10 ms·

Latest Soundboks firmware cuts the performance of their speakers by half

81 points by ghuntley 4y ago

basicplus2 4y ago
Developer working on speaker updates has neighbour with soundboks speakers turned up to 11 day and night
- nsteel 4y ago
  > I've been playing tunes to groups of people as the sun goes down Or is fed up with loud music while trying to enjoy sunset at the beach.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Typical developers, spending months to solve it technically when you could just go over to the person and ask them to lower the volume/turn off the music.
    - yetihehe 4y ago
      Yeah, but your protocol is typically met with "Request denied, fuck off nerd" response. I said typically because I've had some sporadic success with kindly requesting lowering the volume, but it was sporadic. People who would turn down the music don't typically bother other people in the first place.
      - capableweb 4y ago
        Works differently in different places and with different places I guess. In my life, I've probably asked around 30 people to turn down the volume when we've been in nature (parks, wilderness, beaches, mountains) and people played music, only remember once a person who refused to lower it. But this has mostly been in West/South Europe and around in South America, maybe people react differently where you live.
        yetihehe 4y ago
        > Works differently in different places and with different places I guess. Exactly this. It also depends on social skills of the one requesting turning down. Maybe most of the times I skipped even trying to ask because I thought situation was hopeless, someone would actually turn volume down, but in my life I think I didn't even have 30 situations like this. I live in a place where it's rather quiet and poeple just don't push out loud music for long periods. If they do, it's rather sporadic and they try to respect social norms. I also know that I should not be an ass and let other people have fun, that helps too.
    - eertami 4y ago
      Maybe the onus shouldn't be on people to request the music be turned off, but on people not blasting loud music in public nature spaces in the first place? This is just the kid on the bus/train playing music on his phone speaker. Wear headphones or play the music at a noise/distance that doesn't disturb others.
      - capableweb 4y ago
        I agree, everyone should just be perfect and in harmony with everyone else, all the time. That should be the goal at least. But alas, we live in the real world. Sometimes people act in ways we don't like, and we can (and should) talk to them in that case, worst thing that can happen is that they say "No thank you" and then we either deal with that or leave.
        mring33621 4y ago
        worst case, they shoot you
        capableweb 4y ago
        Lol, yeah, if you're unfortunate enough to live in the US I guess that's possible. Luckily, only 4% of the worlds population live in the US, so the rest of us 96% usually don't go around being worried about getting shot.
dewey 4y ago
> "we are aware that the update is damping damping their sound more than it it should" So it's just a bug.
- Freak_NL 4y ago
  Read on. The article explains why they are limiting it to 5. (It has to do with fried batteries.)
  - dewey 4y ago
    Software bug in the workaround for the hardware bug which is killing the battery if you run the speakers on battery + power adapter.
- capableweb 4y ago
  "more than it should" hints at that it was supposed to damping the sound, but ended up too much. The "more than it should" is the bug part, while the author also doesn't like the modification that the sound is supposed to be damped in the first place.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
126dB to 90dB isn't half, it's less than half a thousandth.
- kragen 4y ago
  This is a really underrated comment. A 36 dB reduction is a factor of 4000 in power, so if the speaker could output 40 watts of power before the update, now it can output 0.01 watts.
  - buescher 4y ago
    Yes. Of course, hearing is logarithmic and since a 36 dB reduction is six 6dB increments, the reduction from 11 to 5 makes sense.
    - kragen 4y ago
      It makes sense for a volume knob, but speaker pricing is not logarithmic; a 40-watt speaker does not cost twice as much as a 10-milliwatt speaker, it costs more like 100 times as much.
- jefftk 4y ago
  It's "half" on the manufacturer's 1-11 scale
- topynate 4y ago
  You have a point. Even if the manufacturers needed to reduce power consumption by a half, it shouldn't have led to a 36dB loss. More like 3dB. So why did they make it so much quieter? This has me thinking that regulation of noise pollution in vehicles might be why, rather than the battery issue.
- archi42 4y ago
  These numbers puzzled me as well. As others said, that's several kW of amp power needed there. And 126dB is really a lot of sound pressure. In a forest, absent of room gain... My not-so-tiny speakers would require close to 10kW to reach that level. So that guy probably did a pretty bad measurement. Smart phone mic at a random but close distance? Oh, if the sound quality really improved, an updated DSP filter could be to blame. If the lower end can push up to 96dB and the upper 112dB, reducing the overall gain by 16dB and adding a 16dB gain to the low end can make for a nicer frequency response curve overall, at the expense of maximum volume (reality is a bit more complicated, but that's the rough idea & what I did to one of my systems). //Edit Some seller lists these as having 3x72W on two 10" subs (96dB) and one tweeter (104dB). So yeah, close to 126dB (as promised by the manufacturer) might be possible. I guesstimate that's now limited to <1W?
