Fluance Ai41. So they are kind of interesting. $249, 5 inch woofers. The tonality is poor(bright), especially given there's some DSP on board. But the speakers get most of the rest decent for the price, so I don't hate 'em.
I personally like the looks, they don't have much hiss, and they don't distort much noticeably, no port chuffing I noticed, lots of connectivity(Bluetooth, RCA, optical, sub out), solid imaging. Unlike the larger, older Ai60's I'd previously measured, the limiters don't kick in too aggressively, nor is there bad built in loudness compensation to the volume knob. Plus the subwoofer out has an 80hz high pass filter. So it's quite nicely featured for the price.
But tonality is just okay. I can see it being "impressive" for first-time fancy speaker owners, but they are bright on-axis and voices sounded a little hollow. More than anything, I noticed the unevenness when playing piano via some of my favorite VSTs, with some notes sticking out more than others. The spin, measured at tweeter axis via RCA.
Still, it didn't sound terrible to me, just not great. Compared to something like the way smaller iLoud MM, the MM are much more neutral to my ear, but their SPL limitations are (unsurprisingly) easier to notice.
More data:
Maximum and minimum bass and treble settings:
You can see that no combination of settings will fully fix the tonality, and there are still broad dips and peaks within the adjustment range. Still, I found treble set to two notches above the minimum. sounded best to me and helped make the overall response neutral-ish in terms of overall tilt, albeit still uneven.
Long story short: good lifestyle features and overall 'tech' polish, middling tonality, though decent in other aspects and free from most cheap annoyances.
Though I definitely wouldn't recommend these to anyone here, I wouldn't be totally opposed to recommending them to someone as more of lifestyle speaker, if they wanted something with all these features and weren't too picky about the sound (truth is, I meet many people like this). Of course, you're better off with one of the many cheap good monitors for sound quality alone.
I personally like the looks, they don't have much hiss, and they don't distort much noticeably, no port chuffing I noticed, lots of connectivity(Bluetooth, RCA, optical, sub out), solid imaging. Unlike the larger, older Ai60's I'd previously measured, the limiters don't kick in too aggressively, nor is there bad built in loudness compensation to the volume knob. Plus the subwoofer out has an 80hz high pass filter. So it's quite nicely featured for the price.
But tonality is just okay. I can see it being "impressive" for first-time fancy speaker owners, but they are bright on-axis and voices sounded a little hollow. More than anything, I noticed the unevenness when playing piano via some of my favorite VSTs, with some notes sticking out more than others. The spin, measured at tweeter axis via RCA.
More data:
Maximum and minimum bass and treble settings:
You can see that no combination of settings will fully fix the tonality, and there are still broad dips and peaks within the adjustment range. Still, I found treble set to two notches above the minimum. sounded best to me and helped make the overall response neutral-ish in terms of overall tilt, albeit still uneven.
Long story short: good lifestyle features and overall 'tech' polish, middling tonality, though decent in other aspects and free from most cheap annoyances.
Though I definitely wouldn't recommend these to anyone here, I wouldn't be totally opposed to recommending them to someone as more of lifestyle speaker, if they wanted something with all these features and weren't too picky about the sound (truth is, I meet many people like this). Of course, you're better off with one of the many cheap good monitors for sound quality alone.
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