Review on 🔊 Enhance Your Sound Experience with Edifier R980T Active Bookshelf Speakers - 2.0 Computer Speaker by Jennifer Manning

This is probably the only self powered bookshelf speaker set I've tried in a long time that hasn't failed on a channel since first use. Both speakers still work without turning off the passive side (the one without the built-in amplifier). I hope they never get that flaky. The sound is good and the playback is close. The highs are quite crisp, the basses seem firm enough and the mids seem reasonably clear. The gain seems good enough and they can be loud if you like. It's not a high-end set of precision monitors, but the sound is good. It has one of those ridiculously popular knobs that let you adjust the bass separately. On almost everything else I've tried, these knobs just muddy the bass when you turn them; such devices typically range from fairly clean to full landslides. It's like a real bass control, allowing you to roll off or boost the bass while still keeping it clean enough, although it has a relatively limited effect compared to those landslide controls. This is one of the few that I find comfortable if you install it about halfway (there's a handy travel lock at that point). Unlike some amplified speakers I've tried, these cannot be used when the amp is off (the built-in amp doesn't turn off when the power switch is off). While not surprising (especially at this price point), this is a minor caveat. They pay very close attention to the ground balance. Make sure they're plugged into the same outlet as what's plugged in as the source, otherwise you might get a lot of AC noise. I've seen this often with amplified speakers, but they seem to be more sensitive than many I've tried. Perhaps the lack of an explicit ground? Maybe I have old cables in my house? Unfortunately, the bottom, maybe 25%, volume control is useless. Anything below about 25% and they just go silent, regardless of the input level. That means I have to use a very low signal amplitude so they aren't quiet, just quiet. Since they pick up noise from the PC this is not easy (reducing the volume on the PC below 10% allows the speakers to amplify as much noise as the signal). By using an external volume control (basically the built in variable resistor in each channel) I can drive them to 50%+ from the PC side and set the internal volume to 30% (so they don't turn off completely) and still maintain a good volume range (soft background music when playing loud enough to discern detail when playing on a PC) without picking up or amplifying much processor noise from the PC. Outside of the low end, the volume control seems pretty good. Overall, I can forgive the shortcomings, except that the bottom edge of the volume control is unusable. This limitation required a built-in volume control (so I could move about enough from the PC side to avoid audible processing noise, but the output was quiet enough to work for background music while I was working). They lose a star for that.