Hey there party people who ended up here from the googles, you can find my updated review of the B652's over here. If you are looking for the old beat down of the really broken speakers that parts express shipped for a while continue reading, it's a short but mildly entertaining read.

Dayton B652 Bookshelf Speakers

- Cat was hiding from the sound.

Setup in 12.5ft x 16ft living room on the long wall, on top of the subwoofers with some books added underneath to get the height correct. Each one is powered by a Kinergetics KBA75 Class A in bridged mode, source is a squeezebox feeding digital into the DEQX that acts as the DAC and preamp. I set the DEQX to have two profiles, one for pass through with no subs, and the other with the subs enabled and crossed over at 100Hz.

- Started listening with subs disabled.

Turned down the volume immediately, wow this is bad.

I'm not sure if the tweeters are working, and the tone is like a horn from a PA speaker.

Removing toe-in does not help, of axis is just as bad if not worse. I just want to turn these down.

- Enabled the Sub

Flat Bass does not fix the problem, it has no effect on the ailments of this speaker.

- Disabled the Sub

I can't take it anymore, after three songs I'm starting to get a headache. They are not hurting my ears, but hurting my mind. This speaker is all midrange, and nothing else except ringing distortion.

- Did the first measurement and DEQX Correction

- Initial measurement

- Initial measurement with comments

- Corrected response

I tried a couple of correction profiles before settling on this. It's still got a bit of a bubble response bump over the range of the speaker, which is not flattering, but when completely flat they have a gritty texture from the driver distortion that is very audible. The DEQX can only do so much.

- I listened to a few tracks, switched back and forth to uncorrected and corrected and slowly lost faith in humanity until giving up after 4 tracks.

If you like the sound of school announcement systems, or PA speakers that have not been EQ'ed then these are the speakers for you.

- I put off testing these again for a few weeks, I just did not want to deal with them again, but I ended up biting the bullet and set these up on the desktop for a final part of the review, Set EQ in foobar to match the room correction settings from the DEQX as a starting point.

Running on board sound to 1/8 inch stereo jack to JVC 1028V Receiver that is an "Advanced Super-A" amp that sounds like an above average A/B amp putting out about 58 watts per channel out of a claimed 120 watts. Speakers are setup on books about 7 inches off of the desktop and pulled out 18 inches from the back wall. The room is 8 ft x 11ft setup on the short wall.

- Final EQ (click image to download) Note: Adjust 55Hz to 110Hz bands for the room.

This is a good EQ for tone, and a bit better than I the got out of my attempts with the DEQX.. the voices sound correct, and everything is nice and balanced. The distortion I was hearing during the living room testing on the DEQX is still here, and a little more of a bother now that I'm 2 feet away from the speakers.

These speakers are bad, I don't care how much they cost, I've heard factory car speakers sound better. They look the part of real speakers, but they are not doing the job. I have considered testing my old Logitech setup to see how it compares as I don't remember it sounding anywhere near this. I can't recommend these speakers, they are really bad without correction, and have very audible distortion once corrected.

For your average consumer, they sound like a broken Bose 901 with only the front speaker working, who knows maybe someone would like that sound.




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