NEUMI BS5 Passive Bookshelf Speakers, 5-Inch Woofer, 1-Inch Tweeter, Dark Wood, 1 Pair

Small speaker, big sound. Detailed, clear, full sound. I use these near field and close to a wall. They sit over my desk and the stereo imaging and details in the sound are great. Especially for the price. I have turned the bass and treble down to get a little more mids in, because sometimes EQ is not just about adding frequencies but removing some to accentuate what is missing. These small units fill a small to medium sized room just fine.

Speaker components have changed very little over the years: bass driver, mid range, and tweeter in a rectangular box for the most part. What has changed is the refinement of those components. I've only had these small speakers for a few days now but I already know they were a good purchase. I'm using them in a 16 x 18 foot room and they easily fill the space with sound. The sound is slightly on the warm side which I like. The mid range and tweeter are excellent. Because of their size the bass may be a little lacking for some people. bit if you have a receiver with a 'bass boost' function you'll be fine. They really sound good for the price. You could probably spend 200 dollars more and not get a better sounding speaker. A few YouTubers tested these out and came to the same conclusion. If you want to hear these speakers at their best, listen to any album by Johannes Linstead. He's a Spanish guitarist with a great backup band. I think a lot of people would be happy with the sound of these speakers.

I think these are priced just about right and are worth a look. These for me are great contenders for desktop or small room listening with a sub. Other bookshelves I've compared these to are the Dayton Audio B652-AIR and Pioneer SP-BS22-LR with the BS5 being priced squarely between them. First, the Pioneers are better than the BS5 in nearly every way and they should be. They are right now (August 2020) double the price of the BS5. Now the Dayton B652-AIR is a more interesting comparison as they are half the price of the BS5 but are not completely outclassed and in some regards but offer a different flavor, mostly due to the tweeter. After 2 months here are my impressions of the BS5. Build quality - For $90 these are pretty much what I expect, MDF cabinets with a reasonably good looking vinyl wrap. The cabinet does have some ringing to them, but nothing as offensive as the Dayton Audios. They are shorter but deeper than the Daytons and with REALLY stout magnetic grills the front baffle is much more attractive. One of my tweeters was dimpled out of the box, but that was an easy fix with a toilet paper roll and a quick suction with my own lungs. Drivers- Again these seem pretty appropriate for the price, the tweeter has a heat sink to contend with more power and heat dissipation. I would have like to have seen a vented pole design on the woofer being this woofer has quite a bit of excursion but it can heat up pretty quickly when listening loud so I'd keep those loud sessions short. Sound Impressions - I drove these with 2 different setups, an Onkyo TX-SR605 A/V Receiver rated @ 110w into 8Ohms and an Adcom GFA-5500 rated @ 260w also into 8ohms. Both were fed from a Schiit Bifrost Multibit connected to my PC and streaming Amazon HD lossless audio. Most listening was done at my desk with distances ranging 3ft to 6ft with some occasional listening in a 13x16 room with listening distance around 9ft. Treble - This is not a detail monster nor is it forward, it is laid back and rolled off. There isn't a lot top end sparkle in these but they are not boring, just relaxed. The top end is detailed enough when listening at my desk I didn't feel short changed. In a bigger room they needed a little boost in treble to feel right. They will be more forgiving of nasty recordings than the AMT in the Daytons so if you mostly listen to compressed audio formats through like Spotify / YouTube or Pandora these are going to smooth some of that edginess. Mid range: Vocals - Vocals over all sound great. Center image is well defined and engaging enough to keep you interested. Male vocals have body and texture with a hint of chestiness. Female vocals can be a little nasal at times but overall come through nicely. Instruments have decent separation and placement within the sound stage. Bass: Bass is the Jekyll and Hyde of these speakers. At times I'm thinking, 'where is the bass' while others I'm thinking 'where did that bass come from?' The woofers in these speakers are eager to do some work, but I think are choked by the smaller cabinet size. When sitting at my desk and pouring some power into these things you get a nice refreshing breeze coming out of the front firing ports. The woofers are certainly moving some air, but again with the cabinet size, can't play as efficiently. Placing them closer to a wall helps with bass response, but at the sacrifice of sound stage imaging. Overall I'm pretty pleased with how they perform, especially given the price. I'm using them as my daily driver at my computer for listening to music at low to moderate levels with occasional 100db blasts when I have the house to myself. I find their size to be just fine for largish desktop monitors / speakers. A bit of work with a DSP I think will really allow these speakers to shine.

