NEUMITECH NEUMI BS5 Passive Bookshelf Speakers, 5-Inch Woofer, 1-Inch Tweeter, Dark Wood, 1 Pair

Speaker components have changed very little over the years: bass driver, mid range, and tweeter in a rectangular box for the most part. What has changed is the refinement of those components. I've only had these small speakers for a few days now but I already know they were a good purchase. I'm using them in a 16 x 18 foot room and they easily fill the space with sound. The sound is slightly on the warm side which I like. The mid range and tweeter are excellent. Because of their size the bass may be a little lacking for some people. bit if you have a receiver with a 'bass boost' function you'll be fine. They really sound good for the price. You could probably spend 200 dollars more and not get a better sounding speaker. A few YouTubers tested these out and came to the same conclusion. If you want to hear these speakers at their best, listen to any album by Johannes Linstead. He's a Spanish guitarist with a great backup band. I think a lot of people would be happy with the sound of these speakers.

... they go well in my garage... love them.

Perfect for small studio apartments. Adequate bass and clarity. I paired this with a Fosi Audio BT20A and it's perfect!

I have barely been able to hear dialogue from my TV and was using closed captioning as a workaround. One day it hit me that this wasn't ideal and I could do something about it. It turns out that this is a common problem with modern TVs. This led me down the speaker rabbit hole. First I thought about getting a sound bar then took a step back to bookshelf speakers. I gravitated from powered speakers to passive speakers with an amp, since I liked the idea of potentially getting the best components for the money which can be individually upgraded or replaced. The Neumi BS5's are frequently recommended on subreddit r/BudgetAudiophile along with the Aiyima A07 power amp, so I went with that combination. Two YouTube channels that were especially helpful to me have been Erin's Audio Corner and Cheap Audio Man. I am using an HD Google ChromeCast as my main input and an HDMI-to-RCA converter (ASIN: B00BIQER0E) to connect it to the amp. The ChromeCast readily handles streaming from services like YouTube, Spotify, and Amazon Prime, and I found a piece of software called mkchromecast which can stream audio and video files from a PC through it. I got some thicc speaker wire from KnuKonceptz (ASIN: B008H3NXK6) and banana plugs from FosPower (ASIN: B0C3WKLL2R). I am in an apartment so can't turn up the volume too loud. The sofa is about 6 feet back from the speakers and the speakers are placed about 5 feet apart. The difference in sound quality between the TV speakers and the A07 + BS5's is game changing. Not only can I understand dialogue now, but with music it sounds like a proper stereo system - all kinds of music: jazz, rap, heavy metal, electronic. I lack the vocabulary to describe the auditory immersion I get from this system that I was lacking from TV speakers and laptop speakers. It's really wonderful. One thing is the nice flat response where the bass doesn't overpower everything else and the treble isn't piercing. The system gets plenty loud for me with the A07's volume knob turned up to only the 9:00 position. The TV, ChromeCast, A07, and BS5's have formed the basis for a nice little music listening & TV watching room on a relatively small budget. To elevate the speakers to about ear-level with someone who is sitting down, I built some simple bookshelves from pine boards as speaker stands. With all that said, keep in mind that I am someone who just moved to "real speakers" from "afterthought speakers", and not an audiophile by any means. I also haven't been exposed to much else in high end audio, especially not the super expensive stuff. One other facet of the budget audiophile rabbit hole that's worth mentioning are in-ear monitors (IEMs). I recently got into these as well, and have been starting to appreciate them.

They are connected to a Fosi mini class D amp for streaming music in my living room. Sounds great.