Best Speaker Under $100 - They're good... really good

good morning i'm randy i'm the cheap audio man it's saturday speaker shootout i've been looking forward to this all week and i hope you have too probably not because i don't have a ton of subscribers which leads me to ask you to subscribe i know it probably doesn't mean a lot to you but it means a lot to me if you want to try high-res music for free and you live in the u.s or canada i'll have a link to amazon hd if you click on the link scroll down at the bottom of the page it'll it'll say try hd otherwise you you're just trying like regular amazon music unlimited and it's kind of like spotify or apple music it won't be high-res so anyway grab a cup of coffee it's speaker saturday shootout let's get it on all right we have five speakers up here they're all less than a hundred dollars it's the less than 100 saturday speaker shootout i'm i'm super excited you will you may you may recognize someone that was actually playing in the sub 200 saturday speaker shootout and that's the sony sscs5 why is he down here slumming it with the rest of us well because he went on sale for 73 dollars that's pretty incredible okay so from your right my left to your left my right we have the dayton uh let's see what is he he is the something something air b five two air b52 air something like that it's a date and audio okay it's got an amt tweeter all right then we have the nume bs5 we have the mica mb42x i think let me see and b i got it right mb42x the polk t15 and then the sony ss cs5 i'll challenge you to remember all these um model codes they're not easy all right we're getting right into it so first let's talk about build quality um build quality um from worst the best worst is the date and audio it's a 55 dollar bookshelf speaker from parts express okay uh it's the finish is is poor um the baffle is painted and it's not painted well it's got a vinyl wrap um some of the cuts on the back aren't mating up properly it's not built well okay then we will go to kind of a tie between the marker mica what rb no i keep forgetting this mb 42x okay so the mica and the polk um probably similar they're both built in an acceptable at an acceptable level they're different though so the polk has like a fake wood grain which is actually pretty good and if it was like brown it would look really cool um so it's it's pretty good this is kind of like a vinyl plasticky kind of computer speaker looking um finish they're both built well they all have um five-way binding post except for the daytona which just has clips you know the old style the old style of clips on the back and i'm saying clips not clips in the comments told me i was pronouncing clips wrong speaking of klipsch i'm giving away a pair of klitsch r51m speakers i will link that video in this description if you want to get entered if you want a free pair of speakers go watch the video give you all the details and instructions i'm pretty i'm pretty lenient on the instructions so basically you have to subscribe just subscribe and then fill out the thing otherwise i can't i don't have your name so i can't tell who won okay so build quality build quality um next best build quality would be the sony it's it's a straightforward rectangular box speaker but it's finished well it's not trying to be wood grain it's got a vinyl wrap it's got kind of a cool baffle covering it's straightforward it's affordable and it's simple and it's good looking they do it well far and away the build quality would go to the nume bs5 and i'm gonna see if i can show you it's got um a wood grain vinyl wrap that is ever so slightly browner than the front black baffle it's very nice the back has 45 degree cuts which are done really well inlaid ports um it's just built really well all right let's talk about some specs and driver sizes a polk t-15 is a five and a quarter inch woofer with a .75 inch three-quarter inch soft tone tweeter nume bs5 5-inch woofer with a one-inch soft dome tweeter dayton audio is the biggest woofer here it's a six and a half inch um six and a half inch woofer and an amt tweeter so amt is different technology it's a ribbon tweeter it's not a dynamic driver but we'll get into the sound later okay uh mica four inch um woofer three quarter inch tweeter yep and then uh sony uh five five point one two inch point one two is very important because that two hundredths of an inch makes a difference by 5.12 inch uh woofer one inch or 0.98 inch we're just south of a one inch soft one tweeter and then a three quarter inch super tweeter okay all right um the sensitivities on these are all fairly similar the nume is 85. um the nume and the sony are six ohms uh the rest are um eight ohms yes 8 ohms actually the mic is 85 db so the mic is actually though it's not really hard to drive because 8 ohms there's similar sensitivities okay that's great who really cares about how they look some people do i don't particularly care rear ports rear port front port front port no port okay rear port rear port front port no port are we ready to talk about base yeah let's