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The Egg speakers themselves sound impressively clean and clear.
They don't colour the sound at all. That's all down to their design and not having any straight edges or corners inside for the sound waves to bounce off. Most cabinets have a resonant frequency which the box itself vibrates at, which has the effect of adding to the sound when playing notes at that frequency.
Not so with the Egg100 monitor speakers, giving them a really nice, flat response.
They also go very loud for such small drivers, and stay crisp and distortion free at a much louder volume than is comfortable to listen to when sat close to them. They have a wide sweet spot too, meaning you don't have to sit exactly in the middle of them for them to sound good. They're also not fatiguing on the ears, so you can use them for long studio sessions without getting a headache.
Although monitors are primarily meant for making music, a lot of people use them to listen to music as well - most especially DJs - because of their precise response.
So I set the Eggs up next to my decks and mixed a load of vinyl through them. They sounded amazing handing vinyl; with all the warmth and depth of analogue sound really coming through.
Here the ability to angle the Eggs vertically was very useful. Being able to have them on the same surface as the decks, and angle them right up so I could stand and mix, eliminated any chance of feedback.
I also played digital music through them, mixing from my iPad, running Alogriddims DJAY2 app, and running through a Pioneer DDJ WEGO-3 controller. Using the EQ on the Pioneer I was able to get a surprising amount of bass out of them considering they only have 4" woofers.
Finally I ran them from a Bluesound Vault, which has a 24-bit / 192kHz capable DAC. Playing hi-res FLAC files the Eggs sound easily as good as mid range hi-fi speakers.
Making music
Monitor speakers are really all about making music though, so I invited a producer friend over and we spent an afternoon putting the Eggs through their paces. We used a Focusrite soundcard running into a Soundcraft mixing desk.
We messed around in Ableton Live, Reason and Logic Pro, playing with a bunch of different synths and plug-ins and chopping up some beats and samples. We listened to a range of tunes in different genres and finally knocked up a pretty basic track, before mixing it down.
The Eggs handled everything we threw at them.
They sound really warm and rich, especially when running loud. All the tracks we played sounded exactly how they should, not lacking in any area except perhaps the low sub bass frequencies which the Eggs aren't capable of reproducing.
The only criticism we had was that in places where there was lots of sub bass in the track, which the Eggs can't reproduce, the higher bass they can play ended up sounding a little muddied.
Making crazy-weird noises with the various soft synths in Logic Pro though was loads of fun and, when we'd finished building the arrangement of our tune, mixing it down on the Eggs was quick and easy. They are tight, fast, make a great stereo image without wearing your ears down at all.
