With the correct cable finally in my possession, I was able to get the speakers off my desk and onto the bookshelf, from where their sound has the necessary room to unfold. Running them through their paces now, they truly do fill my room with sound and it’s AWESOME.
I was a little bit concerned that the bass-reflex slit at the back of the speakers would be less than ideal in this location because the speakers are pretty close to the wall now, but if anything, it seems to give the bass a beneficial boost (considering the size of the speakers). I actually found that, with various songs and tracks that I’m very familiar with, the bass is droning too much in my room, so I’ve added a software equalizer, in order to reduce the lowest frequencies a little bit (about -4.5dB).
After this adjustment, the sound is really quite impressive and I’m wondering whether I actually need to add a subwoofer. Of course there are works like Thomas Köner’s “Daikan” which contains incredibly low frequencies that would be nice to “feel”, but it’s an exception. The “bass massage” of Hecq’s “Bete Noir” sounds surprisingly good even without a subwoofer.
I’m thoroughly impressed by the sound and after the software EQ adjustment, am enjoying it a lot. The speakers are “loud without being loud”, if that makes any sense. I think the upper part of the bass well into the midrange was where the small desktop satellites of my old system were lacking, and I never noticed this until now. I’m sitting at my desk and the speakers, about 6 feet away from me, make me feel as if I’m surrounded by sound. Needless to say: I love it!
The loudness is easily enough for my listening but at higher volume levels, but, going back to the sub-considerations, I do notice that the physical presence of true low frequencies is missing. Maybe that is “subwoofer residue” from my previous setup, so I’m giving myself some time to get used to the new speakers and adapt to the new listening experience.
(if I were to add a subwoofer, I might look for a model that has a signal pass-through with a high-pass filter, to reduce the lowest frequencies before going into the A5+ speakers.)