Thursday, February 17, 2011

Bass-Bustin?, Battery-Powered Speaker Invented by Rocket Scientist

Why should the audiophile nerds get all the good-sounding gear? Floor-standing speakers, amps that weight a ton and speaker cables as thick as the tentacles of a giant squid might sound good, but they?re not exactly portable.

Battery powered speakers are never going to compete with proper hi-fi gear, but at least we don?t have to settle for sucky portable speakers anymore. The new foxL v2 joins the Jawbone Jambox in the tiny-speaker-big-sound category, and better, it was invented by a rocket scientist.

There are two internal tricks. One is the ?Twoofer?, a combined tweeter and woofer which saves space but apparently gives a big sound from a small (25mm) driver. The other, rather cleverer, trick is the ?BassBattery?. This uses the mass of the rechargeable li-ion battery as an ?acoustic suspension bass driver.?

The foxL comes in two forms: a straight-up wired version and an A2DP Bluetooth version which also adds a mic for hands-free calling, and a call answer button. They are priced at $200 and $250.

A word on this kind of speaker. Even with clever engineering and high-quality internals, the bass from a little speaker is never going to shake the room. I have been trying out the Jawbone Jambox for the last few days and it sounds truly amazing for its tiny size, but there is no real bass thump. You get a good thud, but it?s not the same. The SuperTooth Disco which I tested a while back has a subwoofer built-in. This gives better bass, but the speaker is as big as three Jamboxes.

That said, things are a helluva lot better than they used to be.

FoxL product page [SoundMatters via Oh Gizmo]

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