talk about base all right when you're in a budget speaker and i've said it before budget speakers and this is definitely would fit into the category of budget speakers sometimes do one sometimes two things well rarely does a sub 100 speaker or even a sub 200 dollar speaker do three things well from its sound perspective they could get the build right but it doesn't always sound correctly so um pleasantly surprised with a few of these so let's talk about the what i would call the weakest bass unfortunately it's gonna going to go uh to the mica it makes sense too it's physics it's science um it's a four inch it's a four inch uh woofer and i think i got the specs down here it's it is specked at 60 000 uh or 60 hertz up to 20 000 kilohertz okay can you affect the base sure you can move it closer to wall with the rear port it's okay it's okay it needs a sub the problem with needing a sub though in this price category is usually if you're buying speakers of this price then you're probably not either you can't afford or you don't maybe want to buy a sub if that makes sense so i'd rather have speakers be somewhat full on the low end in this price range simply because people probably aren't going to be buying a sub initially okay so let's talk about uh the next best bass okay so if the mica is the worst then it would probably be a tie for the polk and the dayton audio now [Music] i apologize for that unfortunate interruption that was my daughter and she wanted lucky charms so we were talking about bass i believe we were talking about bass i think bass on the poke and the dayton audio would tie um even though the dayton audio is only spec to 70 hertz when you hang it on a wall and it's meant to be hung on the wall because it's got a keyhole this one's also meant to be on a wall they have a similar base response this one's rated down to let's see the poke is rated down to 60. um the dayton's rated down to 70. but i i kind of felt i heard the same i heard the same bass response okay let's step it up a bit bass response um then would come to the the sony the reason why these are really probably the same it would be a tie the only reason why the nume wins in base is because it's front ported and it's not as dependent on placement as the sony the sony has very good bass it's tight and it's fast for a speaker in this price category the nume may not have quite as fast of base but overall the base is going to be a bit better than the sony simply because it has more placement freedom however the sony does have a pretty wide sweet spot and sweet spot to me it defines as where the music sounds balanced from a bass mid-range and treble standpoint i found that this speaker sounded very balanced between 6 inches out to almost 16 inches so i have a much wider sweet spot than some other speakers even even double this price so very good base on both of these the nudge goes to the nume simply because of the front porting okay let's talk about mid-range [Music] okay okay um i'm going to say the worst mid-range on here is the polk and i continue to continue to poo on the pulse last week i pooed all over the s15 it's just veiled it just sounds like uh the speaker is underneath a a thin blanket or a sheet it's just not clear it's not detailed and then in speakers of this price range i don't my expectation is that the sound is balanced and it's clear and that's really it and i don't i think at this price range that's about as much as you can ask the sound is not clear the completely crazy thing is on amazon this has 4700 reviews and they're good reviews this is i think the third best selling bookshelf speaker on amazon okay and if you just buy it if you put it up for surrounds i can see it being good and satisfying that use case scenario it does have a keyhole on the back so you can hang it on the wall that it probably gets such good reviews for surrounds okay it's not as good as as the rest of these um the mid-range then is going to be kind of a toss-up between the mica and the dayton audio and they both have similar mid-ranges because they both have it have a over dependence on the tweeter for the mid-range um this has a 0.75 inch tweeter this one has that amt so they both have a tendency to be shouty okay the mica i had it by the tv so how i how i review speakers is first i put them up in my in my main listening room which happens to be my office i put them on a set of stands i listen to them and then i move them forward or for forward or aft of closer to the wall or farther away from the wall until i get what i feel like is a balanced sound signature and this is all done without a subwoofer i listen to it for a while i i mess with toe in to see you know kind of where i feel the sweet spot is for me but then it also tells me when the speaker is the most bright when the speaker is most cohesive and balanced and all that good stuff okay and then the last thing i do is i put them up on my tv stand and i run them for a few days just with the kids watching tv because i don't normally watch a lot of tv in the living room because well it's got cartoons