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.