Freak_NL 4y ago
> Does anyone have any recommendations for what to get instead of SOUNDBOKs for my van? If you want hardware that will last, don't buy stuff that includes remote updatable firmware. Speakers work fine without firmware. For hardware that does run firmware (like a receiver or controller) get one that doesn't update, and doesn't require updates, unless you find an issue that is solved in an update and which you can opt in to. Most hardware that's on the internet chatting to whoever made it doesn't have a life expectancy past five years or so — it's part of the business model.
- Aardwolf 4y ago
  A loudspeaker is a device that takes in an analog electric signal and turns it electromagnetically into sound waves, and if it includes its own amplifier that too is analog circuitry. If it has firmware, then it's not just a speaker but a stereo system / radio / player of some sorts / ... that happens to have its own built in speakers. And a crappy one at that if it wants to waste your time with "updates" rather than just playing what you ask it to.
- salzig 4y ago
  man am i happy that my Soundboks 1 doesn't have something like that, or at least i never realised as it works as a bluetooth speaker without any app-BS. Quite strange how the Hardware World has changed.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    I think what's changed is consumer/"prosumer" gear, professional gear still works the same way.
- kragen 4y ago
  I think the correct solution is to buy hardware whose firmware is free software under your control so that you're safe from manufacturer-pushed malware. As long as people keep using the hardware, they can share firmware updates with each other. And that way your device gets better over time instead of worse. If you're designing a speaker with a built-in amplifier, you can probably get better performance at lower cost and lower power consumption by designing a microcontroller into the amplifier circuitry. Once you do that, you have firmware, and then it's just a matter of whether users (or the manufacturer) can update the firmware or not.
josh2600 4y ago
Some thoughts: * hardware is hard. * devices that make 126db sustained at low frequencies consume a lot of power (im assuming the author is measuring dba but I know the SB3 puts out a lot of bass so could be dbc). * battery power + wall power simultaneously with high power draw is very hard to get right. Basically the thing Soundboks is trying to make is the intersection of a LOT of different hardware problems. Im not surprised they’re having trouble.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  I can completely see that the AC adapter is probably underpowered. Very few songs are 30 Hz bass continuously, so it seems a reasonable design decision to deliberately have the AC adapter provide power of an average song, and use the battery to supply peak power during brief peaks. If they did that however, they needed software to keep track of the battery voltages and have a failsafe mode which reduces volume only if you've been playing 30Hz bass for 8 hours continuously and the battery has been discharging despite being on AC power.
  - marionbe 4y ago
    Answer from SOUNDBOKS support on all battery issues have always been that it’s a battery powered speaker, and not supposed to be used while charger is attached. That fact the charger can then be connected at the same time is a mystery.
- gtvwill 4y ago
  Geez the JBL-EON ONE MK2. They go hard. Legit first piece of speaker tech asside from the adau1701 series of DSP that has gotten me excited in roughly the last 5 or so year.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    > JBL-EON ONE MK2 - All-In-One Rechargeable Column PA with Built-In Mixer and DSP That's so much more than just a speaker though, and could suffer the same fate as the "speaker" in the submission. Although JBL has a reputation they care deeply about, so unlikely to happen.
onphonenow 4y ago
Weird that mains power can’t go above 5 - some messed up design there!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
yellow_lead 4y ago
They messed up the hardware design and so they throttled the software to account for it. It's like CPUs and speculative execution.
dewey 4y ago
> I took the speakers into my local forest, cranked both to 11, slapped on some dark berghain techno > I've been playing tunes to groups of people as the sun goes down Maybe cutting the volume is actually a feature.
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  Not for their customers, anyway.
- 5h 4y ago
  > I took the speakers into my local forest, cranked both to 11, slapped on some dark berghain techno What a horrible thing to do, hopefully there was nobody else in range to have their time in the forest ruined.
madsbuch 4y ago
To be honest, this firmware upgrade seems to be alright. It seems to be instantiated to protect the hardware from a known bug. The real problem when doing firmware updates is ruining right to repairs, removing access to content that is bought. Depending on the promise on the marketing material (minimum db?), the real solution would be to fix the issue and allow people to switch in the SoundBoks for a new functioning one -- after all they did sell an item that does not work under normal use (ie. ruining the battery when the device is connected to AC and volume cranked over 5).
