I’ve steadily transitioned from CD’s and my home stereo system to my phone and tablet.
I started by loading music onto my phone and connecting it to my car audio system. I also started listening to music at home. The phone’s speaker was pretty decent.
I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tablet and noticed a improvement in sound. But it just doesn’t get very loud. Especially if there’s any noise in the house. The music gets drowned out. There’s no low end. I want to hear the bass!
My latest upgrade is a bluetooth amplified speaker. I originally planned on buying the Bose Soundlink. But there were a lot of complaints on Amazon. Some people said it stopped working after a few months. Others said it stopped charging.
I looked at other brands. JBL has a line of amplified speakers. They have a $400 100W boombox for outdoor parties. 60W model for smaller groups. I decided to buy the 40W JBL Charge 4. It has a charger port (power station) for my phone and auxiliary plug for non bluetooth devices. It’s only 8 inches long and approximately 4 inches high. Weighs about 3 lbs. $130
There is a newer model, the JBL Flip 5 $100 that’s similar but there’s no auxiliary input or charger port.(power station)
I finally have really good hi-fidelity sound. My bookshelf speakers system still sounds better. But I love the portability of using my phone or tablet with the JBL speaker. It’s powerful enough for indoor listening or out on the deck barbecuing.
I got a JBL Link 10 about a year ago. It was on clearance for $30, and it’s the best bluetooth speaker I’ve ever had. Pretty rich sound from a smaller speaker - it fills the room and most of the surrounding rooms quite well.
Audio from small speakers is something that has really benefited from advances in technology during the last 10-15 years. Sound from phones, televisions and laptops has become pretty decent and the portable speakers like discussed upthread have become excellent. Sometimes, one of the guys working in the warehouse will use a tiny one and it’s amazing what kind of sound a 3.5" cube can push today, wireless and long life rechargeable at that.
It really is amazing the difference between a phone/tablet’s speakers and a good bluetooth speaker.
My daughter regularly listens to music on her iPhone and I growl at her “ugh… tinny speakers!” because when she jacks the volume up enough to enjoy the music, the high end is blasting all over the house. She turns the volume back down.
I recently realized just how bad phone/tablet speakers are when I watched one of the music videos my wife and I record for church. She plays piano and I play bass, as accompaniment for singers, and I edit it all together with picture-in-picture and such.
Normally, when I watch these videos on my computer or with headphones, my stunningly awesome bass line is crisp and clear. The other day I saw one of these videos on my wife’s iPad and was surprised that the bass did not come through at all. There I was, playing bass in silence, while the singers and my wife’s piano were loud and clear.
To be fair, I had applied a low-pass filter on the bass and a high pass filter on the piano to give them each their own part of the audio, so perhaps had I not filtered the bass there would have been higher overtones coming through.
I have one set of AudioEngine and one set of Fluance powered bookshelf speakers. One set on my desk and the other in another part of the house I routinely listen to music. Both allow me to connect via Bluetooth and are so much better sounding than the small speakers I started off with. Of course, they also cost quite a bit more and aren’t portable. I still use the small speaker for moving around when I work outside.
All are better than the crappy built-in speakers on my Google Pixel phone.