Link to my full writeup and data are here:
Monoprice Encore B6 Bookshelf Speaker Review
www.erinsaudiocorner.com
A sample of the review is provided below but I encourage you to look at the rest of the data in the link above to get the full story.
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And my conclusion/notes:
- The bass is pretty darn nice. In my case, the speakers were away from the walls about 3 feet and while there wasn’t a lot of low bass, the midbass had a nice ‘attack’ to it. I attribute some of this to the mild bump at 100Hz but also to the extended port tuning that puts the F3 point at about 68Hz with an F10 at about 37Hz. Placement near a wall will help this but since you have a port here, you’ll need to be careful. It might be worth you taking the time to try stuffing a rag in the port and putting the speaker a bit closer to the wall (say, like you might a surround speaker in a home theater) and see if you like the response.
- While the distortion profile is respectable, high output listening or home theater I still recommend treating these as you would a similar sized bookshelf speaker by crossing them over to a subwoofer. The typical electrical filter on AVRs of 80Hz would be a reasonable place to start here.
- Listening on-axis is not recommended here. I recommend turning the speakers off-axis. How much is up to you but I think 10° is sufficient. The reason for this is to tame some of the on-axis peak/dip caused by the waveguide/baffle symmetry. Though, to be honest, a lot of the peaks/dips in the high frequency area aren’t as troubling as the data might indicate. Hearing these kinds of things is something that should be tested blindly but simply from the perspective of knowing it’s going to be there; it might be prudent to at least play with this aiming.
- I use my music app and applied a single band of EQ at 4kHz (-3dB, Q = 3) and found the speaker to be much more pleasant. When toggling the EQ on/off it was pretty evident that the 3-4kHz peak shown in the Estimated In-Room response was causing a bit of ‘edge’ that I wasn’t fond of.
- Vertical positioning should be between the waveguide and midwoofer, though, interestingly, the data indicates that the response is rather neutral at +30° (but not so much at +10° or +20°.)
- Horizontal radiation in my listening session was nice. Not super wide, but it seemed to be reasonably even in the room with respect to the on-axis response vs what was reflected and how that impacts the overall timbre of the sound. Though, as expected, the waveguide does narrow the response in the higher frequencies, it isn’t extreme and yields a horizontal radiation pattern of about ±50° from 800Hz to 10kHz. The radiation is about ±75° from 300Hz to 800Hz and below this it is going omnidirectional.
While the data isn’t perfect, the attributes of this speaker relative to its price make it an option worth considering. From sound quality to looks, it’s a little of everything at a relatively low price. You get nice response and you get a nice looking speaker with the typical black veneer on the sides but the added gloss top and bottom that take it from a “plain” speaker to one that might fool your friends and/or significant other … heck, maybe even yourself, into thinking you spent a couple hundred bucks more than you did.
- Erin