ugjka 4y ago
What probably happened here is that the speakers were putting too much load on the battery the thing started overheating and probably caught on fire. Then lawyers got involved and you get an update without a change log (you can't admit fire hazard, can you? ;))
- Applejinx 4y ago
  That would be my guess as well. On the one hand, don't want to interfere with people maxing out the speakers' performance. On the other, potential class action problems if the speakers are known for bursting into flame or blowing up. So, an update that makes certain no bursting into flame will occur, but mishandled/exaggerated, and then a lot of denial because the underlying issue (which is plausible with something that high powered) is one they don't want to come up, ever. I've got a Blackmagic Atem Mini video switcher that's a brick because I used it at its full capacity for months in a location without great cooling and it burned out its fan (I think) and melted itself. I replaced it, and stuck the base of the replacement on a giant heatsink, and didn't have a recurrence. Sometimes stuff is designed so you're not really supposed to max it out in a sustained way. Unfortunately there are those of us whose use cases are exactly that maxing out, and then there are problems :)
londons_explore 4y ago
Theory what's going wrong.... They used an off the shelf lithium charger board. It charges the battery till it hits 4.2 volts and then goes into a trickle charge mode. There is also a protection chip which prevents the battery voltage going over 4.2 volts or under 2.4 volts by disconnecting the battery. However when playing loud music, there are both periods of brief extreme load on the battery (ie. Hundreds of amps), but also periods of brief extreme currents into the battery. For example imagine after a drum beat, the speaker cone which has a lot of momentum and coil with a lot of inductance and flowing current needs to be rapidly stopped, and that energy ends up recharging the battery (for a few milliseconds). As the batteries age, they get higher internal resistance, and the current dumped into the battery causes the terminal voltage to briefly rise above 4.2 volts. The recharge circuit goes into trickle mode, and the protection circuit disconnects the battery. Now the next drum beat of your music happens, and the charger in trickle mode is providing nowhere near enough current, and the whole speaker turns off.
- ghuntley 4y ago
  Hey @londons_explore; author of the blog post here. I've added three new photos to help folks like yourself figure out what's going on. One of the battery specs, one of the charger specs and one of the T barrel connector.
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    To really figure out what's going on, you're probably going to need to take them apart and get photos of both sides of each circuit board inside...
  - fuzzfactor 4y ago
    Hardware is hard. Power supplies are hard. Audio is hard. In that order. Charger 14.5V x 3.3A = 47.85 Watts maximum rated power output under ideal conditions. It's the law. Ohms law. Barrel connector looks like a laptop one, this could be even more of a bottleneck compared to the limited power of the charger. The physical point-contacts are so limited it can only pass so much amperage. Higher amounts of power usually require higher voltages than 14.4V unless beefier connectors are used, which allows more power (at the same maximum amperage) to be conducted through thinner copper wiring and lower-cost connectors. It would be good to know the specs of the audio output amplifier and speaker assembly but chances are it takes a lot more than 47.85 watts of audio power output to get 126 dB from the speakers. More like 100W RMS delivered to the speakers as an estimate. You can't get more out than you put in, plus significant energy efficiency is lost in places. And that power would have to come from the battery if the recharging connector was not a strong enough source. Ideally there would at least be adequately beefy fully-soldered wiring & connections between the battery and audio output circuit, to supply it with the fully rated input power unless a lower engineering target had been designed. So it seems to be full performance as issued was only ever within reach under battery power so it is basically a battery-powered speaker and the charger as it says on the device is merely a "battery charger" not an A/C line source for highest-performance operation. Imagine if you will, you are running quite loud and drawing the maximum rated power from the battery pack, if this just happens to be 99.84W of power, the batteries will last only one hour like it says on the battery pack, 99.84Wh. So the most you can get is one hour if you're drawing close to 100W, and the audio output will still be measurably less than that. Once the battery is discharged, the charging circuit including the external charger may or may not be intended to continue powering the speaker, but it could not realistically be expected to get very near full output dB performance.
tonetheman 4y ago
90db still insanely loud, like rock concert loud. Speakers that are doing this are still good.
- isatty 4y ago
  Rock concerts go above 125db peak. 90db is loud, yes, but it’s like THX home theater peak loud.
jespertt 4y ago
