ownership of an amplifier at a higher cost than the speakers.  There are budget speakers available these days that when driven by a quality amplifier sound quite good.  Time can then be spent enjoying current system while saving funds for better speakers after obtaining some idea of one's preferences prior to making the next speaker choice.  My thinking is that speakers provide much of the character of a system. One needs to know what 'character' they are listing for and then search for the best quality of speaker providing said character. 

@mesch  - Agreed that the Audio Refinement Complete is a pretty solid little amp. Hard for me to disagree with your philosophy as that's exactly what I'm doing right now. The very inexpensive Sony speakers sound pretty darn good driven by this good quality integrated amp and playing streaming audio. Ultimately I will likely buy a "step-up" pair of bookshelf speakers for the office. But for now, the cheap Sony's are meeting my needs for background music and streaming music discovery.

@reubent , why not try the upgrade kit from gr research.  Danny really liked those speakers and said the measured incredibly well.  I know the upgrade kit is around $200 but if you already like them but just want more…

A strong point of them was that the frequency response didn’t change much off axis and they also measured really flat and smooth.

@b_limo  - Thanks for your reply. Just went out to the GR Research site and the upgrade for these speakers is now $345. So, not a chance I'm going to invest that much into an upgrade for these. I could easily buy a much better speaker for that money. For instance, I could buy a pair of Spica TC-50 for less.

For now, they sound good enough for the current use case. If I ever decide to step up my office system, I'll probably buy a pair of small-ish floor standers.