on it 24 7 on a loop and every once in a while i'll throw on some music so the mic has been living there for the last few days the micas are shouty with the vocals it's metallic okay metallic the dayton can also sound that way but the one thing that dayton has going for it is like female vocals in the upper mid-range the upper mid-range in general comes through crystal clear it's it and it's not on every track but certain tracks the dayton is just whoa wow that sounds incredible okay so mid-ranges uh shouty and metallic midrange can be shouty and metallic but female vocals and upper midrange can sound incredible mid-range uh on these two they're very good at this price range they're very good i would say all the way into up to 200. up to 200. these speakers these if you if these speakers and this one was in the 100 to 200 that sub 200 speaker shoot up this they could they could they could play they could play and they could do well okay mid-range on this um is a little bit smoother than on the sony and it kind of makes sense there's two tweeters so you're gonna have a little bit of an emphasis on the upper upper frequencies but absolutely clear multiple genres of music sound great rock jazz um classical i don't listen to a lot of classical but it still sounds good i do if you consider metallica s m ii with the san francisco symphony orchestra as being classical and i guess it is it just has the greatest rock band of all time playing along with them anyway excuse me um i would say the sony has a ever so slightly cleaner mid-range but it doesn't mean it sounds better it's just cleaner okay the nume has a smoother mid-range more buttery mid-range okay the polk is veiled it's balanced but it's failed the poke as a whole this speaker is balanced it just seems like someone threw something over the top of it okay let's talk about treble [Music] so normally speakers below 100 can actually do trouble pretty well um because it comes down to a woofer and and um enclosure limitations other than a tweeter limitation because twitter put it right there interestingly enough tweeter does not need his own enclosure so tweeter is already an enclosure just uh in and of itself um the woofer is the thing that needs an enclosure to tune it properly so in theory you could take a tweeter and just put it on a literally a piece of wood that's angled and you could get similar response now you're going to have reflections and stuff off the baffle and that's going to play into it but the point is tweeters aren't as hard to tune as woofers are okay so i digress um the the high end on the t15 is probably um the worst simply because it's covered up and not as clear the mica is ultra clear but too clear and uh if you toe out it gets better it gets better i forgot to mention imaging imaging is best on this one uh imaging is actually good on all of these except for the polk soundstage um goes to the nume no sony nume for soundstage that's how wide how high how deep music sounds okay getting back to treble treble's the worst on the polk simply because it sounds veiled and it's not detailed mica is the second worst simply because it's too detailed it's it's not balanced with the rest of of the sound okay uh third best trouble is the dayton interestingly enough and i think it's has everything to do with this amt tweeter if i wish they had a better crossover or more expensive version of this with an amt tweeter because i think there's a lot of potential in this speaker a lot of potential get a little bit better enclosure port it put a decent crossover in it and maybe put a little bit better woofer in it you got a winner i mean this tweeter is good um it's airy um besides the sony it probably has the most clarity and detail out of any of these um and because of that it has fairly decent imaging okay so um the nume is the second best top end it's got a very good oh i just poked it i don't like it when i do that it's got a very good waveguide it's got a very large soft dome tweeter for this size okay so one inch one inch and another three quarter inch amt three quarter inch so there's a there's a theme here my daughter's coming out i'm going to have another interruption [Music] i apologize for the child interruption again couldn't find the lucky charms which can be a very big deal to a child so we were talking about trouble specifically the trouble on the mica in the sony which in this class is class leading okay the wind would go to the sony um and it has everything to do oh i was talking about driver size so there's a theme 0.75 inch um is not as good as a one inch and that kind of makes sense obviously it's how drivers are implemented that's obvious however at a sub 100 level for speakers i think the one inch is always going to beat the 0.75 inch unless there is a ton of engineering going on and at this price range i think it precludes a ton of engineering going on okay so one inch one inch amt this is the best and i think it's because it has that additional three quarter inch and the way it has been implemented has is in such a way that it remains