Latest Soundboks firmware cuts the performance of their speakers by half
ghuntley.com
ghuntley.com
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.
I also seems like that wouldn’t make sense considering multiple people appear to have the same issue.
Also, no way to skip the update? Shady as usual.
Also also: why the hell connect a speaker to the internet? Extra shady.
Also also also: Coincidentally, forcing this update and dropping the problem to the users seems cheaper than fixing the reported problems in the battery and charger. Shady as a black-hole now.
I take Jesper's comment as an official response from the company, it's the CEO speaking after all. The comment also says that input from engineering was received, and this implies in some coordination and a thought-out response. This rules out commercial staff or other non-technical folks just saying what "looks like" to be the cause.
> It is clear that the firmware may have caused unintended behavior and it's clear that the team is looking to remedy it.
But, then why hide the problem? A ethically correct response will be "as an emergency measure, this update will reduces output to prevent the batteries from <marketing lingo for bursting into flames>. Please contact us to schedule a free HW fix or a replacement for non-faulty unit."
> I have no idea how the construction of your entire comment is at all part of one in this discussion rather than an ideological rant at an industry as a whole but whatever it is, it's a rotten piece to an otherwise civil conversation.
Perhaps I was too rant-y, but I am very used to see these "a software update removed features from my appliance" stories, from what I think that this industry itself is already rotting. Well, we are even becoming used to say to non-technical folks "never apply the updates, specially if the vendor seems to be pushing it too hard", with the expected drawbacks for security updates.
>In the newest firmware update, there is no audio updates to the SOUNDBOKS Gen 3
and instead just skips past it stating that the update does indeed
>change in the signal processing for the tweeter
CEOs are politicians, they lie all the time.
The authors broader points are valid as well. Firmware updates should come with changelogs.
In the meantime, we will continue to investigate internally in SOUNDBOKS, and try to figure out why some users are experiencing this, when we are not experiencing it ourselves, and it has not occurred in any of our testing.
Speaking from my own management experience, it's OK for me not to understand a technical issue as well as the person I've made responsible for a task. But you have to have complete trust in their judgement and "communication accuracy." Free advice--take a good hard look at what else you've been told. I'm not saying someone is deliberately lying, but pressure and skill shortcomings can lead to untrue statements.
You might also take a good hard look at what you've said and done. You get lots of points for directly speaking with customers in this forum. But it doesn't sound as if the technical side is your wheelhouse (which is OK, that's not what your job is), and you may be having "hair on fire" issues. That can very easily lead to making decisions and demands which are impossible for your team to fulfill, or lead them to making risky technical choices. A startup "failure is not an option" or "go big or go home" or "YOLO" mentality can easily go overboard can make it impossible for them communicate the true situtation to you _or even to themselves_.
Years ago I wrote a firmware loader for an industrial Z80 system. All it did was read a file over the serial port into RAM, jump into it and then overwrite the EEPROM. I got a page quantity calculation completely wrong. It didn't update all the memory pages. Because the changes were fairly small and the code was assembled rather than compiled and the test cases were fairly light, it was released to clients. It still worked absolutely fine but the status LED didn't work on the device in a specific situation because the update CALL never got executed because it was neatly in a previous page that didn't exist any more.
Of course this was reported as (1) hardware had completely failed (2) the LED had broken and (3) it only works sometimes. All of which weren't true. No one had even mentioned that they had recently updated it. So I can see how it happens.
Thus the tyranny of unexpected behaviour is a deep and dark passage lined with monsters, misinformation and bad assumptions. You have to tread very carefully and not say things too soon because it makes you look even more of an idiot when you have to backtrack later.
The sound profiles have not been changed at all. The playback time is exactly the same as before, i.e. 5 hours on max volume in Power mode. (confirming the SPL is the same) The settings for the woofers have not been changed at all. The contribution of tweeter sound pressure level is only a minor fraction of the total SPL for the speaker and since the woofers’ SPL has not been changed, the total SPL should stay the same as well.
As a result of the above, we have not seen any SPL change in our measurements post-upgrade, and are not sure as to why some users are experiencing this.
