Best Desktop Speakers Under $500 Series: Onkyo GX-30ARC Review

Standing just over 10 inches on their stands the Onkyo GX-30ARC make for a relatively large desktop speaker – when compared to those the average consumer is used to seeing.

By audiophile standards, this pair of active speakers is tiny. And smaller yet, the little brother to the GX-30, the GX-10DB comes in 2 inches shorter and $100 cheaper – albeit without an HDMI ARC connection.

Both models are available in White or Black with plastic bases that have wood-like finish that matches accordingly. The fit and finish here seems quite congruent with their place in the market, that is steps were clearly taken to ensure this remained an economical product, but its been executed well and with taste.

This two-box system has 50 watts of power on tap. Now, that may not seem like much but the engineers here opted to focus on efficiency. To get the most out of every watt, they chose to dispense with the traditional step of converting the digital signal to analog and then amplifying the analog signal.

What Onkyo has done instead is simply run the PCM input signal straight into the amp which then modulates the output and drives the transducers. In the analog path between the amp and driver, a low-pass filter is applied.

Keep in mind, this means that if an analog signal is input to the speakers, this signal will first go through an A to D converter before being introduced to the amps.

For this reason, Onkyo recommends sending a digital signal to the GX-30s – although they do have a single ended input with phono EQ.

Each speaker has two amplifiers on-board: one 17-watt amplifier for the woofer and 8 watts for the tweeter.

Supported bit rate and sampling frequency is limited to a maximum of 24 and 48, respectively, however higher resolution files are simply down sampled.

Touching a bit more on the handling of digital signals, I found the best sonic results streaming from a Wiim Pro Plus via an optical connection.

This configuration allowed me to fix the maximum output bit rate and sampling frequency allowing the Pro Plus to handle the task of down sampling.

Presuming this configuration to be less likely than configured on a desktop, I chose to do most of my listening in the near field at my desk with the GX-30s hooked up to my laptop.

Okay, getting into the sonic characteristics a little more, there were two qualities that stood out most.

The first one and the main reason why I believe this pair of speakers would make for a nice introduction to a fledgling audiophile is the blackness of the background.

Noise in the background is one of those sonic traits that you don’t necessarily even recognize until its gone.

Even if you’re not able to articulate it, this is certainly something that would grab your attention if previously unfamiliar with hi-fi.

The second quality was that of the bass. Now, I’m not talking super deep bass – we are dealing with a 4-inch woofer after all. But starting around 60 Hz there’s plenty of bass energy and its remarkably articulate.

Admittedly, without support down to say 20 Hz, they don’t offer a ton of heft in the bass and lack extension, but – for what they are – I was impressed.

This was most notable when listening to Force of Habit, from Barker’s Stochastic Drift album. On larger, more powerful systems, this track hits you in the chest and although the chest thump was lacking on the GX-30s, it did cause me to raise my eyebrows.

Where the port makes the hand-off to the woofer there’s a bit of a dip before swinging back up and remaining relatively flat through the balance of the frequency spectrum.

This dip means some of the finer details in this 100 to 200 Hz range go unnoticed and takes away from some of the timbral characteristics of instruments that play here.

As I just mentioned, the response of the speakers past 200 Hz is relatively flat with a very subtle lift through the mids.

This subtle lift in the middle presents clear and detailed vocals – another trait that those less familiar with hi-fi will almost certainly take note of.

The track on my notepad referencing this characteristic was Dominoes from Lorde’s 2021 album, Solar Power. In addition to articulate vocals with presence, another note here was how delicately the GX-30s presented to music – there was a light airiness to most everything I heard through these speakers.

Vocals were again delicately on display with Mentissa’s single Et Bam. Along with the gentle presentation of her voice, the GX-30s demonstrated their ability to disappear, generating a detailed and believable holographic image of the performance.

If there’s anywhere where this pair of speakers fall short it’s the upper range of the frequency spectrum, admittedly this is partly to blame on the inferior streaming source – that being my PC – as streaming from the Wiim Pro Plus mostly eliminated the faults present here.

Chief among them was a slightly grainy sound, although this varied greatly from recording to recording. It just felt as if the speaker was reaching – like it was on the limit.

In addition to this, rather than continuing the subtle drop after the mid lift, the engineers here chose to add a little lift around 6.5 kHz. This is often done to try and render ‘clarity’, and I would argue it’s at the expense of sounding believable.

Don’t get me wrong, these things still punch up; my job is to let y’all know what to expect if you buy a pair and you’re just not gonna get perfection for 350 bucks.

If your looking for some enjoyable listening while at your desk, I’d argue that with their attractive modern minimalist design, the Onkyo Creator Series GX-30ARC Desktop Speakers are certainly worth considering for your shortlist.

With a gentle airiness and impeccable imaging, I frequently ended up with a smile on my face throughout the day with them as an addition to my workspace.

And, yeah, these definitely whet my palette for what Onkyo has coming out later this year in the Icon Series – which consists of a pre-amp, stereo power amp, and a streaming integrated.

Thanks for sticking around and letting me share what I heard while reviewing this product.

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