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Listener Howard's Top Ten Reasons to stop thinking about it and buy a Playstation 3
10. It is an excellent BluRay player - Picture quality is great, my 10-year-old daughter said after watching Happy Feet "The penguins' looked liked real life"
09. Firmware updates give you stuff you can use - Up-conversion was a firmware update, Added features to viewing your photos, keeps your Playstation from becoming quickly obsolete
08. It can become the Hub of your entertainment center. - I have my music, photos and home videos stored on the hard drive.
07. Its WiFi - It recognizes media servers, it allows me to download internet content, and using my laptop and TVersity, and it reads my laptop as a server and allows me to view material that I cannot download to the Playstation.
06. It connects you to the internet - It can use some improvement in this area; however, this is an issue that can be address by firmware updates
05. It has the ability to swap out your hard drive for a bigger one when needed. - Since the hard drive is a standard laptop hard drive, you can always upgrade to a larger one when needed.
04. It has not reached its full potential yet, it can continue to grow (how many pieces of electronic equipment can you say that about)
- With firmware updates and future add-ons, the sky is the limit
03. At the time I bought mine, it was the cheapest BluRay player out there. - After time I feel that, I got a steal because of all the other things I can use it for
02. Yes, you can justify buying one to the finance committee by saying "you are getting it for kids so they can play games"
01. It looks sooooo good in my AV rack - The piano black is beautiful; many people squawk about the fingerprints, how many times do you touch it a day?
Today's Show:
In Ara's never ending search for the perfect low cost whole house audio system he has experimented with many powered speaker systems but its always been a compromise. Either the speakers were too small and did not produce enough volume, or they did not produce an acceptable level of audio quality, or they were just plain ugly. Today we talk about a speaker system that gives him everything he was looking for without compromise.
The iPod connection is great and as far as iPod docking systems go this solution is much higher in audio quality than a boom box type setups we've tried in the past. More on audio quality later. But the main reason we tested the system was for whole house audio. The feature that Ara really liked was so simple but very powerful. The powered speaker has an AC power jack on the rear panel. This makes it ideal for plugging in an airport express and then using the supplied mini jack cable to connect the audio. Within 5 minutes Ara had an additional zone up and running in his master bedroom. The powered speaker has a blue LED that lets you know that its on and a volume knob for easy volume management.
Sound Quality
The instruction manual says to get optimum sound you should break the speakers in for 24 to 48 hours. They specifically say you should not do any critical listening tests until you do so. So of course we did do a critical listening test to get a baseline. The speakers sounded very good right out of the box. So over the next 4 days we logged about 50 hours of music through the A5s. The audio did indeed improve. We found that listening to mp3 and AAC music sounded quite good. An advantage this speaker system has over say much higher end systems is that it was designed for compressed music. It won't create data where the data is missing in compressed audio but it can try to compensate for deficiencies in compressed audio. Here the speakers do a fantastic job. We listened to everything from hard rock and roll of Van Halen to Beethoven's ninth symphony. The speakers did an excellent job of playing back subtleties of the Ode to Joy and it handled the loud and powerful guitar licks of Eddie Van Halen.
If you want loudness these speakers do not disappoint. But these speakers can find a home on a musician's desk top as well. The A5s are not so big that they will overpower your desk and they deliver great sound even at low levels. So its easy to imagine a musician working in GarageBand with these speakers showcased on his desktop.
The A5s do not come with a subwoofer but we did not find that to be an issue. They are designed with built-in subwoofers that do a good job with the real low end. The room has something to do with this and proper placement helps. The speakers need to have at least 6 inches from a wall to create the bass. If your room does not allow for this, the speaker has a connection for an external sub. We did not use this input as our room allowed for plenty of bass.
Odds and Ends
The speakers come in pouches a la
Aperion and they include all the wiring and cables you need to be up and running in no time. The fit and finish of the speakers are first rate and can be displayed in any room. One thing to note however, the speakers do not have grills on them. For us it's not an issue as we feel they look better without them. The Aesthetics committee in Ara's house disagreed. Just something to consider. Some may find the A5s too big for a desktop so you may be interested in the newly released
A2s. The A2s are very similar to the A5s but in a smaller form factor specifically designed for the desktop. After listening to the A5s, Ara's daughters have already requested that he buy A2s for them. To be honest, Ara will probably buy a set for himself too!
Conclusion
There are other ways to amplify your iPod but in our opinion none that sound better. And if you are looking for a way to add multiple music zones to your home with Apple's airport, nothing is more convenient. The speakers come with a three year transferable warranty. If you don't believe us? Take them for a free 30 day test drive (only if purchased directly from AudioEngine Website). The Audiogen A5 is the HT Guys choice for listening to two channel music in any room that you want to fill with music!
