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OB–4 – Portable high fidelity loudspeaker

teenage.engineering

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Re: OB–4 – Portable high fidelity loudspeaker

#131

Post by jensgk »

jascii wrote: post #121

I would be in the market for a powered/bluetooth speaker that doesn't sound like shit. For the price I'd expect (near) audiophile sound, however little in the marketing even seems to mention sound quality, it just seems very gimmicky. Does anyone have any recommendations for a semi portable powered/bluetooth speaker that focuses on accurate sound reproduction (within the limits physics puts on a smaller enclosure)?

This comes to mind: https://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/speakers/filter/bluetooth

I have the A1 (1.gen.), which have mostly received good reviews.

Re: OB–4 – Portable high fidelity loudspeaker

#132

Post by jensgk »

jensgk wrote: post #131
jascii wrote: post #121

I would be in the market for a powered/bluetooth speaker that doesn't sound like shit. For the price I'd expect (near) audiophile sound, however little in the marketing even seems to mention sound quality, it just seems very gimmicky. Does anyone have any recommendations for a semi portable powered/bluetooth speaker that focuses on accurate sound reproduction (within the limits physics puts on a smaller enclosure)?

This comes to mind: https://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/speakers/filter/bluetooth I have the A1 (1.gen.), which have mostly received good reviews.

Also this: https://www.dynaudio.com/home-audio/music/music-3

Re: OB–4 – Portable high fidelity loudspeaker

#133

Post by JohnBooty »

I have not heard this speaker, but like many portable speakers, the design is distinctly suboptimal even by portable standards. In a portable device, stereo is actually not desirable. Two reasons.

One, you will certainly not experience the intended effect of stereo (the illusion of spatial separation) when the drivers are so close together.

Two, the drivers will actually interfere with each other. Not only are you not getting the effect of stereo, it's making things worse. The phenomenon is comb filtering:

https://audiouniversityonline.com/comb-filtering-explained/

https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-what-exactly-com...

You can visualize the effect by imagining two stones, dropped into a swimming pool, a short distance apart. As the ripples spread outward, they will cancel each other at some points and reinforce each other at other points. These areas of reinforcement and cancellation alternate, and that is essentially what happens (in three dimensions) with the sound emanating from two drivers playing the same sounds in close proximity.

(The actual detriment will depend on how the recording is mixed. If the recording has no stereo separation for a particular sound or instrument, the effect will be worst. If a particular sound is hard-panned 100% left or 100% right, there will be no detrimental effect)

If anybody is interested, for the price of this device ($999) you can get a heck of a home stereo. Wirecutter has excellent recommendations for affordable bookshelf speakers, receivers, etc.

Re: OB–4 – Portable high fidelity loudspeaker

#135

Post by Syzygies »

They're missing a killer feature they have the hardware to implement: Ad skipping.

Within a fraction of a second they could notice that the audio feed exactly matches a fragment in memory, and mute audio till the feed diverges again from history. One would want this mode off for a "Top Forty" radio station, but on for live content.

An easy enhancement would be to press a "kill" button to immediately mute repeating content, and always automatically mute this content in the future. This feature would be useful for songs one never wants to hear again.

Many baseball fans would pay thousands of dollars to never hear the "Kars for Kids" ad again, wondering why they don't explain their charity's narrow mission, wondering if their cars are sold by an intermediary that redirects profits.

Re: OB–4 – Portable high fidelity loudspeaker

#136

Post by joezydeco »

vel0city wrote: post #108
joezydeco wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is HD Radio, then? https://hdradio.com/get-a-radio/new-cars/

HD Radio is a digital radio standard in the US, Canada, and Mexico. Many new cars are sold with HD Radio. Many new cars are sold without HD Radio. Go look at some new car listings, you'll find tons without HD Radio. Many will only say AM/FM. Sometimes they'll also mention Radio Data System (RDS), the thing that shows a snippet of text with song titles and station names. Some will mention HD Radio Ready, as in you can…

It was a rhetorical response to the statement "The US digital radio effort has been complicated and slow to ramp up".

The answer was "it exists and has been ramped up for a while". And I'm not even talking about SDARS.

Re: OB–4 – Portable high fidelity loudspeaker

#137

Post by chendragon »

jascii wrote: post #121

I would be in the market for a powered/bluetooth speaker that doesn't sound like shit. For the price I'd expect (near) audiophile sound, however little in the marketing even seems to mention sound quality, it just seems very gimmicky. Does anyone have any recommendations for a semi portable powered/bluetooth speaker that focuses on accurate sound reproduction (within the limits physics puts on a smaller enclosure)?

When it comes to anything Bluetooth and speakers I tend to look at Oluv's Gadgets on YouTube first, since that guy actually posts frequency response measurements of a wide variety of speakers. Seems like there is a wide variety of products featured but it is biased towards lower cost options.

Re: OB–4 – Portable high fidelity loudspeaker

#139

Post by geekuillaume »

Syzygies wrote: post #135

They're missing a killer feature they have the hardware to implement: Ad skipping. Within a fraction of a second they could notice that the audio feed exactly matches a fragment in memory, and mute audio till the feed diverges again from history. One would want this mode off for a "Top Forty" radio station, but on for live content. An easy enhancement would be to press a "kill" button to immediately mute repeating co…

Adblock Radio does exactly that: https://github.com/adblockradio. They should get in contact with the creator!

Re: OB–4 – Portable high fidelity loudspeaker

#140

Post by thih9 »

jhvkjhk wrote: post #96

Many people here are discussing OP-1 and complaining its expensive price. There's a open source clone called OTTO[1], and it looks promising (although not finished). [1]: https://github.com/OTTO-project/OTTO

Note that OTTO departed from OP-1 and doesn't attempt to clone its features.

E.g. the "tape" has been removed, source: https://github.com/OTTO-project/OTTO/pull/66 . Instead they plan adding: "A simple loop-station-style audio looper that can get audio from line in or synth. It has overdub and one level of Undo.", source: https://otto-project.github.io/docs/

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