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Okay, got'em, tested them, took the measurements.

Okay I picked up a pair earlier today at the local Best Buy.

The funny part was when the cashier asked if I wanted the extended warranty. I laughed. Out of curiosity though I asked how much it was. It was $29. extra. I did not opt for the extra coverage. :-)

For starters they are packed well and look nice.

My first issue I had with them was how resonant the box was. There is a single brace centered between the drivers but it was still pretty hollow sounding. The grove cut and folded sides leaves a lot to be desired. They are going to require some work to get that hollow resonation out of them. Some No Rez might do the trick there.

First I did an impedance sweep. This looked pretty good.

http://www.gr-research.com/images/insignia impedance.jpg

The tuning frequency was at 58Hz and the minimum impedance dip was on the tweeter end and was 5.45 ohms.

Next I took a frequency response. Here is a curve of each speaker taken with 1 watt and at 1 meter.

http://www.gr-research.com/images/insignia pair.jpg

Not bad for pair matching, but a little rough. That peak at 840Hz is going to be annoying especially since it is followed by a 5db drop. The tweeters response is pretty rough too but keeps a good average. On the bright side it is within +/-3db (an industry standard), but it is pretty rough.

Then I wondered if any of the roughness was due to a resonance that was not being controlled or if it was just amplitude unevenness.

See spectral decay:

http://www.gr-research.com/images/insignia decay.jpg

The only real resonance problem was at the peak at 840Hz. Some of this might be fixable if attenuated well.

A higher order network might take care of a lot of it, or it may need a little impedance trap or LCR network there to fix that.

Popping it open and the network out, it looked like second order on each driver, but running the traces proved it to be not the case. The two small electrolytic caps (a 1.5uF and a 2.2uF) were used to make one value. The tweeter had a second order network but the woofer had a first order.

I'll see if there is something that can be done with these to fix the problems, and get them closer to an accurate response without spending too much on them. If one were to have to spend a couple of hundred dollars on them plus labor to get them up to speed then it really wouldn't be worth it.

As a frame of reference the X-LS speaker from AV123 is only $199. a pair. It uses much higher quality drivers, is in a much nicer looking and vary well braced enclosure, and is far more accurate.

Here is a comparison. The Gray line is the Insignia and the Red line is the X-LS

http://www.gr-research.com/images/insigversesxls.jpg

If I can put together an upgrade for these though that puts higher quality components in front of these drivers and do so for very little money then it still might be worth it and fun for the customer. It needs to be as cheap as possible otherwise it wouldn't be worth it. I might have to sell half of a sheet of No Rez to fix the enclosure resonation problem...

Stay tuned.

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