Insignia ns-B2111... the good, the bad and the ugly, please

[1984ericfx]

I guess i'm late to the party... Nearly two decades

A while back I purchased a pair Insignia ns-b2111. And honestly, I like them, but I was wondering about purchasing more of them as i've been able to find them fairly cheaply and using them as fronts, center, rears and atmos

I'm curious to hear from people who have actually owned these speakers, what was your opinion of them? Where did they seem to be? Lacking, what do they Excel at? Are they really worth the time of hunting down some nearly twenty years later?

 

[Chris Brown]

I bought a pair of these back when they first came out. I had mixed impressions when just using them on their own in stereo configuration. The speaker itself was a re-brand of a more expensive speaker from a more well-known audio brand, although I can't recall what brand that was.

They have extremely good imaging and soundstage, likely due to the coaxial driver that they use. All of the sound is coming from the exact same source, as opposed to slightly offset tweeter/mid/woofer. They sound good in the mid and vocal range and have a pleasant treble.

Where they really lacked was bass, both midbass and deep bass. Not only did they have poor bass, but the woofer movement from the bass would muddy up the midrange also. That's why I didn't really care much for using them as mains.

However in my case they found a 2nd life as surround speakers. The poor bass response really isn't an issue when using them as rears, but their imaging and relatively small size are great. I even bought a 2nd set to do a 6.1 setup. I used two as side speakers, one as a center and one as a rear center. It worked fine as a front center, but I later upgraded to a JBL 520C center, and switched from a 6.1 to a 7.1 setup by having all 4 insignias in the side/rear. I'm quite pleased with them in that role.

I could see them being good as mains, but you would definitely need to have them set as "small" speakers with your sub crossover set reasonably high, while pairing them with a decent sub.

 

[1984ericfx]

I bought a pair of these back when they first came out. I had mixed impressions when just using them on their own in stereo configuration. The speaker itself was a re-brand of a more expensive speaker from a more well-known audio brand, although I can't recall what brand that was.

They have extremely good imaging and soundstage, likely due to the coaxial driver that they use. All of the sound is coming from the exact same source, as opposed to slightly offset tweeter/mid/woofer. They sound good in the mid and vocal range and have a pleasant treble.

Where they really lacked was bass, both midbass and deep bass. Not only did they have poor bass, but the woofer movement from the bass would muddy up the midrange also. That's why I didn't really care much for using them as mains.

However in my case they found a 2nd life as surround speakers. The poor bass response really isn't an issue when using them as rears, but their imaging and relatively small size are great. I even bought a 2nd set to do a 6.1 setup. I used two as side speakers, one as a center and one as a rear center. It worked fine as a front center, but I later upgraded to a JBL 520C center, and switched from a 6.1 to a 7.1 setup by having all 4 insignias in the side/rear. I'm quite pleased with them in that role.

I could see them being good as mains, but you would definitely need to have them set as "small" speakers with your sub crossover set reasonably high, while pairing them with a decent sub.

I would be running my SVS PB12NSD

 

[zenith2134]

Still have mine. Once every few years, I pull them out for nostalgic reasons.

I did something to the crossovers, I forget exactly what.

They sound respectable at low volumes and look very cool, but, as has been mentioned they have very little bass output and the highs are nothing to write home about.