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Fed up with the tinny sound of audio through your computer or laptop speakers? Sick of having to wear headphones to enjoy audio from your Windows PC? The Monoprice DT-3BT Bluetooth Desktop Speakers solve all those problems, offering a fun and easy way to add really good audio to your computing experience, whether it's your favorite game, the audio from a YouTube short, or music from your library or a streaming channel. Tech expert Dave Taylor checks out the Monoprice DT-3BT with Bluetooth connectivity and finds that they're a solid option in the budget category.
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Up your computer audio with these self-powered desktop speakers
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Let's check about. Dave Taylor here, and I'm checking out these
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These are the Monoprised DT3 BT desktop speakers, and they're pretty nice
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They will definitely improve the sound of your computer if you've been just listening to things through that little tiny speaker on your laptop or your desktop
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So that's really their intended purpose. They are self-powered. So you will need to plug them into the wall
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but you're thinking plug them both in? No. Turns out that there's actually a wire that runs between the two speakers
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and it gives the secondary speaker, which is this guy, it gives it power and audio signals
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So really all of the circuitry and all of the smarts are in this speaker
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How can I tell the difference? Well, number one, you can see the controls on. on the front and let me give a little close-up so you can see there is a 3.5 millimeter
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oaks in there is a headphone jack for out so you can plug in headphones and then it stops the
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speakers actually making noise and then there are LED indicator lights for Bluetooth or power
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and there's that volume control right on the front super easy to work with the other one has no
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controls in the front because it is the passive unit but the back is really where things are different
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The back of this one basically gives you the ability to plug in that wire, and it has what's known as a passive bass radiator
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It's just a hole because the way that the systems work on speakers is that there's a lot of sound inside the speaker
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And sound engineers have found that if you just leave a hole somewhere in the speaker, a lot of more bass comes out, and it just sounds better
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So that's pretty cool. Now, this one is, like I said, the passive
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it's pretty simple. This one's where all the action is. And you can see on the back, it's a lot
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There are a lot of different controls here. So from the top, those are two quarter inch inputs
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And then there's an RCA input. Then there's a Bluetooth button that lets you pair or put it in pairing mode
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So you can actually get this to work with your phone. There is a power button
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And then there is the input for the power cord. And then finally near the top is the connection for the speaker wire between the active and the passive speaker
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And again, that hole cut out for that passive base radiator. So there's lots going on here and there's lots to hook up
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But once you get it hooked up, it actually sounds really good. So here's what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually connect the two speakers with this included wire
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And you do want to make sure that the jack. do denote black and red and you want to do the same on both sides that let me do this at the same time that is to do with having the sound in phase This should not be this hard There we go
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So that's all hooked up. And now the other end I'm going to put onto the passive one
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And I'm going to match colors. So that's easy enough to do
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This is like speaker wiring 101. There's nothing particularly thrilling about this
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There we go. That's hooked up. This is hooked up. Now we need power and I happen to have an
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extension cord here so I can plug it in and then I can plug in the speaker itself
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and what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and turn it on once I've plugged
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it in there we go and turn it on and now the power light should come on there we
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go so you can see that over there and that's all good but now we need an input
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signal so one thing we can do so we can go to Bluetooth so I've already
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paired it with my phone so let's go in my phone and go back to Bluetooth and make sure that it is connected
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Looks like it is. So let's see if we get any music. And we do
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So the speakers are not facing me, but hopefully you can hear
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It gets pretty darn loud and I can use this volume control. So super easy to work with with Bluetooth and obviously you can use this for sound if you want to watch a video or a movie or something via Bluetooth
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I didn't find any latency issues so that means that the lips will be in sync with the sound of the person talking
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Super important. But that's all well and good and Bluetooth is obviously really helpful
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But what if I want to hook up my computer? So here's where you get into some of the other wires that they're including
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So one of which is a 3.5 millimeter to 3.5 millimeter. That's useful in many cases
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But what I really want is I don't want to plug it into the front. Because remember, the only 3.5 millimeter input is on the front of the speaker
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And I want them to be a little bit more sleek and neat. So I'm going to use the plug on the back
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And to do that, I'm going to need my RCA to 3.5 millimeter
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Because this is going to plug into my computer. and this will plug into the speaker
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This is a traditional old school speaker connection. And again, you want to make sure you get your colors to match
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So that's plugged into here. And then let's see, really nice manual, very helpful
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I really appreciate when companies put in the effort to do that. Put this here
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And let's see. I have a brand new Lenovo Yoga and it happens to be a lovely computer
