I want to believe this tiny thing will sound good enough for the 2-4 hours of daily use. I know better...nothing beats displacement when it comes to sound no mater the wizardry...
I mean, Hoffmann's Iron Law always applies - playing low, playing loud, small speaker, pick two. The D3V can play really low for a 3" class speaker, but obviously it won't play deep bass particularly loud. (Using a smaller woofer attacks displacement on two fronts - obviously surface area becomes smaller, but so generally does linear excursion.) It'll do decently at half a meter, but rocking the entire room is not going to happen without compromising on bass output, which is what the bass shelf settings are for.
Having physics on your side tends to make things a whole lot easier and cheaper. You'll be hard-pressed to find
any 3-3.5" midwoofer with the level handling of a half-decent 5.25" one, but price wise they aren't actually all the different. Occasionally a good 4.5" will beat a so-so 5.25", but that's about as much as you can typically stretch things without driver cost going out of hand. And I'm not kidding - if you wanted the absolute best drivers, you could splurge on some Purifi ones, but then one of their 4" jobs is going to cost almost as much as an entire decent desktop speaker system.
Likewise, not making your enclosure as small as humanly possible is a cheap way of increasing output. (Note how the most compact of designs also tend to be using passive radiators, which aren't exactly free either. They do avoid having a BR port turn into a hairdryer of sorts at high levels, not to mention the possibility of internal resonances getting out via the port.)
Kali has some prime examples for both, like the LP-UNF (a 4.5" desktop speaker system that
can rock a room if need be) or their LP-6v2 monitors (6.5") where you can tell from driver spacing alone that they're not intended for the very closest of distances. In nearfield applications, 5.25" woofers are a very popular size, and you can get very competent budget ones in the $300-400 range per pair. (Note, T5Vs are quite notorious for being hissy, with noise levels even ahead of the classic JBL 305P MkII. You should be better off with the likes of KRK RP5 G5s or the trusty Mackie MR524 if that is a concern. JBL and Focal remain the kings of deepest bass coverage in the 5" class.) By contrast, if you want a maximum of output and deep bass per $ for at least medium distances of 1-1.5 m typ, the budget 8" 2-way class will deliver that although dispersion tends to be a bit less even than for their maller cousins. (Fun fact, the
chonky ADAM T8V actually even has markedly less hiss than its smaller brethren, and that's before even taking the larger typical listening distance into account. And the Yamaha HS8 is arguably the most well-rounded member of its series.)
If you are drawn to and can afford ADAM A4Vs for the desk, odds are the same would apply to their direct competition in the form of the Neumann KH80 or the Genelec 8020D (the former being lower noise and louder, the latter having wider dispersion and lower power consumption). Generally speaking this class tends to be approaching "proper" full-range but in most cases falls slightly short still. A bunch of standard 5.25" jobs has similar -3 dB points but lower -10 dB which is a better indication of effective bass coverage. Even some 3" ones are pushed lower (e.g. iLoud Micro, ADAM D3V) but you can tell how much of a stretch that is by how they're dropping like a rock below that.
Anyway, if you're after "classic" monitors with analog balanced inputs, those should probably be complemented with a matching DAC or audio interface ($200-300 should generally do).
HD490Pros are good cans, but there is something to be said about HD600s, too... they're a classic for a reason. I love how undemanding they are. They should work splendidly from the MBP's headphone jack. The PC side may be hit and miss in terms of output impedance and level depending on the onboard audio implementation, but if in doubt you can always spruce it up with a Topping L30 II / Atom Amp 2 / Schiit Magni or similar. Oh, you already have a DAC/amp in the Schiit HEL 2, I imagine that would be just fine as well.
I see relatively little wrong with the DMP-Z8 for its price given its feature set - that being a DAC-amp with a fancy DAC and display and a bunch of connectivity - but the question is whether you really want and need such a singular do-it-all device. What if you concentrate everyone into one setup only to find out that you still need decent sound on the move, on the bedside and in the office?
i think i found the speakers... the Adam D3V.
