Near field shootout

Cat was not harmed in any of the following measurements.

Vanatoo Transparent One:

This is what a good speaker looks like. I did not have these or the Monoprice on hand, so I pulled these measurements from my previous reviews and matched up the scale.

NHT Super One Xu (circa 2002)

These are old speakers, but still in good shape and cost me about $300 when new. Notice the dip/chopping from 3k to 6k.. this is noticeable and very shit.

OSD AP490

This speaker has good drivers and a pretty good design, but tons of tone issues.

Micca MB42

Everyone that heard these liked them, and to be fair the bass on these little speakers is really good. But I have been consistent in calling it like it is.. these are still bad speakers, now you can see why. If the 7k peak is smashed down they are at least interesting to listen to, but still wrong.

Monoprice bookshelf speakers

These are not fun to listen to, build quality issues abound. The bump for 3.5k-6k is what really makes them nasty.

Dayton B652 Recalled version

This is the recalled speaker, as they were a gift, and I have no boxes for them they will be barbecued on 6/5/2013 at 2:00PM for the world wide BBQ652 celebration.

Dayton Revised version

Oh, yeah.. they fixed all of the issues here. These are getting returned, as soon as possible.

Match up: NHT vs Micca

This is why it's best to get OK used speakers vs cheap bad speakers.

Match up: Dayton B652 vs Dayton B652

Guess which one is fixed.

Match up: OSD vs OSD

During my review of these I was short on time and only used one channel to measure most of the time so I missed this little problem. There is a good bit of tonal differance between the two speakers, this is disconcerting, but not uncommon if you look at the rest of the results. Also, since the last measurement they have both developed a rattle resonance. I checked and it was the lead wires on the woofer hitting the back of the cone, moving them a little bit fixed the problem.

These are still the best speakers under $100 I have tested and are really very good at what they do. I am still using these in my personal desktops setup without a subwoofer and just the DSP correction.