Hi Ghuntley and everyone, Jesper, CEO and cofounder of SOUNDBOKS here. Ghuntley, I’m sorry to hear about you and other people’s issues after the latest update. This is new information to us, and is definitely not something that is intended. Nor does it have anything to do with the batteries. In the newest firmware update, there is no audio updates to the SOUNDBOKS Gen 3. I spoke to our engineers, and their best guess is that there is something in the filetransfer of the update that went wrong, and therefore that you should try reupdating the firmware. You can do this by going into the updates section in the app, and pressing re-update. I'll keep an eye on this thread, so please let me know how it goes and i'll liaise with our development team. Again, my apologies for the issues that you are experiencing. Jesper, SOUNDBOKS - jesper@soundboks.com EDIT: there was a note in the original post where one of our customer support team members had said that the update ''dampen their sound more than it should'' - a note is that this is where it gets a bit more technical; our support team member mistaked the speaker for SOUNDBOKS GO (our other version), where we have pushed out an audio update. In that audio update, there is implemented a tweeter protection mechanism, that limits the volume increase on the tweeter when it gets too hot. That can in some cases limit the dB a tiny bit (we're talking something that's not hearable), but in some cases there is a calibration error on the base temperature of the tweeter, making it think it is way hotter than it is - which can make it dampen too much. That is a bug, and we're working on fixing that - but again, that is on the SOUNDBOKS GO, and has nothing to do with the SOUNDBOKS Gen 3 that the author has. EDIT 2: A few people have commented that my original explanation is not a likely answer when more people are experiencing this issue. I am currently liasing with our engineering team, and will get back as soon as i know more. Thanks to everyone engaging! We're working on solving the issue for GHuntley and other customers as fast as we can.
- pjc50 4y ago
  Are firmware updates signed/authenticated/hashed? It would be tragically hilarious if this was the outcome of of a single flipped bit in the transfer.
  - thedanbob 4y ago
    I was going to say, if the speakers will happily apply a corrupted firmware update they’re doing something horribly wrong.
keewee7 4y ago
Soundboks users have turned many parks and beaches in Denmark into a living hell. There are many other brands of portable speakers but Soundboks seem to attract a very obnoxious and annoying user segment.
- magicalhippo 4y ago
  If only it had a built-in GPS and geo-volume-fencing...
- rhexs 4y ago
  Damn, glad modern-day boomboxes are coming back into style. Apartments will get even worse than they already are.
- permo-w 4y ago
  the style of this article regularly veers towards the obnoxious
- HelloNurse 4y ago
  The triple digit dB user segment? But obnoxious people deserve products that perform as advertised as much as everyone else.
fimdomeio 4y ago
I thing the outrageos thing is "mandatory update". I genuinely thought I was going to read a story about a legislatory change that forced a firmware update. It would be nice for SOUNDBOKS to explain the ways they are planing to punish the customers that do not comply.
School-Cotton 4y ago
I just don’t know who to root for here: “company that makes shoddy IoT hardware that can be bricked remotely with mandatory updates” or “antisocial dick who plays >90dB music in public where people are trying to relax”.
- egypturnash 4y ago
  Ending it with a screengrab of one of his tweets about this that contains a ludicrously overpriced monkey jpg as his icon is a nice touch.
HighlandSpring 4y ago
In an alternate universe: - firmware updates to intentionally reduce max volume, 1% at a time so people don't notice - monthly subscription to increase max volume
krnlpnc 4y ago
Time to get yourself a set of powered PA speakers from a reputable legacy brand. A model that does not have firmware to update is the way to go.
ilikeitdark 4y ago
Even though I was supposed to sympathize with user, and be angry at the company, the exact opposite actually happened.
netsharc 4y ago
Mmm, tasty tasty PNGs, for that retro 90's "image is loading" feeling even on a Gigabit connection.
dpratt 4y ago
Is nobody going to talk about the elephant in the room? Namely, has the author of the article considered that it might be somewhat inconsiderate to be blasting 120 dB music in the middle of nature? It’s reasonable to assume that it’s likely that other people around him have chosen to camp out or spend time there precisely because they’re looking for somewhere to get away from people blasting music at hearing-damage levels.
- h2odragon 4y ago
  The persons affected by that are far better placed to judge how offended they are, and to do something about it.
  - dpratt 4y ago
    This is true, I am not there to be subject to the OPs high-volume concert in the middle of a forest, and I suspect it’s ideal for both of us that I am not, in that the major problem/damage to his speakers may not originate with a firmware update if I were.
dpratt 4y ago
I’ve reached the point where if I hear of a product that has a “mandatory” firmware update, I completely write off the manufacturer for good. Even worse if said device silently updates to said firmware revision. It is completely unacceptable for a device like a speaker to have a ‘mandatory’ update to continue operating, and I choose to not support it by withholding my dollars from the manufacturer.

