Demo 2, record with zoom h1, 1m away. Music name - Ciellito Lindo
Hi guys, it’s been many months now since I bought the aktimate mini and I believe the speaker has been fully burned in. At first, I want to go straight away to the bookshelves speaker but because of space constraint and irregular electricity in my house at that time, so I hold back the thoughts of buying one. Before I own the aktimate mini, I’m the user of Altec Lansing mx5021 and corsair sp2500. I would not do a comparison between this three speakers because it’s simply a different league altogether. Instead, I’ll focus more on the build quality and packaging, setup and the sound quality of the mini.
Packaging, accessories and build quality
There’s nothing special about the packaging, it’s a plain box and got the Aktimate mini written over it. The packaging not as fancy as the multimedia speakers on the market but when you open up the box, there is another white box inside the prior one. Boxception! The speakers are covered with some fabric to prevent the speaker from scratches. Beside from speakers, you will receive various sizes of ipod dock, cheap 4mm banana plugs, power cord, remote control and 3 feet speaker cable that usually sell for 10bucks at car audio shop.
The build quality of the speaker is very good even its made from plastic. It’s like tampered glass, which is heavy and solid rather than normal, light and fragile glass. In a word, the mini’s cabinet is very solid and the high gloss black finish is superb and looks exclusive.
Setup and the speaker positioning
Power up the speaker is very easy, it takes only 10 minutes of my time but the placement and how to setup properly is little bit tricky. Bear in mind that your rooms acoustic have a huge impact on the overall sound quality. Try a few different location to find your own sweet spot. Rule of thumbs, always place the speaker that is equidistant from sidewalls and the ideal height should be on the eye or ear level while listening. Rear bass port must be 6”to 12” from a rear wall to make it sound beautiful. Isolation is also very important factor here, if you don’t have an expertise to building a sound trap or it’s simply your space doesn’t allow to (like me) try to use other alternative, such as solid and heavy table or speaker stand. Blu-tack is your good friend, use it at the bottom of speaker to secured it from falling down and as a cheap alternative from unwanted vibration.
At first when I plug in the speaker to the wall socket, the sound a bit dampen, it’s like some ghost put a blanket all over the speaker and the culprit is the inconsistency of electrical power at my house, after that I go buy APC power regulator and tacima cs929 to support the speaker. Since then, it doesn’t stop singing. The moral is, eventhou the speaker not too hungry for power, but damn! It’s very picky on how you feed it (in terms of electricity and quality of the music) Crap in, crap out. I even bought a self powered USB hub to ensure the signal is well transported.
In layman term, it's like when you modified your car engine kaw-kaw until can fly to the moon, but the tyre that you use are the stock one, can’t right? Atleast you must change the tyre to semi slick or sport tyre one to support the power of the engine. If you dont, death will awaits you
Same with the speaker, if your room acoustic not good enough or the isolation not good enough and the sources are not good enough, the sound will be all over the place and that is not a good thing. Until now I still not satisfied with my isolation and whatnot, maybe this weekend I go buy carpet from ikea
Sound quality
So this is the best part of the review, they look good and exclusive but if the sound they produce is crap like “Hidup segan mati tidak mahu” what are the points of buying it right? For your information, I’m listening to wide genre of songs from classical, oldies, pop, rock, post modern rock, trance, dubstep until chillstep? Haha! Youtube chillstep, to know what it is.
Bass
Everyone love bass, who don’t? It gave a soul to music but if the bass too excessive, it can ruin the whole listening experience, you fast become fatigue and sometimes you feel like you want to throw up (atleast for me) There are many kind of bass, we have drum bass, guitar bass, keyboard bass and we have string bass. All of the bass that I mentioned, you can rely it on mini. The bass is well pronounced, tight and it sound exactly where, when and how it should be according to producer intended to. For a conclusion, if you are into drum and bass song, trance and dubstep the mini can pretty well satisfied your needs. It may not enough for the basshead but for the ex-basshead like me, it’s good enough. I mean it!
Mids
Currently, I often listen to Eva Cassidy, Lara Fabian and Babra Streissand, the vocal with the mini is not recessed and not too forward, just nice. It’s natural and clear, even at the very low volume just before the mini turned mute, you can hear the vocal pretty well. Thanks to 5.25” mid driver.
Highs
The highs on this speaker are realistic and crisp. I can listen to the music for hours without feel the fatigueness. Thanks to 25mm metal dome with neodymium magnet, which is licensed from Epos, same with the mid driver.
Imaging
With mini, you can identified and pin-pointed the instrument being play in the music. No problem whatsoever. Even with other speaker, I believe you can hear it, the question in this matter are always on how accurate the sounds of piano, guitar, violin, drum and many others instrument compare to the real thing. Once again, mini can reproduced the sound pretty damn good.
Movies
Nothing much I can comment on the performance when watching movies, what I can say is, the performance is not very good with the action movies. The sound tends to get messy in fast pace action scene, maybe the quality of the movies not too good. You know what I mean, jack sparrow one. However, when I paired it with my ps3 and watch original blu-ray film, the speaker will shine, but the film was Hugo not a black hawk down, so I can’t comment the overall performance in movie experience.
Conclusion
For a conclusion, it's clear but not too analytical, warm but not too excessive, quite accurate on the bass and instrument, a little bit airy and smooth. The Aktimate mini are all rounder speaker! Thank you for your time in reading this noob review
vivakarna setup
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teetotem setup
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arjunazwan setup
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Distributor
Digital Audio Studio
This post has been edited by vivakarna: Dec 22 2012, 05:28 PM