Popular Bluetooth Speaker

thegummy

Thinking about getting a Bluetooth speaker to use as a mixing reference (since they seem to be becoming a very common way for people to listen to music).

Does anyone know if there's a specific model that is ubiquitous or at least significantly more popular than others?

p90fool

Perhaps one of the Sony, JBL or Kitsound range? 
I have a Marshall Kilburn which sounds pretty good, but it is interesting how it messes with your stereo imaging, usually in ways you wouldn't expect. 

I think the form factor is probably more important than the brand or even the quality for checking mixes. 

TheMarlin

The big standard Anker Soundcore (not Soundcore 2) sounds great, with an deeply impressive battery life.  Months!  Charge it before you go on holiday, leave the charger at home. You won’t need it!!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B016MO90GW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_fc02Eb570MPC6

i have one for knocking about in the garage. 

i use Anker Soundcore Flare Mini’s in my office - a pair in stereo, impressive volume and sounds very lovely.  REALLY like them. Wait until Amazon are doing a promotion and push them out for half price. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07PPNY861/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Yc02EbMTC3MSN

Good price now!!

There are better speakers around, you you pay a ton more - and at the end of the day, Bluetooth audio isn’t hifi. 

In a cost Vs quality grid, Anker come out right at the top, they hit hard for the price you pay. 

The UE Boom is good, but battery life sucks and it’s expensive for a mono speaker. You can pair them up for stereo, but I got my pair of Flare Mini’s for half the price of a single UE Boom, and sounds better to my ears. 

Danny1969

There's so many different models and they all sound different. Although many of them use the same TI class D chip which is actually pretty good the speakers vary wildly .... in quality, position and materials used. All of them sound mono ish as the speakers are very close together.

I would go for a basic £20 with small speakers as that's what more people will use. Although I've repaired units that cost upwards of £150 most people use £20 units. Useful for checking the vocal against the other mid range instruments but I wouldn't worry too much about using one foe checking anything else

goldtop

I asked here (in the Off Topic area) about a year ago and was suggested the Anker Soundcore, and it is pretty good. The only downside for me is that it has some sort of processing on the 3.5mm audio input - which is the one I use in preference to the Bluetooth connection, to avoid latency.

The symptom is that it gates the first part of an incoming analogue signal. So if your Logic track has a kick and cymbal on the first beat, you literally won't hear it. Press [spacebar] [Return] [spacebar] immediately to play it from the start again and you WILL hear it, as normal.

It seems that with silence, it goes into some idle mode (noise reduction and/or power saving?) when it thinks there's no signal. It wakes up - taking a few milliseconds - once it detects a signal is coming in. Then the gating is (I think) switched off while there is a continuous signal and things play normally.

This suits it's intended use as a MP3 playback speaker for people's mobile phones. It's also fine as a "poor man's soundbar" for movie audio on my old iMac.

thegummy

Thanks for the replies guys.

So from what's been said here, the Anker Soundcore seems like the closest to a "standard".

Anyone know if the Alexa units accept a 3.5mm input? They seem to be pretty popular these days from what I gather.

Danny1969 said:

Useful for checking the vocal against the other mid range instruments but I wouldn't worry too much about using one foe checking anything else

I'm with you with the idea of not being too worried about adapting the mix for lower quality playback systems. I definitely wouldn't want to compromise the sound on decent systems much in order to make it sound better on cheapos. I'd imagine by definition, anyone who cares about sound quality will be listening on a good system and, likewise, anyone using a system that isn't so great is probably doing so because of indifference to sound quality and will be used to hearing less fidelity.

It's really just to check that nothing weird happens on cheaper speakers and that the general order of the sounds is right and the tracks can be heard in order of importance etc.

As a bassist, it can be a bummer sending video clips to friends of bass riffs/licks etc. only for them to play them through the phone's internal speaker and basically getting silence lol. But anyone who's listening to full songs through the phone's internal speaker won't be expecting any bass

Keiko

goldtop said:

I asked here (in the Off Topic area) about a year ago and was suggested the Anker Soundcore, and it is pretty good. The only downside for me is that it has some sort of processing on the 3.5mm audio input - which is the one I use in preference to the Bluetooth connection, to avoid latency.

The symptom is that it gates the first part of an incoming analogue signal. So if your Logic track has a kick and cymbal on the first beat, you literally won't hear it. Press [spacebar] [Return] [spacebar] immediately to play it from the start again and you WILL hear it, as normal.

It seems that with silence, it goes into some idle mode (noise reduction and/or power saving?) when it thinks there's no signal. It wakes up - taking a few milliseconds - once it detects a signal is coming in. Then the gating is (I think) switched off while there is a continuous signal and things play normally.

This suits it's intended use as a MP3 playback speaker for people's mobile phones. It's also fine as a "poor man's soundbar" for movie audio on my old iMac.

My JBL Xtreme2 has the exact same problem. Really annoying with music, but super annoying when you try to watch a film and it cuts off the speech after every short period of silence.