SoundBuckets

A high quality portable speaker for studio or home use.

Overview

The SoundBuckets are a compact, portable, quality active speaker. It’s been designed with expensive, proper drivers and analogue electronics to properly reproduce music, albeit in a compact format. It’s ideal for mono compatibility, edit rooms, portable talkback and small speaker checking. They can work off internal rechargeable batteries, or permanently via a mains power supply.

Background

There is a plethora of speakers around, but very few that combine accuracy, small size and modern semi-omni characteristics.

Omni design

We designed then with an upwards facing woofer to make them nearly perfectly Omni to about 1500Hz, where the tweeter takes over and gradually becomes more directional. This means that the inevitable reflections from all around the speaker are given the same energy, making it easier for your ear to hear a consistent soundfield, not dominated by room effects.

Cylindrical

A cylinder is a great shape for a loudspeaker, instead of the normal panel resonances of a box speaker, the cylinder vibrates in a 360 degree manner, spreading the effects out equally, and in a better way than a box speaker. This also lets you not damp the sides as much which in turn doesn’t store as much energy. The net effect is a more lifelike speaker.

Sealed Box

Again, unlike other compact speakers, we’ve kept the design as a sealed box – no farting ports or flapping passive radiators. Yes you lose some bass extension, but you gain great transient response and better, tighter bass. And after the ported versions have run out of steam, you’ll still hear some low bass from the SoundBuckets because they roll off at half the rate of the others.

Analogue amplification

We decided to keep the electronics completely analogue, unlike many other DSP based designs. DSP is a great tool, but at this price range it’s used to cover up for poor speaker drivers. We instead used good drivers and good old analogue active filters. The result is a clean, zero latency design, that will happily work natively with any format or resolution of audio.

Bluetooth or not

SoundBuckets are available with or without Bluetooth. Bluetooth lets you check to see exactly what your customers will hear, and obviously you can do this wirelessly. You can bypass the Bluetooth however by just using the analogue inputs instead.

Batteries and mains power

The SoundBucket is truly portable, and works off large Li-ion batteries. However in the studio, you can also power it off the mains via the included mains power supply. This has the advantage of also giving them a 6dB loudness boost!

Studio Use

Because of their accuracy and benign Omni characteristics, SoundBuckets are ideal for:

Edit room stereo monitoring
Mono compatibility checking
Portable, on location talkback
Reviewing work at home or in a domestic environment

Edit rooms

The compact size of the SoundBuckets and their benign semi-Omni response means they work really well as stereo speakers around an edit screen. The full range response means that you’ll get to hear clearly the changes as you edit, and the Omni response evens out reflections from the adjacent screens and desktops.

Mono compatibility

Strangely, even today there are a lot of mono devices, -most portable speakers, most phones, and even FM radio in poor reception areas. For these reasons, it’s important to check your work on a mono speaker, that electrically mono’s the source and broadcasts it from a single point. With the accurate SoundBucket, you’ll get an instant, accurate soundfield to check any anomalies.

Location talkback

The battery power in the SoundBucket makes them a great speaker for remote talkback. Together with the long battery life, and even Bluetooth wireless inputs, this makes providing talkback on location very easy.

Reviewing your work in a domestic environment

Being portable, you can play your work out in your properly treated studio, and also listen to it on the same speakers in your domestic environment. Whether for leisure or compatibility checking, it’s a great option to have!

Features

Physical:

Strong, compact design, 14cm diameter x 12cm high (~ 6″x5″)
Solid, bolted construction weighing 1.6Kg (4lbs) with leather carry handle
Outer cylinder is epoxy powder painted in semi-gloss car paint
Removable top bass driver speaker grille
Audio board and batteries are built to be replaceable/ upgradable
Aux and power connectors are mounted on the rear of the unit

User features:

Power: On/Off
Bluetooth: automatic connect/ disconnect
Audio: dim level
Status: Tri-colour LED displays battery level& Bluetooth status
Mono or stereo operation

Connectors:

3.5mm audio aux jack in, 2V RMS max level
3.5mm audio aux jack out, for wired stereo, or daisy chaining multiple Soundbuckets
Micro USB connector for standard charge
12-24V DC jack in for high power operation

What’s in the box:

SoundBucket (sic)
24V 2.7A mains power supply
Aux Cable
Micro USB lead
User Manual

Audio:

16mm (5/8″) tweeter and 115mm (4″) bass/ mid driver
Pure analogue path with analogue crossover and bi-amped power amplifiers
Max short term power output, RMS >2x 30W into 8 ohms
Max continuous power output RMS > 2x 20W RMS into 8 ohms @ 1KHz, < 0.02% THD+N 20-20K bandwidth
Analogue S/N: 126dB, pre power amp
Analogue THD+N: <0.001% 1KHz, 2V RMS pre power amp

Bluetooth:

Bluetooth 4.0 specification
True Stereo allows you to link 2 Soundbuckets together for wireless stereo
aptX and SBC streaming decoders Range in free air >10M (30ft)
Auto connect to last device on boot up
Up to 8 previous pairings stored in memory

Power:

Internal, rechargeable batteries
Battery Life: > 30Hrs at 60dB SPL, > 6Hrs at 85dB SPL
Battery rating: >500 full charge/discharge cycles
Micro USB power/recharge, 5V @ 0.5A
External power via 2.1mm DC socket: 12-24V @ 4A
Recharge time from flat varies depending on USB or external DC, but typically 4-16Hrs

Loudness:

Max RMS level on batteries without clipping: > 84dBC @ 1M (90dbC @ 0.5M)
Max RMS level on external power without clipping: > 94dBC @1M (100dBC @ 0.5M)
Max peak level on batteries with music before audible distortion: > 90dBC @1M (96dBC @ 0.5M)
Max peak level on external power with music before audible distortion: > 100dBC @1M (106dBc @ 0.5M)

Acoustics:

Frequency response on axis, ref 1KHz: +/- 2dB 110Hz-20KHz
LF Frequency response, ref 1KHz: -3dB @ 95Hz, -10dB @ 55Hz
System damping is near optimal @ Q = 0.8

SoundBucket Speakers