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Comment by jakear | Hacker News Reader

I've had good experience with the JBL lineup... I'm on the largest (boombox), and I find the quality acceptable (I don't find the quality of most audio products acceptable). The convenience OTOH is phenomenal -- it comes with me biking, kayaking, (it's submergible) and camping to charge devices and play music, and the charge can last >week. I can only remember it dying on me 2 times in the months I've owned it, and I rarely charge it. One consideration is that it's much too large for backpacking or hiking.

I wouldn't necessarily classify myself as an audiophile, though I do care more about accuracy of reproduction than most I meet.

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I have an xtreme 2 and it's a very convenient and enjoyable device.

My pet-peeve is that when I bought it, its sound-signature was very close to my JBL studio monitors. I was astounded by the quality. It could give you goose-bumps.

Unfortunately people started complaining that it does not have enough bass and with every firmware update since then, JBL increases the bass response and destroys everything else.

There is no way to downgrade the firmware. It's still a good speaker but nowhere near what it can do when tuned for fidelity instead of bass. :(

Interesting. Since Sony, whose Bluetooth speakers I'd been using for most of a decade, discontinued most of their higher-end stuff, I tried out the JBL Charge 4 earlier this year and was astounded at how bad the sound quality was. There was a very ugly rumble in the low mids that was grating. I'd wondered if I'd gotten a defective unit since the sound quality was so bad, but was disenchanted enough to look elsewhere. From what you're saying, it sounds like they may have been another victim of the bass wars. I ended up going for the Anker SoundCore Boost, which I genuinely thought sounded better and is a third the cost.

I own an JBL charge 2. These are probably aimed for people who prefer high bass over a balanced sound (balanced they are not). Worst- the bluetooth connection is unstable even in direct sight, within 5-20 cm, with android/mac/raspberry. I realize everyone has different tastes but I would not recommend JBL.

Interesting you had issues with bluetooth -- I use it as my car stereo (car is too old to have bluetooth), and often leave it running with the car shut and I can walk all the way from my garage to the house and still hear the music chugging along just fine.

As for the bass, I agree its a bit boomy, I use EQ at the source to compensate.

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