Audioengine once again brought their entire product line of good-looking, affordable, decent sounding, user-friendly gear.
Really user-friendly. Super user-friendly. These folks set their room up while I was eating breakfast. They wheeled in some boxes, plugged stuff in, and listened to music within minutes. Other exhibitors must absolutely hate them. While other exhibitors sweat their setup by quarter-inch increments, and break their backs schlepping thousands of pounds of equipment and insurance policies to their rooms, Audioengine brings little boxes you can buy with paper route money and tuck under your arm.
Talking about the sound quality in this room is almost a waste of time. There was just too much there. The important thing to remember is that it all sounds just fine. It’s not the best you can get, but it’s sure not anything like the worst you’ve heard. Whenever a grey-beard on the internet bemoans the lack of affordable gear that sounds good, I want to smack them upside the head with a bamboo Audioengine 5+ ($469), or the N2 integrated amplifier ($199) and D1 DAC ($169). These are impulse buy prices, and they’ve taught more of my non-audiophile peers about the joys of decent sound than almost any other product line I can name.
Do I need to mention that their room is almost always crowded? Getting in to get pictures meant getting there early. It also meant viciously elbowing people out of the way.
I, for one, dig that.
