Review Fluance Ai41 Powered 5-inch Stereo Bookshelf Speakers Review: Solid sound, good wood looks

[Admin]

The Fluance Ai41 Powered 5-inch Stereo Bookshelf Speakers don't break new ground, but they're an attractive, good-sounding value, with a remote that's more versatile than most.

Fluance Ai41 Powered 5-inch Stereo Bookshelf Speakers Review: Solid sound, good wood looks : Read more

 

[chaz_music]

I did not see in your article about spectral response. On their website, it gives a rating of "35Hz – 20KHz (DSP Enhanced)", which I interpret as the amp has gain beyond the passive response of the speaker to extend the range a bit. 35Hz bass response in a 5" speaker is superb. It also appears that they are flattening the entire speaker frequency response with the DSP filtering which is an excellent way to match the amp and speaker.

Frequency response is a critical spec that ranks right up there with speaker sensitivity. With each of us having bias on what we can hear, including psycho-acoustic bias, it always best to at least give a upper and lower break frequency in the specs. For instance: There are tons of tiny Bluetooth speakers being sold that to me are awful. They sound like AM radio.

What some of us think is "good" bass is actually our psycho-acoustic interpretation of the harmonics that we are hearing. Our brains fill in the gaps as to what we are supposed to be hearing. That is why people can hear a male voice well on a phone speaker with no bass output. They can hear the upper harmonics of the male voice well enough to understand and even indicate who the person is. But the phone response and speaker have filtered out the bulk of the bass audio power out of what is heard. This is why when we get a hearing test with an audiologist, the test system uses a pure sinusoid with no harmonic content, with harmonics being easier to distinguish. By using pure sinusoids, they can actually test that we hear the test frequency only.

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

Yeah, all speaker reviews should include freq response (unless it's Bose, which hide anything "measurable") & THD. However, in terms of PC-connected speakers, if you're concerned enough about audio to want to know the above, then you're likely already digging into the specs much deeper than your average person scanning a speaker review on Tom's. Probably a review on AVSForum would be more in line with that demographic.

That being said, freq response doesn't always tell you the full story. A lot of cheap PC speakers may have some decent looking frequency ranges, but don't actually sound anywhere as good as the specs might make you believe. So get a good review, if you're actually going to invest a good chunk of money into a speaker set.