81 points by ghuntley 4y ago

basicplus2 4y ago

Developer working on speaker updates has neighbour with soundboks speakers turned up to 11 day and night

nsteel 4y ago
> I've been playing tunes to groups of people as the sun goes down Or is fed up with loud music while trying to enjoy sunset at the beach.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Typical developers, spending months to solve it technically when you could just go over to the person and ask them to lower the volume/turn off the music.
  - yetihehe 4y ago
    Yeah, but your protocol is typically met with "Request denied, fuck off nerd" response. I said typically because I've had some sporadic success with kindly requesting lowering the volume, but it was sporadic. People who would turn down the music don't typically bother other people in the first place.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      Works differently in different places and with different places I guess. In my life, I've probably asked around 30 people to turn down the volume when we've been in nature (parks, wilderness, beaches, mountains) and people played music, only remember once a person who refused to lower it. But this has mostly been in West/South Europe and around in South America, maybe people react differently where you live.
      - yetihehe 4y ago
        > Works differently in different places and with different places I guess. Exactly this. It also depends on social skills of the one requesting turning down. Maybe most of the times I skipped even trying to ask because I thought situation was hopeless, someone would actually turn volume down, but in my life I think I didn't even have 30 situations like this. I live in a place where it's rather quiet and poeple just don't push out loud music for long periods. If they do, it's rather sporadic and they try to respect social norms. I also know that I should not be an ass and let other people have fun, that helps too.
  - eertami 4y ago
    Maybe the onus shouldn't be on people to request the music be turned off, but on people not blasting loud music in public nature spaces in the first place? This is just the kid on the bus/train playing music on his phone speaker. Wear headphones or play the music at a noise/distance that doesn't disturb others.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      I agree, everyone should just be perfect and in harmony with everyone else, all the time. That should be the goal at least. But alas, we live in the real world. Sometimes people act in ways we don't like, and we can (and should) talk to them in that case, worst thing that can happen is that they say "No thank you" and then we either deal with that or leave.
      - mring33621 4y ago
        worst case, they shoot you
        capableweb 4y ago
        Lol, yeah, if you're unfortunate enough to live in the US I guess that's possible. Luckily, only 4% of the worlds population live in the US, so the rest of us 96% usually don't go around being worried about getting shot.

dewey 4y ago

> "we are aware that the update is damping damping their sound more than it it should" So it's just a bug.

Freak_NL 4y ago
Read on. The article explains why they are limiting it to 5. (It has to do with fried batteries.)
- dewey 4y ago
  Software bug in the workaround for the hardware bug which is killing the battery if you run the speakers on battery + power adapter.
capableweb 4y ago
"more than it should" hints at that it was supposed to damping the sound, but ended up too much. The "more than it should" is the bug part, while the author also doesn't like the modification that the sound is supposed to be damped in the first place.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

126dB to 90dB isn't half, it's less than half a thousandth.

kragen 4y ago
This is a really underrated comment. A 36 dB reduction is a factor of 4000 in power, so if the speaker could output 40 watts of power before the update, now it can output 0.01 watts.
- buescher 4y ago
  Yes. Of course, hearing is logarithmic and since a 36 dB reduction is six 6dB increments, the reduction from 11 to 5 makes sense.
  - kragen 4y ago
    It makes sense for a volume knob, but speaker pricing is not logarithmic; a 40-watt speaker does not cost twice as much as a 10-milliwatt speaker, it costs more like 100 times as much.
jefftk 4y ago
It's "half" on the manufacturer's 1-11 scale
topynate 4y ago
You have a point. Even if the manufacturers needed to reduce power consumption by a half, it shouldn't have led to a 36dB loss. More like 3dB. So why did they make it so much quieter? This has me thinking that regulation of noise pollution in vehicles might be why, rather than the battery issue.
archi42 4y ago
These numbers puzzled me as well. As others said, that's several kW of amp power needed there. And 126dB is really a lot of sound pressure. In a forest, absent of room gain... My not-so-tiny speakers would require close to 10kW to reach that level. So that guy probably did a pretty bad measurement. Smart phone mic at a random but close distance? Oh, if the sound quality really improved, an updated DSP filter could be to blame. If the lower end can push up to 96dB and the upper 112dB, reducing the overall gain by 16dB and adding a 16dB gain to the low end can make for a nicer frequency response curve overall, at the expense of maximum volume (reality is a bit more complicated, but that's the rough idea & what I did to one of my systems). //Edit Some seller lists these as having 3x72W on two 10" subs (96dB) and one tweeter (104dB). So yeah, close to 126dB (as promised by the manufacturer) might be possible. I guesstimate that's now limited to <1W?