balanced and not overtly bright it remains balanced and it leans and it doesn't lean it leans right into being exciting it's an exciting speaker okay the nume is more well behaved it is neither bright nor is it warm it is a goldilocks speaker i have another review on the nume if you'd like to watch it it is right in the middle right in the middle okay so treble um tied for the worst and this is just in this category okay i'm not trying not to poop on any of these speakers this is the worst um third best with just an absolute ton of of potential if they just throw a decent crossover in here and make the enclosure a little bit better this could be a this could be really good it could that could also push the price up to 100 the thing about it is i mean okay 55 make it 75 make it eighty dollars and just make it good anyway anyway uh numi sony and depending upon your taste you could switch it out okay so what are my final thoughts and the awards [Music] final thoughts are i have no idea how this has such high ratings on amazon other than it being a polk and people just know that name they buy it i could see this being decent on a desk setup with proper toe in and directionality angle proper angling and a subwoofer i could see that this is just too unbalanced it's too bright um and i just think they can't get over the limitations of the four inch this has a heck of a crossover built into it and there's engineering someone spent some time on this thing but it's it's just too unbalanced for me and it can't it can't stand alone without a subwoofer in my opinion or this this this and even this to a lesser extent can stand alone without a subwoofer okay so probably the worst uh than this one than the dayton the dayton has again a lot going for it and on certain songs it sounds great placement is very important on that it needs to go on a wall and needs to be straight out otherwise it gets just too bright and too intense on the treble needs to be against the wall too to get some room gain to fill out that base however it's well balanced and it's clear and that's at this price range is about all one can ask okay the win is going to be a tie and the reason it's a tie is because it's going to be what you particularly like um it's obvious that the sony was going to do really well in this category because it did really well in the sub 200 category at 120 dollars at 73 dollars it's jaw droppingly incredible and i'm not just saying it's a good 73 dollar speaker i'm saying this is a good speaker period um i i turned a few folks onto this and they purchased three people purchased this yesterday through my links and thank you very much um and i don't know if it's available on amazon i think it's sold out okay i'm i'm gonna link it though um and hopefully maybe they've got more back in stock but for 73 dollars man just buy it i'm thinking about buying another i'm actually thinking about buying the towers because the towers are 99 apiece 200 for a set of towers the thing about the towers is they don't go a whole heck of a lot lower than these it's just going to be louder and it might be ever so it might be a little bit more efficient because when you add more drivers and it depends on the wire anyway you can add efficiency by adding more drivers so knockout it's a knockout the biggest surprise for me was the nume i wasn't expecting much especially when i heard the mica and i think these are made by the same company if you look at their packaging the fonts and the layout is very similar and i think what this is is a chinese manufacturer that probably private labels speakers for ra wide variety of companies and has maybe borrowed some of the technology utilized by different companies and implemented it into their own speaker and good because it is good um if the sony didn't exist this would be far and away my recommendation for less than a hundred dollars it's good it's balanced it is not too bright not too warm right in the middle it sounds so much bigger than it is i had these next to the tv for a few days and i was astounded how easily they filled the room and it's a big room it's i think they're 20 foot ceilings they seem like they're higher when i have to change out a fire detector but i think they're 20 foot um it's balanced across different volume levels um it's a very very good speaker this is an incredibly exciting speaker if i had to compare these two to a more expensive speaker that is very well regarded i would compare this one to the elac debut reference i would compare this one to the clips and i would argue that this 73 dollar sony does better than other clips that are twice as expensive and sounds more similar to the rp600m than other clips speakers do i'll debate you on that one all day long it's good it's great who's the winner well we the consumer are winners because these exist and even this one exists i mean the thing about this one though the worst thing this one has going for it is this one and this one because at 55 now you can find coupons for parts express and you probably get it for maybe 45 um but you're still