Multimedia speakers are a lot like short films; you hear about them through your friends but every once in a while, a little la-minute piece of film touches something inside of you that a hundred 90-minute films couldn't get to. That's just what the Audioengine 2 evoked within us.

We were told the 2s were toddlers so we gently peeled the tape off the box and helped an exact replica of the 5s (sized down of course) out of the box. However, there's no line in or iPod charging port on the top panel; the former has been passed over to the rear while the latter doesn't exist. Plus, that bass-reflex port has been implemented to a front-loaded slot design instead. But let's not get too caught up in the aesthetics shall we?





Technology
Getting back to that wooden cabinet, the reason behind this choice of material is all for rigidity as the internal acoustic and electrical design has been very cleverly laid out for, supposedly, the exceptional bass response. And if this claim is true, then only wood can provide the stiffness and stability that the lower frequencies would require at higher volumes even when the cabinet they're emanating from is just 1 /3rd the size of the 5s. As for the front slots, a sealed cabinet as tightly packed as this demands a focused approach to releasing just the right amount of low frequencies.

The drivers have been kept quite the same (size varying) as the 5s with a O.S-inch ferro-fluid cooled, silk dome tweeter and a 2.75-inch Kevlar woofer woven with glass aramid composite and supported with rubber surrounds. And since Kevlar has been used, being the gung-ho material that it is, Audioengine decided to not equip the 2s (or the 5s) with grills. They can really take a thrashing without so much as even
a squeal. Well, maybe an aesthetic whimper in the form of scratches on its ultra-shining cabinet (feels just like the back of an iPod). As for the amplifier section, the
left speaker contains an all-analogue designed 15-watt RMS / channel power amplifier. Just like the 5's, here too, one has to hook up the right speaker to the left via a knob type speaker port on the rear panel that's placed right next to the level knob that's been provided.

Performance
After placing these babies (literally!) on our desk at ear level with the help of hardcover books, we qued up Prefuse 73's 'One Word Extinguisher', a melodic, well-balanced 10M album, in our Winamp playlist. We jumped to "90% Of My Mind ... " and waited for the kick and the bass to come ... then it did, with a punch and tightness we weren't at all expecting. It felt like a subwoofer that even had my hard-working neighbours commanding a lower in level. As for the snares, they were slightly dipped and blunt, which is a good thing for ear-fatigue reduction. The high frequency samples and melodies panned well beyond the edges of the cabinets while being rendered with crispness that even the 5s couldn't manage. This created a superbly balanced soundstage we found hard to walk away from; it had us glued to its firmness.

We dropped in John Mayer's 'Continuum' and skipped over to "Vultures", which immediately sounded a lot warmer than we've heard it due to that mid-range dip. When we raised the volume to its highest, the drivers didn't distort even a little due to the bass, the cabinet stayed right where it was and the tweeters gained no accentuated partiality and remained at its balanced state of rendering. We had our fingers in our ears because the level was so loud, and guess what! We realised that our Windows volume level was only at half way! Now that's what you call power-handling!

After hearing these little 2s, there isn't ever going to be a moment in the future when we AV MAX nut-heads are going to underestimate little speakers. For this price, this size and this sound, there probably isn't a single deal out there that can match these Audioengines. What are you doing still reading this! Grab your wallet and get yourself a pair of God's most recent gift to mankind!