AudioEngine A5+ review

Room Cinema System
Finally made the jump away from PC speakers to bookshelf studio monitors. Audiophile have always shunned PC speakers as piece of junk plastic and they have never been so right.

Packaging: 10/10
Boy did they wrap this pair of speakers well. Delivered in a uninspiring brown carton weighting 14kg with Audioengine printed at a obscure corner. Opening it and you will discover the usual anti shock Styrofoam with an additional box for each individual speaker. Within each box is a cloth wrapper each which further protect whatever shock that manage to get through all that defenses.
PC speakers manufacturers usually include the cables and manuals in cheap plastic wrapping while Audioengine actually uses ziploc allowing you to keep the unused cables back neatly.
Audioengine have spend tremendous effort and cost to create this near impregnable package to ensure your speaker arrive in mint condition and unwrapping experience much more enjoyable.

Design and construct: 8/10
The cabinet features matte finish but still quite prone to fingerprint and dust. The bottom have a purported antishock material but is wholly insufficient for its 5" woofer. Anti shock pads should be added optionally as a stick on, especially for speakers targeted for PC. Even then i should be looking for more concrete solutions to solve both isolation and tweeter placement in the near future.
The speaker also lack grills from curious fingers from prodding it. As shown in the picture below, the bass port is situated at the back leading to limitation for speaker placement. I would very much prefer a front bass port featured in their passive variant of bookshelf speakers, AudioEngine P4.
Setting up the speakers is also straight forward with minimal wires due to the lack of subwoofer and table controller. Connectors are gold plated and the mechanism to secure the wires using a knob screw is better than MX5021 clips.



Due to the lack of any attempt to stick their brand on every visible area, this speaker looks great and classy. The only place you will ever find audioengine printed is on the remote and the back of the speakers.
The passive speaker's woofer is not aligned centrally as well (leading to less tension on the southern side of the woofer's rubber). There doesn't seems to be anybody else having the same issue so i presume i m just unlucky. There is no perceivable difference between left and right speaker in terms of the audio, therefore i guess i just have to ignore it. (exchange laws in my country sucks)
The speakers is also abit on the large side, slightly blocking my TV. Therefore check the manufacturer site for dimension before purchasing.

Audio: 9/10
Coming from a Altec Lansing MX5021,the lost of subwoofer is abit daunting at first. But that worry disappears once the speaker is fired up.It could deliver considerable amount of bass for a 5" woofer. However it only has a response frequency of 50hz, it lacks the deep rumble of the lower frequency. Still its lacks the distortion while reaching the extreme end of its reported specification make it sound better than other 2.1 setup. This results in tight and bright bass not found in MX5021.
Its accuracy and clarity totally owns MX5021 in all other frequencies too. MX5021 suffers overly bright highs which can be useful for movie conversations, but its lack of mid makes most music feels flat. MX5021 also suffers from the common syndrome of requiring high volume to sound good. A5+ eliminates all such issues with full flat response from high to low. This result good sounding music or movies at almost any volume.
Tracks from Adele and FunctionJunctionYuuka sounds real good with great sound stage and accurate reproduction of vocals. You would simply feel like they are performing in a quiet bar instead of from a pair of speakers with minor details like catching their breathing in between singing perfectly. JayChou's 发如雪 start with subtle drops of rain splatters which is barely audible with MX5021 unless the volume is turned way up. A5+ can produce it even at low volume similar to my JLabs J4 earphones.  I generally prefers listening to pop genre that emphasize on vocals without noisy electronic instruments added. If you have the same taste in music, you are in luck. I would go as far as saying this speakers is a match in heaven for these genres.
With that said, i still enjoys some noisy dance tracks occasionally and the lack of lower frequency rears its ugly head here. No room rumbling music like those in played clubs even at high volume which MX5021 can replicate to some extend. It still sounds good though due to its clear punchiness of the bass while MX5021 produce a loud but muddy mess.
Badly encoded music in my library also sound pretty bad on A5+ as it unforgivably reproduce all the jarring artifact and flatness with terrifying clarity.
Movies benefit much from the flat response and wider sound stage. Positional audio is much better compared to MX5021. Conversation is crystal clear with satisfying gunfire and jet soaring overhead. Lacking is again the explosions but they overall sounds better due to its lack of distortion at high volume. Another benefit of A5+ is seemingly less hearing fatique during movie marathon but this is subject to different user perception.
Gaming is generally unspectacular with again lackluster bass marring its ability to replicate the explosions faithfully. However, gunfire do sounds closer to its original and the conversation more audible from all the background clutter going on. Not to mention better positional audio exhibited in movies is also beneficial in gaming.
Overall, good mids and high with alittle lacking on lower bass. Dont get me wrong, the bass is impressive for a 2.0 system, but still left me desiring just abit more. Its arteficially capped at 50hz for bass but i believe these woofers can go even lower. AudioEngine can consider allowing A5+ to go lower when no subwoofer is detected on the variable output.
Another issue worth highlighting is the sweet spot of tweeter position vertically. As you slowly shift your vertical listening position leads to rather drastic change in audio signature, with the ear at tweeter level sounding the best. Do take note about volume difference between active and passive speaker. This problem can be alleviated by setting the source volume lower while turning the speaker volume higher.
The speakers are positioned 30cm from the wall for the bass port, positioned 1.2M apart, similarly to my previous MX5021. I seat between 1M to 3M with the tweeter at my chest level. Source is fed by Creative XFI Xtremegamer with 109db SNR but eyeing the unreleased soundblaster Z for its 127db SNR.

Overall:9/10
Costing more than twice of flagship Altec Lansing models, A5+ gives you more than double the return for your investment. Although A5+ is relatively pricey desktop speaker it is considered low end in the audiophile world as they generally shun active speakers and go for passive with separate amps. However with this leap, the difference is so big i cant see myself buying another product from mainstream PC speaker manufacturers in the future.
In fact A5+ also sounds much better than many other boutique PC speakers that out price A5+ by a significant margin. I've auditioned speakers from Bose and B&W and found A5+ more to my requirement of an all rounder room entertainment speaker. They simply lack the bass and power output of A5+ even with Bose's setup of satellites+subwoofer. They may come in more convenient dimension and stylish formfactors but if you have the space to accommodate it, A5+ wouldnt disappoint.