Freak_NL 4y ago

> Does anyone have any recommendations for what to get instead of SOUNDBOKs for my van? If you want hardware that will last, don't buy stuff that includes remote updatable firmware. Speakers work fine without firmware. For hardware that does run firmware (like a receiver or controller) get one that doesn't update, and doesn't require updates, unless you find an issue that is solved in an update and which you can opt in to. Most hardware that's on the internet chatting to whoever made it doesn't have a life expectancy past five years or so — it's part of the business model.

Aardwolf 4y ago
A loudspeaker is a device that takes in an analog electric signal and turns it electromagnetically into sound waves, and if it includes its own amplifier that too is analog circuitry. If it has firmware, then it's not just a speaker but a stereo system / radio / player of some sorts / ... that happens to have its own built in speakers. And a crappy one at that if it wants to waste your time with "updates" rather than just playing what you ask it to.
salzig 4y ago
man am i happy that my Soundboks 1 doesn't have something like that, or at least i never realised as it works as a bluetooth speaker without any app-BS. Quite strange how the Hardware World has changed.
- capableweb 4y ago
  I think what's changed is consumer/"prosumer" gear, professional gear still works the same way.
kragen 4y ago
I think the correct solution is to buy hardware whose firmware is free software under your control so that you're safe from manufacturer-pushed malware. As long as people keep using the hardware, they can share firmware updates with each other. And that way your device gets better over time instead of worse. If you're designing a speaker with a built-in amplifier, you can probably get better performance at lower cost and lower power consumption by designing a microcontroller into the amplifier circuitry. Once you do that, you have firmware, and then it's just a matter of whether users (or the manufacturer) can update the firmware or not.

josh2600 4y ago

Some thoughts: * hardware is hard. * devices that make 126db sustained at low frequencies consume a lot of power (im assuming the author is measuring dba but I know the SB3 puts out a lot of bass so could be dbc). * battery power + wall power simultaneously with high power draw is very hard to get right. Basically the thing Soundboks is trying to make is the intersection of a LOT of different hardware problems. Im not surprised they’re having trouble.

londons_explore 4y ago
I can completely see that the AC adapter is probably underpowered. Very few songs are 30 Hz bass continuously, so it seems a reasonable design decision to deliberately have the AC adapter provide power of an average song, and use the battery to supply peak power during brief peaks. If they did that however, they needed software to keep track of the battery voltages and have a failsafe mode which reduces volume only if you've been playing 30Hz bass for 8 hours continuously and the battery has been discharging despite being on AC power.
- marionbe 4y ago
  Answer from SOUNDBOKS support on all battery issues have always been that it’s a battery powered speaker, and not supposed to be used while charger is attached. That fact the charger can then be connected at the same time is a mystery.
gtvwill 4y ago
Geez the JBL-EON ONE MK2. They go hard. Legit first piece of speaker tech asside from the adau1701 series of DSP that has gotten me excited in roughly the last 5 or so year.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > JBL-EON ONE MK2 - All-In-One Rechargeable Column PA with Built-In Mixer and DSP That's so much more than just a speaker though, and could suffer the same fate as the "speaker" in the submission. Although JBL has a reputation they care deeply about, so unlikely to happen.

onphonenow 4y ago

Weird that mains power can’t go above 5 - some messed up design there!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

yellow_lead 4y ago

They messed up the hardware design and so they throttled the software to account for it. It's like CPUs and speculative execution.

dewey 4y ago

> I took the speakers into my local forest, cranked both to 11, slapped on some dark berghain techno > I've been playing tunes to groups of people as the sun goes down Maybe cutting the volume is actually a feature.

nibbleshifter 4y ago
Not for their customers, anyway.
5h 4y ago
> I took the speakers into my local forest, cranked both to 11, slapped on some dark berghain techno What a horrible thing to do, hopefully there was nobody else in range to have their time in the forest ruined.

madsbuch 4y ago

To be honest, this firmware upgrade seems to be alright. It seems to be instantiated to protect the hardware from a known bug. The real problem when doing firmware updates is ruining right to repairs, removing access to content that is bought. Depending on the promise on the marketing material (minimum db?), the real solution would be to fix the issue and allow people to switch in the SoundBoks for a new functioning one -- after all they did sell an item that does not work under normal use (ie. ruining the battery when the device is connected to AC and volume cranked over 5).