Previously, i mentioned the notion of it being a data corruption issue. We have integrity verification, so this is extremely unlikely, but as it is an easy check, we recommend trying this out. If you try to re-upgrade, and it skips the “transferring” step and goes directly to “Ready to patch”, it means that the previous upgrade had been successful with no corrupted data and that you have had the correct firmware on your speaker. (In this case it will be a very fast process) If however, it started to transfer files, it is worth to wait until the transfer step is completed to make sure you have the right firmware.
In the meantime, we will continue to investigate internally in SOUNDBOKS, and try to figure out why some users are experiencing this, when we are not experiencing it ourselves, and it has not occurred in any of our testing.
Again, thanks for your engagement!
A while ago, we realised we are seeing some failed tweeters in Gen3. The issue occurs when a. playing with the battery and the power on the battery is too low, or b. playing with only the charger on high volume. In those cases, there is a possibility that for a couple of seconds, a high-pitched sound comes out of the speaker and the speaker will shut down afterwards, resulting in damaging the tweeter.
For this very issue: We have changed the failure mode in a way that it will not damage the tweeter during that shut down. We also made a slight change in the signal processing for the tweeter which further protect the driver from these sudden peaks.
The two things I mentioned above are the main changes in the latest firmware (2.0.1 and 2.1.1) for Gen.3.
I would also like to mention a few notes regarding the latest firmware:
The sound profiles have not been changed at all. The playback time is exactly the same as before, i.e. 5 hours on max volume in Power mode. (confirming the SPL is the same) The settings for the woofers have not been changed at all. The contribution of tweeter sound pressure level is only a minor fraction of the total SPL for the speaker and since the woofers’ SPL has not been changed, the total SPL should stay the same as well.
As a result of the above, we have not seen any SPL change in our measurements post-upgrade, and are not sure as to why some users are experiencing this.
Previously, i mentioned the notion of it being a data corruption issue. We have integrity verification, so this is extremely unlikely, but as it is an easy check, we recommend trying this out.If you try to re-upgrade, and it skip the “transferring” step and goes directly to “Ready to patch”, it means that the previous upgrade had been successful with no corrupted data and that you have had the correct firmware on your speaker. (In this case it will be a very fast process) If however, it started to transfer files, it is worth to wait until the transfer step is completed to make sure you have the right firmware.
In the meantime, we will continue to investigate internally in SOUNDBOKS, and try to figure out why some users are experiencing this, when we are not experiencing it ourselves, and it has not occurred in any of our testing.
Again, thanks for your engagement!
''My upgrade failed initially and impeded speaker output. Allowing the upgrade to run again resolved the issue without any further frustration or impact to performance.''
Glad a customer was able to try reupdating and it fixed their issue. I wish the team best of luck tracking down how the upgrade flow got busted
Got it.
>Now, as a reminder - I own two speakers - both speakers have had their performance nerfed by this firmware update.
So even not counting everybody else on the internet with the same issue, I find it quite unlikely that there would be the exact same transfer failure on two separate units.
This definitely sounds more likely to be a software issue.
-10 for an implausible explanation.
I do work with audio stuff in auto industry.
That’s just trying to hide the root cause.
In the meantime, we will continue to investigate internally in SOUNDBOKS, and try to figure out why some users are experiencing this, when we are not experiencing it ourselves, and it has not occurred in any of our testing.
Again, thanks for your engagement!
Don't you see how not providing changelogs and explanation looks suspect? Can't you admit a mistake, if it's only a forgivable case of not testing far-fetched usage scenarios properly?
Previously, i mentioned the notion of it being a data corruption issue. We have integrity verification, so this is extremely unlikely, but as it is an easy check, we recommend trying this out. If you try to re-upgrade, and it skips the “transferring” step and goes directly to “Ready to patch”, it means that the previous upgrade had been successful with no corrupted data and that you have had the correct firmware on your speaker. (In this case it will be a very fast process) If however, it started to transfer files, it is worth to wait until the transfer step is completed to make sure you have the right firmware. In the meantime, we will continue to investigate internally in SOUNDBOKS, and try to figure out why some users are experiencing this, when we are not experiencing it ourselves, and it has not occurred in any of our testing.
Again, thanks for your engagement.
Blaming the user here is not endearing you to the community.
Also, if they pushed a fix that worked reliably, they'd be shouting that loud and clear as THE solution, not merely suggesting to try updating and to see if it might help.
It is definitely possible that there is a link; as i said, we're investigating, and in the meanwhile we recommend to try to reupdate as we have customers where that has fixed the issue.