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So I'm going to just open it up. and log in hopefully and now we're going to go with the music from my PC
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Now one of the things I can do here is I can adjust the volume on the PC Right So I can do that So what you generally want to do is you want to get it to about 50 on the computer and then
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adjust it on the speaker itself. And the reason for that is if you have the computer all the way up, you're going to get
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a lot of distortion and clipping and it's just not going to sound really good
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But by letting the speaker amplifier do the work, it can get pretty darn loud and still
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sound pretty clean. So let me pause this music
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So there's lots to like here. I have to say that I think it's easy to work with
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I like the addition of Bluetooth. The design is very attractive. These are MDF cabinets and MDF in case you're not
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is medium density fiberboard, so it doesn't look like fiberboard. It looks like a really
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fancy audio file finish, which is great. And let me give you some specs. They are 40 watt powered
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speakers with a class AB amp with a 3.5 inch polypropylene woofer, that's not easy to say
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and a 0.75 inch silk dome tweeter. So they have some good audio components in them. They give you
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75 to 20,000 Hertz frequency response. And like I said, on the front, you have that 3.5 millimeter in and headphone jack out
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Also the headphone jack is 3.5 millimeter. So if you are having these at work and when you're off hours, you want to jam the music
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but when other people are there, you want to go to headphones, super easy to do that
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You don't have to mess with your computer at all. Very helpful. It's working with Bluetooth 5.0, so you're going to have good range from your device
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that's like probably 25 or 30 feet away but more likely than not your device is
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going to be sitting pretty darn close to the unit that works fine too and in
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terms of dimensions they are 8 inches tall 5.5 inches wide and 5.9 inches deep and
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each one's about 3.5 pounds so they're not the lightest speakers in the
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world but they're not intended to be these are not something you're going to put in your backpack and take with you when you cruise around these are intended to
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to be set up on your workspace, hooked up to your computer or with the jack just sitting there
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ready for you to plug into your laptop or your tablet or whatever other device you're using
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and then rock and roll. So if you're a gamer, this is going to be a game changer. Make sure that
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your neighbors are okay with that. And by neighbors, sometimes I mean your mom. But whether you're a
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gamer or not, even if you just want to have some nice background symphonic music from the local
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channel, the local college station or something, then get it streaming off of your computer
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plug in these, and you're going to just be in a much more enjoyable acoustic and audio environment
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Now from an audio perspective they sound good but not great I will say that when I turned them up and gave them some pretty challenging music they did have a tendency to have a little bit of audible distortion
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Not a lot and not particularly noticeable if you don't turn it up super loud like I was doing
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But these are not top of the line speakers. I have speakers that are the same form factor that cost 10 times as much
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and yeah, they sound a lot better. But the whole thing is, is that it's always tradeoffs with these sort of device
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These are at a really good price point. They're a really nice way for you to upgrade the sound with your computer or home office
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or your executive suite or something without needing a subwifor, without getting into some complex setup or anything
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They're simple, straightforward, that back is pretty intimidating to look at, but once you get things hooked up the way you want
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it's actually pretty easy to work with. So there's a lot to like here
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They have a good sound stage. They have good frequency, The low end is a little muddy, but nothing that's unpleasant if you have it at a medium volume
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And the highs, they're fine. You know, they're not bright or tinny, but there's just a sort of, they're just good sounding speakers
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And I will say that, you know, if you are still listening to the speakers on your laptop or the speakers on your tablet or you're using little earbuds that came with your phone
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this is going to be way better than all of those. So if you're looking for a modest investment with a significant payback
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then these are a really good choice. Now, we do need to talk about the price
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but before we get to the price, I'm going to ask if you could subscribe to my channel
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Please go ahead and click or tap on that subscribe button, then turn on notifications
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We're connected. Great. Now, these are the Monoprice DT3BT desktop speakers, And I will point out that they also have the DT3, which are as far as I can tell, the exact same speakers minus Bluetooth
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And for a few bucks more, I would get them with Bluetooth because it gives you more flexibility
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But that's up to you. These, let me say that again, are the Monoprice, DT3BT, desktop speakers, and they're 9999 for the pair at Monoprice.com
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I would say these are a solid upgrade if you're looking for a budget choice
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going to give you something that's going to be way better sounding whether you're
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watching YouTube playing video games or just want some background music while you're
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working or frankly these also will work really it'll be really fun and they'll
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work really well if you do a lot of Zoom meetings or something people will just
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sound a whole lot better and that might be fun all by itself so definitely wants to
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check out it's all I got I'm going back to my music so I'll catch you in my next video
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