Portable Bluetooth Speakers Discussion Thread

[Subob]

I couldn't see a definitive thread for these, which surprised me, since they must be very popular, and the tech seems to be moving on fast. Please merge if there is such a thread in existence here.

For some camping use and very limited indoor use (attaching to a laptop whilst I play around at dj on Mixxx), I've just ordered a Bogasing era S9 pro, mainly because it has a claimed 48hour battery life (crucial for camping off grid), is fairly compact, and has an aux slot, all at a price of just over £70 on an Ebay deal.

So my first question to kick things off. Using the aux slot should give me more battery life compared to Bluetooth, using like for like settings, shouldn't it? Also, how would using the TF card slot compare, in terms of battery usage?

Also, this model just has one woofer/midrange driver, one tweeter and one passive radiator. Models that double up on that driver count are still effectively mono anyway, aren't they?, despite maybe trying to convince you otherwise. You only really get stereo by pairing with a second speaker ( most often via TWS, or cabled on mini rigs) don't you? So I thought keeping the driver count low might result in a 'cleaner' sound, especially as I'll be listening at fairly low volumes anyway in near field, and if I like it and fancy stereo I can maybe pick up another one.

I should add that I also saw a teardown video of the bigger Bogasing S8 pro max, and the person doing it was suitably impressed by the components used, so that gave me some confidence to try out this make. He didn't appear to be a shill either (yeah, I know it can be hard to tell) as he was also answering questions and sometimes favourably suggesting other makes as alternatives in the comments section.

I had looked into all sorts of other makes outside of the more expensive well known ones, too. These included W King, Tribit, Doss, Zealot and such like. Any thoughts?

 

[staticV3]

Using the aux slot should give me more battery life compared to Bluetooth, using like for like settings, shouldn't it?

Not really.

Using Aux may disable the Bluetooth receiver, but will enable the internal ADC.

Also, how would using the TF card slot compare, in terms of battery usage?

I would not expect any difference in battery life, regardless of the chosen input.

Models that double up on that driver count are still effectively mono anyway, aren't they?, despite maybe trying to convince you otherwise. You only really get stereo by pairing with a second speaker ( most often via TWS, or cabled on mini rigs) don't you?

Speakers with driver pairs tend to play true Stereo, but naturally the stereophonic effect will be limited at best.

And in turn you get a very narrow sweet spot directly on axis, and driver cancellation anywhere off axis.

Because of this, I greatly prefer true Mono designs like the Flip 7, Charge 6, Nest Audio etc.

Any thoughts?

For me, only Soundcore, JBL, Minirig, and Tribit are interesting as only those offer granular EQ that I can actually use for frequency response (tonality) correction.

Some examples:


Each and every time the improvement from stock is so dramatic, that I'd dread being stuck with the default sound profile. Just wasted potential.

 

[Subob]

Not really.

Using Aux may disable the Bluetooth receiver, but will enable the internal ADC.


I would not expect any difference in battery life, regardless of the chosen input.


Speakers with driver pairs tend to play true Stereo, but naturally the stereophonic effect will be limited at best.

And in turn you get a very narrow sweet spot directly on axis, and driver cancellation anywhere off axis.

Because of this, I greatly prefer true Mono designs like the Flip 7, Charge 6, Nest Audio etc.


For me, only Soundcore, JBL, Minirig, and Tribit are interesting as only those offer granular EQ that I can actually use for frequency response (tonality) correction.

Some examples:
View attachment 493842 View attachment 493843

Each and every time the improvement from stock is so dramatic, that I'd dread being stuck with the default sound profile. Just wasted potential.

Great reply, thanks.

Yeah, you have a really good point regarding EQ, and I'm potentially going to be winging it a bit with this Bogasing as it only has three preset EQ's.
I'm just hoping one of the presets will do for me. Using iems and YouTube, the '3d sound' setting sounded ok for me on some comparison videos, although I realise that essentially tells me bugger all as to what I'm actually going to hear when I get it, lol.
Given the use cases, good battery life and reasonable portability tend to be my chief requirements, but obviously sound quality has to at least be acceptable. Also, for camping I'll be using an old Cowon M2 DAP and that has EQ options galore (along with a mental potential 90 hours battery life I should add!), so I should be able to get a sound I'm happy with that way, perhaps?

Oh, and another question if I may, please? Since both main use cases will be using the aux male to male 3.5mm cable, a 3.5mm male splitter to 2 female 3.5mm paired with two long male to male 3.5mm cables will work for giving me stereo, won't it?, if I later decided to add a second speaker.

 

[staticV3]

Since both main use cases will be using the aux male to male 3.5mm cable, a 3.5mm male splitter to 2 female 3.5mm paired with two long male to male 3.5mm cables will work for giving me stereo, won't it?

Depends on the splitter's pinout.

Some will split Stereo into Left and Right, others will split Stereo into 2xStereo.

 

[Subob]

Depends on the splitter's pinout.

Some will split Stereo into Left and Right, others will split Stereo into 2xStereo.

I dug this old thing out from my odds and sods drawer.

Would it work, or would I need a single cable with a left and right split?

 

[staticV3]

I dug this old thing out from my odds and sods drawer.

View attachment 493924

Would it work, or would I need a single cable with a left and right split?

That's the latter type (Stereo->n*Stereo)

 

[Subob]

That's the latter type (Stereo->n*Stereo)

I confess that I'm no longer fully understanding, unfortunately.

Oh well, I'll see how I get on with this speaker first before I start thinking of adding another one.

 

[staticV3]

I confess that I'm no longer fully understanding, unfortunately.

Oh well, I'll see how I get on with this speaker first before I start thinking of adding another one.

That adapter takes in a stereo signal and distributes it to many stereo outputs, without modifying the signal in any way.

 

[Subob]

That adapter takes in a stereo signal and distributes it to many stereo outputs, without modifying the signal in any way.

Ah, ok, thanks.
How can you tell the difference between that adapter and the other kind you spoke about?

 

[staticV3]

Ah, ok, thanks.
How can you tell the difference between that adapter and the other kind you spoke about?

One has only two outputs, clearly labeled "L" and "R", the other doesn't.

 

[Subob]

One has only two outputs, clearly labeled "L" and "R", the other doesn't.

Thanks for your patience with me here, much appreciated.

Today I dug out the two very old family BT speakers (Philips BT6600), along with a couple of random cables I had to feed into the splitter. It all works, so might pick up a couple of 3m length cables to get some 'soundstage' into the equation, lol.

Btw, regarding EQ. I just checked, and my little Cowon M2 has no fewer than 44 presets, 14 of which are of the reverb variety!, plus 4 goes at your own customisable settings. They call it 'JetEffect 5'.

 

[Subob]

A quick update here on the Bogasing S9 Pro.

It ticks my boxes for battery life to be used when camping. However, I much prefer the old Philips BT speakers (seen above) in terms of sound quality. So, unless a Bogasing S9 were to come up cheap secondhand in the future, I won't be buying another one to pair up on. It will serve it's purpose very nicely for me, for what it is, but it's certianly not the last word in SQ for a portable BT speaker, IMHO.

Here's a funny thing on the TF card supported file formats.
I have a small library of BBC Radio downloads (via getiplayer), which are all in M4a. This Bogasing claims it doesn't support M4a and I discovered this to be true. So having played around with some batch converting to MP3 without full satisfaction, I thought I'd try simply renaming each M4a file as MP3, rather than converting them, to see what happens. Sure enough, it now plays them all flawlessly!, lol.