I have barely been able to hear dialogue from my TV and was using closed captioning as a workaround. One day it hit me that this wasn't ideal and I could do something about it. It turns out that this is a common problem with modern TVs. This led me down the speaker rabbit hole. First I thought about getting a sound bar then took a step back to bookshelf speakers. I gravitated from powered speakers to passive speakers with an amp, since I liked the idea of potentially getting the best components for the money which can be individually upgraded or replaced. The Neumi BS5's are frequently recommended on subreddit r/BudgetAudiophile along with the Aiyima A07 power amp, so I went with that combination. Two YouTube channels that were especially helpful to me have been Erin's Audio Corner and Cheap Audio Man. I am using an HD Google ChromeCast as my main input and an HDMI-to-RCA converter (ASIN: B00BIQER0E) to connect it to the amp. The ChromeCast readily handles streaming from services like YouTube, Spotify, and Amazon Prime, and I found a piece of software called mkchromecast which can stream audio and video files from a PC through it. I got some thicc speaker wire from KnuKonceptz (ASIN: B008H3NXK6) and banana plugs from FosPower (ASIN: B0C3WKLL2R). I am in an apartment so can't turn up the volume too loud. The sofa is about 6 feet back from the speakers and the speakers are placed about 5 feet apart. The difference in sound quality between the TV speakers and the A07 + BS5's is game changing. Not only can I understand dialogue now, but with music it sounds like a proper stereo system - all kinds of music: jazz, rap, heavy metal, electronic. I lack the vocabulary to describe the auditory immersion I get from this system that I was lacking from TV speakers and laptop speakers. It's really wonderful. One thing is the nice flat response where the bass doesn't overpower everything else and the treble isn't piercing. The system gets plenty loud for me with the A07's volume knob turned up to only the 9:00 position. The TV, ChromeCast, A07, and BS5's have formed the basis for a nice little music listening & TV watching room on a relatively small budget. To elevate the speakers to about ear-level with someone who is sitting down, I built some simple bookshelves from pine boards as speaker stands. With all that said, keep in mind that I am someone who just moved to "real speakers" from "afterthought speakers", and not an audiophile by any means. I also haven't been exposed to much else in high end audio, especially not the super expensive stuff. One other facet of the budget audiophile rabbit hole that's worth mentioning are in-ear monitors (IEMs). I recently got into these as well, and have been starting to appreciate them.

... they go well in my garage... love them.

Perfect for small studio apartments. Adequate bass and clarity. I paired this with a Fosi Audio BT20A and it's perfect!

They are connected to a Fosi mini class D amp for streaming music in my living room. Sounds great.

There Are Budget speakers I tried 3 pairs Micca, Sony and on other names not coming to mind. I was expecting more considering the Reviewers. Nueumi BS5 Poor highs and sound very distanced. Settled for SMNy CSS-5 (3 way) bookshelves with excellent highes and it felt like the band war right there. Of Course I Bought the sony's at $100 off so they were budget!

Update: *Minus 1 star for bad, bad factory smell! Smell was present in the vinyl wrap of the speaker. Had to air the room/speaker, whilst breathing in noxious odor for two whole days to get the smell off!!! There is still some lingering smell even after many months!!* Apart from the bad smell from my speaker.... This is a great neutral speaker and my preliminary observations are that it has excellent directivity & soundstage. A compact 5 incher that truly sounds like a 5 incher! I live in a flat where my living room isn't too large, where I use 5 inch bookshelves, the bedrooms use 4 inchers. And there is a difference in the soundstage width and basically how big the sound is, with 5 vs 4, as I am very well aware of by now... As this is a relatively compact 5 incher, I actually can get that big living room sound now in my master bedroom! Wow! Compared with and A/Bed the BS5s with a Dali Spektor 1 and the Dalis audibly had a smaller soundstage width and weaker bass. Though its bass was precise and blended in very well. Had to reduce the bass a little on the Neumis as they were shoved up all the way against the wall of my bedroom TV console. {I actually bought them for this use scenario as they have front reflex ports.} After which, the sound was well balanced and very pleasing; this neutral speaker shone, honestly and unassumingly (like a neutral speaker would) bringing forth the actuality of whatever media content was playing with a scale disproportionate to it's size. I will update accordingly as I spend more time with this speaker. But it definitely is a keeper! :) Long term update: They're still holding their own against the competition (ie: the other 6 speakers) in my bedroom. As they're not bright, I only use them for music or music-based TV shows. Or when the kids are watching. Movies or shows where speech is the main thing will see the brighter speakers doing duty (ie: Dali Spektor 1/Micca mb42x/Polk T15). This completes my set of (mainly warmer) music speakers (Neumi BS5/Polk S10/Micca OoOs). The Neumis serve a purpose & are doing it exceedingly well. Will be keeping these for a long time, they're great.... Apart from the smell....