ugjka 4y ago

What probably happened here is that the speakers were putting too much load on the battery the thing started overheating and probably caught on fire. Then lawyers got involved and you get an update without a change log (you can't admit fire hazard, can you? ;))

Applejinx 4y ago
That would be my guess as well. On the one hand, don't want to interfere with people maxing out the speakers' performance. On the other, potential class action problems if the speakers are known for bursting into flame or blowing up. So, an update that makes certain no bursting into flame will occur, but mishandled/exaggerated, and then a lot of denial because the underlying issue (which is plausible with something that high powered) is one they don't want to come up, ever. I've got a Blackmagic Atem Mini video switcher that's a brick because I used it at its full capacity for months in a location without great cooling and it burned out its fan (I think) and melted itself. I replaced it, and stuck the base of the replacement on a giant heatsink, and didn't have a recurrence. Sometimes stuff is designed so you're not really supposed to max it out in a sustained way. Unfortunately there are those of us whose use cases are exactly that maxing out, and then there are problems :)

londons_explore 4y ago

Theory what's going wrong.... They used an off the shelf lithium charger board. It charges the battery till it hits 4.2 volts and then goes into a trickle charge mode. There is also a protection chip which prevents the battery voltage going over 4.2 volts or under 2.4 volts by disconnecting the battery. However when playing loud music, there are both periods of brief extreme load on the battery (ie. Hundreds of amps), but also periods of brief extreme currents into the battery. For example imagine after a drum beat, the speaker cone which has a lot of momentum and coil with a lot of inductance and flowing current needs to be rapidly stopped, and that energy ends up recharging the battery (for a few milliseconds). As the batteries age, they get higher internal resistance, and the current dumped into the battery causes the terminal voltage to briefly rise above 4.2 volts. The recharge circuit goes into trickle mode, and the protection circuit disconnects the battery. Now the next drum beat of your music happens, and the charger in trickle mode is providing nowhere near enough current, and the whole speaker turns off.

ghuntley 4y ago
Hey @londons_explore; author of the blog post here. I've added three new photos to help folks like yourself figure out what's going on. One of the battery specs, one of the charger specs and one of the T barrel connector.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  To really figure out what's going on, you're probably going to need to take them apart and get photos of both sides of each circuit board inside...
- fuzzfactor 4y ago
  Hardware is hard. Power supplies are hard. Audio is hard. In that order. Charger 14.5V x 3.3A = 47.85 Watts maximum rated power output under ideal conditions. It's the law. Ohms law. Barrel connector looks like a laptop one, this could be even more of a bottleneck compared to the limited power of the charger. The physical point-contacts are so limited it can only pass so much amperage. Higher amounts of power usually require higher voltages than 14.4V unless beefier connectors are used, which allows more power (at the same maximum amperage) to be conducted through thinner copper wiring and lower-cost connectors. It would be good to know the specs of the audio output amplifier and speaker assembly but chances are it takes a lot more than 47.85 watts of audio power output to get 126 dB from the speakers. More like 100W RMS delivered to the speakers as an estimate. You can't get more out than you put in, plus significant energy efficiency is lost in places. And that power would have to come from the battery if the recharging connector was not a strong enough source. Ideally there would at least be adequately beefy fully-soldered wiring & connections between the battery and audio output circuit, to supply it with the fully rated input power unless a lower engineering target had been designed. So it seems to be full performance as issued was only ever within reach under battery power so it is basically a battery-powered speaker and the charger as it says on the device is merely a "battery charger" not an A/C line source for highest-performance operation. Imagine if you will, you are running quite loud and drawing the maximum rated power from the battery pack, if this just happens to be 99.84W of power, the batteries will last only one hour like it says on the battery pack, 99.84Wh. So the most you can get is one hour if you're drawing close to 100W, and the audio output will still be measurably less than that. Once the battery is discharged, the charging circuit including the external charger may or may not be intended to continue powering the speaker, but it could not realistically be expected to get very near full output dB performance.

tonetheman 4y ago

90db still insanely loud, like rock concert loud. Speakers that are doing this are still good.

isatty 4y ago
Rock concerts go above 125db peak. 90db is loud, yes, but it’s like THX home theater peak loud.

