Edifier S3000Pro Bluetooth Speaker System

Out of the box they sound great. I bought the black friday special directly from Edifier which included the stands - all in .800. Holy smokes, you have to be kidding!! Now there are some important things that can take these speakers to the next level that I thought I'd share with you since this has brought so much joy to my listening experiences: 1) Stands are crucial. Get the Edifier matched stands which are perfectly designed for the 3000's and bring them exactly to ear level. Super well constructed and look great. See picture. 2) Settings. Begin with Dynamic otherwise they will sound flat and disappointing using the default Monitor setting (which is what happened to me). 3) Good source. Garbage in - garbage out. Forget Spotify. If you are streaming use Tidal. Go with USB or optical direct interface. Forget Bluetooth. That's for mobile listening. 3) Get a good DAC with equalizer. Forget the over-hyped stuff and do some careful research. I purchased the RME ADE-2-DAC for .1000. See Z-reviews for the low down on this superb piece of German engineering. The key is the equalizer - this will allow you to draw the most out of the 3000's. Bass is outstanding with just a small bump to frequencies 50-100 Hz. (however even without that extra boost the bass is very good). I also use a shelf for the high-end to bring down the treble since I'm especially sensitive at that range. 4) With an equalizer you can now experiment with other settings. I originally dismissed the Monitor (Studio Monitor) setting as recommended by Z-reviews. However, I went back to it and started playing around and OMG what lovely sound you can produce with some careful equalization. This setting removes all coloring so think of it as having a clean slate to play with. You will be surprised with what you can do. Tinker, tinker, tinker. Needless to say, the same tinkering can be done with the other settings, such as Dynamic. You can give a slight boost to the midrange frequencies to improve midrange performance for example. 5) Use balanced XLR from DAC to speakers. Get good cables but don't go over board. I used 15' Mogami Gold (.120 for pair). All in that's .2000 and way more than the .800 I started with for sure. But the sound!!! With the bass extension these babies produce, you will be hard pressed if not impossible to find an all-in 2K speaker system that compares. I mention again the bass because it feels like subwoofers are attached. Also the bass is not booming but articulate and clean. Really good. This is the real strength of these speakers although midrange is very good and uppers with the ribbon tweeter are excellent. I would be interested in comparing these to the KEF LS 50 wireless which currently run for .1800 so in the same price range as my setup. However I think my system will blow them away. Without that bass extension there's no way they can compare. Also the KEF's do not have balanced XLR input. That's a big oversight. Balanced XLR was one of the main reasons I was so excited about the 3000's - that and the 37Hz it can reach.