gonna have to pay shipping unless you had like five dollars worth of speaker wire because they get free shipping over 50 anyway the worst thing this has going for is this because let's say this is 20 more okay it's actually less than 20 let's say it's 17 more buy this one buy buy buy this one this is the sony is twice the speaker as the date and audio if not more so okay um pleasantly surprised with this category absolutely kind of blown away about how much speaker you can get for your money and if you get the right speaker it can be very well balanced okay very well balanced very enjoyable without the need to utilize the subwoofer if you do use a sub it's obviously going to make a difference okay surprisingly these don't need a lot of low end i crossed these over when i had them next to the tv at 80 hertz normally people would think a speaker of this caliber would need to be crossed over much higher 80 was just fine actually i crossed this one over at 70 just to see how it sounded sounded great so let's give the awards all right so the monkey is the lowest here monkey goes to the mica there's a lot going on in this speaker there's a lot of good engineering and a lot of good intent in the speaker i just don't think they quite get it right on this speaker there's a big crossover in here and if they could use if they had a five inch or five and a half inch driver i think this thing could be a knockout i just don't think it's there yet okay um little skull little skull is going to the dayton audio um the reason why is it it can be remarkable and with that amt tweeter it's just got a lot going for it if you get past the build quality if you get if they improve the build quality if they improve the crossover this could be an incredible speaker if they if they ported the enclosure and got the right a right port length in there this thing could be a knockout um an absolute knockout and if you're a diyer or you want to have some fun you could buy this and start you know messing around with it drill a hole and put a port in and mess with the different port lengths and see how see what you can get out of it um it just needs more work it needs a little bit more engineering um but for what it is it's it's pretty it's pretty good okay this is a tough one man these are both so good okay nume is my zen speaker it's right in the middle it's a good speaker it's good overall sony is the devil horn skull because it's a rock and roll speaker but it's just not a rock and roll speeder it's so much more okay it's so much more it can do so many genres right it sounds so good it images so well it even sound stage is pretty good image is better than this one so incredible and much more difficult comparison than the sub 200 was this was a lot of fun for me all of these that are still available on amazon will be linked in the description if you want to buy the date and audio don't buy it from amazon you'll pay more go directly to parts express search for a parts express discount code you should find one very easily and buy that there where do these live this one lives in the garage this one lives on a desk this one lives as a surround this one lives as a two channel setup or front channels for a home theater or even surrounds for a home theater this one lives as a two channel setup next to a record player vinyl turntable or it lives as a as some front speakers these are extraordinary extraordinary values the worst thing this one has going for is the 73 sony because this is 17 more dollars and i know that 17 doesn't sound like a lot 17 more than the sony and the sony could be considered better you're splitting hairs though they're different sound signatures okay this is a more neutral sound signature this is a more exciting sound signature this was fun this was a blast everything is going to be linked in the description if you want to try hi-res streaming for free click on the link if you're in the usna or the canada you can use those links um there's a patreon link if you want to give to the channel i have had more people using the links i really appreciate that excuse me that's going to keep the channel going okay that's going to keep bringing more stuff in found a deal on qaq sticks they're coming in i'm getting them today qrq63020 not the latest one but it's the 30 20 still available we're gonna give that a listen we're gonna give that a review okay so if you have requests for we're gonna the next tier is sub 300 speakers us okay so if you have a recommendation or you want me to review a specific speaker and it falls under that 300 a retail price or even if it's on sale right now for 300 for uh you know the holidays let me know in the comments and i will see what i can do to get a hold of him but with that i am randy i am the chief audio man and thank you so much for joining me on the saturday speaker shootout [Music]

Channel: cheapaudioman

Views: 74,569

Rating: 4.8588829 out of 5

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Id: -4qFzG3WDf4

Length: 37min 14sec (2234 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 21 2020