jespertt 4y ago

Hi Ghuntley and everyone, Jesper, CEO and cofounder of SOUNDBOKS here. Ghuntley, I’m sorry to hear about you and other people’s issues after the latest update. This is new information to us, and is definitely not something that is intended. Nor does it have anything to do with the batteries. In the newest firmware update, there is no audio updates to the SOUNDBOKS Gen 3. I spoke to our engineers, and their best guess is that there is something in the filetransfer of the update that went wrong, and therefore that you should try reupdating the firmware. You can do this by going into the updates section in the app, and pressing re-update. I'll keep an eye on this thread, so please let me know how it goes and i'll liaise with our development team. Again, my apologies for the issues that you are experiencing. Jesper, SOUNDBOKS - jesper@soundboks.com EDIT: there was a note in the original post where one of our customer support team members had said that the update ''dampen their sound more than it should'' - a note is that this is where it gets a bit more technical; our support team member mistaked the speaker for SOUNDBOKS GO (our other version), where we have pushed out an audio update. In that audio update, there is implemented a tweeter protection mechanism, that limits the volume increase on the tweeter when it gets too hot. That can in some cases limit the dB a tiny bit (we're talking something that's not hearable), but in some cases there is a calibration error on the base temperature of the tweeter, making it think it is way hotter than it is - which can make it dampen too much. That is a bug, and we're working on fixing that - but again, that is on the SOUNDBOKS GO, and has nothing to do with the SOUNDBOKS Gen 3 that the author has. EDIT 2: A few people have commented that my original explanation is not a likely answer when more people are experiencing this issue. I am currently liasing with our engineering team, and will get back as soon as i know more. Thanks to everyone engaging! We're working on solving the issue for GHuntley and other customers as fast as we can.

pjc50 4y ago
Are firmware updates signed/authenticated/hashed? It would be tragically hilarious if this was the outcome of of a single flipped bit in the transfer.
- thedanbob 4y ago
  I was going to say, if the speakers will happily apply a corrupted firmware update they’re doing something horribly wrong.

keewee7 4y ago

Soundboks users have turned many parks and beaches in Denmark into a living hell. There are many other brands of portable speakers but Soundboks seem to attract a very obnoxious and annoying user segment.

magicalhippo 4y ago
If only it had a built-in GPS and geo-volume-fencing...
rhexs 4y ago
Damn, glad modern-day boomboxes are coming back into style. Apartments will get even worse than they already are.
permo-w 4y ago
the style of this article regularly veers towards the obnoxious
HelloNurse 4y ago
The triple digit dB user segment? But obnoxious people deserve products that perform as advertised as much as everyone else.

fimdomeio 4y ago

I thing the outrageos thing is "mandatory update". I genuinely thought I was going to read a story about a legislatory change that forced a firmware update. It would be nice for SOUNDBOKS to explain the ways they are planing to punish the customers that do not comply.

School-Cotton 4y ago

I just don’t know who to root for here: “company that makes shoddy IoT hardware that can be bricked remotely with mandatory updates” or “antisocial dick who plays >90dB music in public where people are trying to relax”.

egypturnash 4y ago
Ending it with a screengrab of one of his tweets about this that contains a ludicrously overpriced monkey jpg as his icon is a nice touch.

HighlandSpring 4y ago

In an alternate universe: - firmware updates to intentionally reduce max volume, 1% at a time so people don't notice - monthly subscription to increase max volume

krnlpnc 4y ago

Time to get yourself a set of powered PA speakers from a reputable legacy brand. A model that does not have firmware to update is the way to go.

ilikeitdark 4y ago

Even though I was supposed to sympathize with user, and be angry at the company, the exact opposite actually happened.

netsharc 4y ago

Mmm, tasty tasty PNGs, for that retro 90's "image is loading" feeling even on a Gigabit connection.

dpratt 4y ago

Is nobody going to talk about the elephant in the room? Namely, has the author of the article considered that it might be somewhat inconsiderate to be blasting 120 dB music in the middle of nature? It’s reasonable to assume that it’s likely that other people around him have chosen to camp out or spend time there precisely because they’re looking for somewhere to get away from people blasting music at hearing-damage levels.

h2odragon 4y ago
The persons affected by that are far better placed to judge how offended they are, and to do something about it.
- dpratt 4y ago
  This is true, I am not there to be subject to the OPs high-volume concert in the middle of a forest, and I suspect it’s ideal for both of us that I am not, in that the major problem/damage to his speakers may not originate with a firmware update if I were.

dpratt 4y ago

I’ve reached the point where if I hear of a product that has a “mandatory” firmware update, I completely write off the manufacturer for good. Even worse if said device silently updates to said firmware revision. It is completely unacceptable for a device like a speaker to have a ‘mandatory’ update to continue operating, and I choose to not support it by withholding my dollars from the manufacturer.