Tom Lyle of Enjoy the Music moved a pair of Audioengine A5+ speakers around his house and found their best spot on the kitchen counter, where they replaced a Tivoli Audio table radio. Each speaker took up a patch of counter about 7 by 8 inches. Audioengine builds the whole stereo into the speakers. The amplifier, and on the wireless models a Bluetooth receiver too, lives in the left cabinet, and the right speaker connects to it with ordinary speaker cable. You never have to match an amplifier to a speaker, because Audioengine has already chosen the pairing. Lyle found the A5+ "very neutral sounding" with bass that "went surprisingly deep," and Tom Gibbs of Positive Feedback heard "clear as a bell highs." Audioengine suits listeners who want real hifi on a desk or a counter without a rack of separate boxes.

For a desk, start with the A2+. Its small woofers are made for close listening. Al Griffin of Sound & Vision raised the pair on a riser to bring the tweeters to ear level and heard "pinpoint imaging." Spencer Holbert of The Absolute Sound set his at arm's length, toed in at his ears, and found them forgiving of how he sat. The A5+ is the step up for a bookshelf or a living room. Gibbs put a pair on stands about 10 feet apart in a good-sized room and never felt the need for a subwoofer. The HD6 adds an optical input and the circuit of Audioengine's D1 DAC, and Hans Wetzel of SoundStage! Xperience used it on a desk 60 inches wide and suspects anything smaller rules out listening to it up close. The A2+ and A5+ both have an output for a subwoofer, and Lyle found that adding one let the A5+ focus on the midrange and treble.

Brady Bargenquast and Dave Evans founded Audioengine in Austin, Texas, in 2005, after working at companies such as Harman, Apple, Gibson Guitars and Alesis. Gene Hopstetter of Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity explains their roles. Evans does the electronics and Bargenquast handles industrial design and mechanical packaging. The A5 came first, in 2005, when, Audioengine says, good sound was thought to need floorstanders and a big amplifier. The smaller desktop A2 followed in 2007, then the S8 subwoofer in 2009, the D1 DAC in 2011 and the B1 Bluetooth receiver in 2014. The HD6 of 2015 built in the circuits of both the D1 and the B1, and Audioengine calls it its first true all-in-one system. Bargenquast told Wetzel the team tried ribbon tweeters during two years of work but "circled back to our own in-house 25mm design," and kept the crossover parts easy to swap. By 2018 the A5 was in its third generation and had been on sale for more than thirteen years.