Audioengine A2 Speakers

Michael Brown — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:06:34 -0500

If you think deploying a subwoofer is a prerequisite to obtaining big-time bass, you haven’t heard Audioengine’s A5 speakers. And if you’re convinced you need huge cabinets for thumping bass, you haven’t heard the company’s new diminutive A2 system.

We’ve been using Audioengine’s A5 speakers as our reference point for speaker evaluations for many months—and they’ve been on our Best of the Best list ever since we laid ears on them—so we couldn’t wait to see what the company’s A2 system would deliver.

The A2’s cabinets are about one-third the size of the A5’s, which means they’ll fit just about anywhere, and they feature an absolutely luscious black lacquer-like finish that reminds us of a concert grand piano. The drawback to the glamour is that dust and fingerprints show up instantly, and the latter are hard to obliterate.

The A2 features the same 20mm silk tweeters as the much bigger A5, and we were pleasantly surprised that Audioengine didn’t overpower the 2.75-inch Kevlar woofers. The walls of the MDF cabinets are about a quarter-inch thinner than those in the A5.
The amp, located in the left speaker, delivers 15 watts RMS and provided more than enough power to fill a good-size bedroom. The amp has two sets of inputs in back, one RCA pair and one 1/8-inch stereo. Audioengine provides about 6.5 feet of 16-gauge speaker wire with bare ends, but the binding posts will also accept banana plugs if you roll that way. The company also includes drawstring pouches for the speakers, cords, and power cables.

While an all-around solid system, the A2’s volume control would be much handier if it were located on the front of the cabinet, and we miss the convenient USB charging port that the A5 boasts. But we have no complaints with the A2’s sound—it rocks, delivering spectacular sound with a wide variety of tunes. These speakers don’t get as loud as some larger systems we’ve auditioned lately, but that’s the only thing that holds us back from giving them a Kick Ass award.

Audioengine A5 Speaker System

Michael Brown — Tue, 22 May 2007 18:41:20 -0500

The Audioengine 5 is not only one of the best-sounding speaker systems we’ve heard in a long while, it’s also one of the smartest speaker designs we’ve seen in the MP3-player era. These puppies will fill a room with sound, and they don’t cost an arm and an ear.

Audioengine pitches this self-powered system as an iPod companion, but we think that’s selling it short: The shielded speakers are compatible with any digital media player, they’re a great companion for your PC, and they’re a fabulous solution for a Squeezebox, Sonos, or other streaming-audio system. If you’re short on outlets, you can even plug your streamer into the auxiliary AC power outlet on the back of the left cabinet. But don’t be fooled by the USB port on the top of that cabinet: It won’t sync your media player to the library on your PC—its sole purpose is to charge the player’s battery. There’s a second 1/8-inch input right next to it, so you won’t need to do a reach-around or disconnect something every time you plug it in. These are handy “just what I needed” features that add value without overkill.

The Audioengine 5 boasts a long list of high-end traits: While many cabinets in this price range are fabricated from injection-molded plastic, the Audioengine 5’s are constructed of one-inch-thick MDF painted an attractive semigloss black (or white). The left cabinet housing the Class AB amp (45-watts RMS per channel) tips the scales at a hefty 14 pounds (the right speaker weighs nine pounds). The speaker connections are sturdy binding posts, not cheap spring clips.

Listening to Johnny Cash’s “Were You There,” from the original 1963 vinyl LP Ring of Fire, we were impressed with the Audioengine 5’s ability to deliver Maybelle Carter’s crystalline vocals through the 0.79-inch silk dome tweeters and Cash’s thundering baritone from the five-inch Kevlar woofers without compromising either end of the spectrum. These speakers aren’t quite as tight as M-Audio’s discontinued Studiophile LX4 system, and we wouldn’t rely on them as studio monitors, but they’re great for less-critical—and more common—missions.

UPDATED 2/8/2008: While referencing this review for an upcoming review of the Audioengine A2, we noticed that the online review had the incorrect verdict (a "9" versus a "9 Kick Ass").

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Audioengine A2 Speakers

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