An answer of “The best explanation we have right now is that you incorrectly applied the update” does not inspire confidence.
Still, "firmware update meant to mitigate speaker cone damage under specific power delivery circumstances" is pretty damning, and it's not the first time I see this. Nokia also did the same kind of update to a device I owned, a couple decades ago. The excuse was practically word-for-word, and also claimed speaker damage could occur if you didn't install it.
I didn't install it and the device actually had speaker damage... about 5 years afterwards, and because instead of a cable or a proper solder job, they had used a spring to connect the speaker to the PCB and it had wore out. Totally unrelated to the speaker cone or any type of high volume issue.
Bugs happen, and that's okay. However, users need the ability to roll back to a working configuration, so they can use the product as they bought it instead of a different one which was swapped in later.
Furthermore in the case where there really is law passed that mandates device firmware be updated to certain functionality, the ability of the manufacturer to force that update onto an end user should be viewed as a security bug in the original firmware.
> to dampen their sound more than it should
Wouldn't this mean that the update should have dampen the sound (so there was an update to the audio), but something went wrong so it dampened it too much?
Hope you/author manage to figure out the issue in the end.
A mandatory update implies a critical fix, it would be helpful to understand what warranted this update in the first place, and how that might relate to SQ, SPL, etc.
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.
I'm not aware of any audio architectures which are regenerative like this? Normally what happens to the energy is it ends up dumped in the MOSFET of the amplifier output stage.
[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yintang-Yang/publicatio...
I always assumed that the damping action of an amplifier would ultimately result in the extra energy being dissipated as heat.
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.
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.
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.
But just to be clear, although I have no experience with the product in question, I do know that some professional speakers used as monitors are active speakers, and they have built-in DSPs to give a flatter frequency curve. Of course there are ones which are not updatable, but then of course you are giving up the ability to apply any bug fixes in the firmware.
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.
I like the idea, but as someone who makes music, I'm having a hard time finding anything that is professional-grade and ships firmware that is free software. Brands I'm using now is Adams Audio, Novation, Mackie, Elektron, Korg, Novation and more, and I don't think a single one of them ships FOSS firmware.
It would limit my options considerably, even though I think it would be better long-term.
Ah, I understand. I guess starting your comment with "I think the correct solution is" and not including the disclaimer of "you can't actually do this today" is prone to making people believing you could do something like that today :) No harm done though, thanks for explaining.
300 years ago you could reasonably have said, "The correct solution to the poverty of the Russian peasants is for them to move to the cities and start an industrial revolution," and you would have been right, but if as a serf you attempted this you would have in most cases been beaten and sent back to the feudal estate you came from, if not killed. It took a century and a half plagued with serf revolts and bloodshed before serfdom was abolished, and even today the Russian peasants are subject to conscription, arbitrary detention, and many limitations on their freedom.
Does such audio hardware actually exist in the real world? If not, this is hardly a “solution”.
* Passive speakers: no microcontrollers at all. Prices from tiny to extravagant.
* Class-D amplifier: no facility to update the firmware. Prices from small to extravagant.
* USB DAC: no facility to update the firmware. Prices from tiny to extravagant.
* Laptop running anything that outputs to USB Audio spec: pick your poison.
At the low end, this could be a pair of JBL A130 (under $200/pair on sale), an Aiyama A07 amp ($80), a $10 Apple DAC, and $20 in wires. It's loud enough for a living room, not for an outdoor party. Substitute in Behringer B215 powered speakers for the JBL and Aiyama components, adding about $400 to the total bill, and you should have a pretty good outdoor small-concert system. You'll need power for all this.
There are an infinite number of solutions in this space; the above two are just examples.
> I've been playing tunes to groups of people as the sun goes down
Maybe cutting the volume is actually a feature.
What a horrible thing to do, hopefully there was nobody else in range to have their time in the forest ruined.
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 :)
* 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.
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.
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.
There are many other brands of portable speakers but Soundboks seem to attract a very obnoxious and annoying user segment.
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?
Or is fed up with loud music while trying to enjoy sunset at the beach.
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.
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.
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.
Speakers that are doing this are still good.
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.
It would be nice for SOUNDBOKS to explain the ways they are planing to punish the customers that do not comply.
So it's just a 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).