After the Hype! Revisiting the SONY CORE SSCS5 Bookshelf Speakers!

so a few years ago i reviewed these affordable sony speakers and i thought they were pretty good for the money especially when sony discounts them for under a hundred dollars a pair but that was years ago i've heard a lot of budget speakers in between then and now so i decided it would be cool to revisit the sony's and to talk about whether or not i still feel the same way about their value proposition so let's go ahead and talk about that [Music] oh god i need a haircut okay so i am going to keep this short and sweet many years ago i gave these speakers a positive review and i did that because i felt like they offered a good value for the money at the time and for their price i felt like they delivered great treble quality really good balance between the treble the mid-range and the bass you got a speaker that could actually sound good next to a wall boundary and it would also sound good at low listening volumes in other words i thought it was nearly the perfect solution for the real world environment for somebody who's on a budget yet you still want sound that is way better than any sound bar or bluetooth speaker you're somebody who is limited on placement options maybe you have to put this small speaker next to a wall boundary which guess what is what most people do with a speaker like this and maybe you live in a condo in a town home or maybe you just have family members you don't want to disturb so you can't always blast your music but you still want it to sound good even at low volumes this speaker checks off all of those boxes which is why it's so easy to recommend to people now here we are in 2021 i've heard a lot of other speakers in this general price range between then and now so another big question is what do i think are they still a speaker worth recommending all these years later and in my opinion the answer is it depends for the most part the answer is yes but i think these become a much easier recommendation when you can pick them up on sale because about three or four times a year sony tends to run these sales to where you can buy a set of these for under a hundred dollars a pair now if you can pick them up during the sale then yeah these are hands down still a fantastic buy now at their msrp which is closer to 170 dollars a pair they are still a fair to good value but other competitors have caught up right now you can get powered speakers that can compete pretty easily against these speakers you also have in new entries from polk audio which are also very very good for around the same amount of money but for under 100 bucks these are definitely an easy recommendation to a lot of different individuals now do i think that the sound quality has changed between then and now and has that changed my stance at all for the most part i think it's the same everything that i reported on my review a long time ago i think is still relevant today except for maybe maybe one aspect of his performance which is the treble i feel like the treble is just a little sharper and more pronounced now now this could be all in my head i readily admit that but i wouldn't be surprised if sony changed the voicing just a little bit because you have to bear in mind these speakers are sold in a mass-market retail environment here in north america that means best buy and their competitors are polk audio and klipsch and polk audio and klipsch has a very different sound klipsch has that you know lively you are there to rock concert type of sound with a very forward top end and then you have polk with that meaty sounding mid-range strong bass and bright treble in that environment polk audio clips tends to sound a lot more impressive and then when you switch to the sony's that are sitting next to them the sony's number one they don't exactly look all too great to the eyes i guess looks around the eyes of the beholder but still not only do they have a flat aesthetic but their sound by comparison is also flat because that's what sony was going for more of a balanced presentation something the audiophile would appreciate but maybe not the untrained ear so i wouldn't be surprised if they bumped up the treble a little bit just to sound a little more impressive and expressive in a store environment now that means i feel like they're a little harsher with um a lot of bright sounding music or treble happy music right in other words core recordings i think these speakers are a little less forgiving of that than what i remembered them to be but nonetheless i don't think it brutalizes things you just notice it a bit more now with the with the cores and again this could all be in my head by the way they could have always been that way and i just don't remember but otherwise i think there's still an easy recommendation the only other thing worth mentioning here is that if you're thinking about buying these speakers they're not very difficult to drive but they do like a decent amount of power so i would recommend something that outputs a strong 60 watts per channel from a receiver or an amp that's capable of running six ohms or higher which the good news is most of them can do that and last thing i want to say is these speakers can scale pretty darn well so even though you can sometimes pick them up for under 100 a pair you can actually connect them to integrated amps and separates that retail for in some cases many thousands of dollars and still feel like you're getting a very good worthwhile sound out of them clearly i don't expect many people to do that but again they do scale well so if you have some higher end components outside of entry level receivers go ahead use them connect them you may be surprised anyways the bottom line is they're good speakers no they don't perform miracles they're not absolutely stunning something that's going to cause me to just sit here and rave about them but i think if you can pick them up on sale for under 100 bucks it's a very good buy anyways that is going to be my take two on the sony cores at this point i have nothing else to say guys so i'm gonna awkwardly end this video now thanks for watching and until next time peace you

Channel: Zero Fidelity

Views: 140,812

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Id: d23_dZ34E_Q

Length: 5min 54sec (354 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 18 2021