Time to read: 9 min
一些产品在我们的世界品牌new-they’re the things we “didn’t know we needed,” the innovations that ramp up our experience of life a few notches. You know, like the Internet, the iPhone, and now all thoseInternet of Things things。Plenty of other products are age-old, traditional, ubiquitous. We also can’t live without them, but they’ve been around so long it’s hard to imagine what else can possibly be improved.
一个这样的项目是扬声器。如同in，放大音频录制或文件声音的框，并让您与它一起摇滚。我们暂时没有看到扬声器技术的任何显着改进......到目前为止。
我们坐下来Jesper Theil Thomsen，联合创始人SOUNDBOKS, to riff on speaker design, efficiency, and revolutionizing a product that’s as much a part of our social fabric as the music it broadcasts.
First, a Little Context
为什么，你可能会问，你是否想要一个大，沉重的扬声器必须携带而不是你的耳机，或者中等尺寸的扬声器，你可以在你的背包里拉起？Soundboks并不完全小：它测量26 x 17 x 13英寸，重量为32磅。这就像携带蹒跚学步。（就像一个幼儿一样，声音也有强大的声音，虽然你完全控制着that.的）
Well, simply put, the SOUNDBOKS is for outdoor parties. Festivals. BBQ’s. Jam sessions in the park. Anywhere or any-what that needs good, strong music to set the mood.
“This is for that time before the concert, to get into the mood,” says Jesper, “as well as after the concert.” Fans love to sing along with their favorite stars live, so why wait till the band shows up?
A Passion Sprouts Early
The founders have a little experience with outdoor music sessions—they’ve been going to festivals practically all of their lives. “Across Europe,” explains Jesper, “especially in the north, like Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, and also Switzerland, the live music festival scene is huge. Also here in the U.S., the festival attendance is growing every year.”
In Europe, the DIY speaker community is huge. In Denmark especially, it’s a verifiable tradition. The SOUNDBOKS crew have been building speakers since they were 16 years old—and, as Jesper shares, they “got quite good at it. People started asking us to make speakers for them.”
如果没有任何工程背景或教育，他们显然学会了通过在线阅读文章来建立这些发言者。但是关于公司的真正令人印象深刻的是，它的创始人是多么年轻。不是三十年代年轻人。甚至没有中年二十岁的年轻人。正如Jesper告诉它，“我们在2014年毕业于高中。”
(For those not familiar with the Gregorian calendar, that would be two years ago.)
In their senior year, Jesper says, the guys “put up an ad in the Danish version of Craigslist, and got 200 orders. Then we saved up money for six months, working full time till January 2015, and launched the company in March. By ourselves. The first year we sold 400 speakers, and then we knew we could go international.”
The team (Jesper Theil Thomsen, Hjalte Emilio Wieth, and Christoffer Nyvold) checked out Y Combinator in Silicon Valley, got inspired, applied, and got in. “So, we’re also here in California now,” smiles Jesper.
From the Festival Circuit into the Boardroom
But with great industry interest comes great responsibility. When you decide to turn a hobby into a marketable product, suddenly you’ve got a whole lot more to deliver on. And what can pass if you’re tinkering with a hobby, can mushroom into a major headache for users in the pro version.
“We learned a lot when we built that first version (the one that sold 400 units),” says Jesper. “First, it wasn’t weather-resistant. Second, the way the battery door opened wasn’t well designed, you could actually break it off. We also messed up the design of a reflex port on the back of the speaker.” That was后发言者被制造并交付给他们的办公室。并且这意味着在每一个400个单位中的每个最后一个都是通过手工的直径。
More pain: “We forgot that people do step on and destroy cables. So everyone broke their cables last year.”
Then, the battery failed in the summer heat.
What doesn’t kill your product, makes it stronger, as they say. The team wasted no time in revving up for version 2. They started withon-the-ground feedback。
“We talked to a lot to people about what they liked, what they didn’t,” says Jesper. And that feedback turned into valuable insights.
“We developed our own amplifier. The electronics are actually 60 percent amplifier and 40 percent motherboard. Before, we had six different PCBs, but in the next version we made them into one. We took off everything that could break off the speaker, like the battery door, and redesigned it so it either slides or locks in and can’t break off. We made it water-resistant.”
该团队还增加了蓝牙功能和更强大的辅助电缆。当我们询问他们所做的不同之处时，Jesper挥动它没有大不了：“这只是一个使用更好，更昂贵的供应商的情况。”
They also made the corners much larger, and flush-mounted everything. Meaning, all the external elements are flush with the wooden frame of the speaker, creating a clean, sophisticated design.
“The key about the development of this speaker, is that most companies just follow the cheapest way to manufacture a product. We wanted to build the best, highest quality and the most durable speaker we could. Whatever it cost.”
Most importantly, beams Jesper, the speaker is greener than just about any other comparable product out there. “Long battery cycle time means we can use a lot fewer batteries.” The amplifier is also much more energy-efficient than most other comparable speakers on the market, and the wood is FSC-certified.
Improving On What’s Already Good
So what exactly is so special about SOUNDBOKS, and is any of what Jesper and his team did truly innovative?
There are three ways SOUNDBOKS improves upon existing technology:
- 一个非常有效的放大器
- 高度敏感的扬声器
- 声学设计
So let’s get into it.
1. Efficient amplifier
Jesper自信地说：“我们可以比你用来为iPhone充电的力量胜过夜总会的音乐胜过音乐。”这是真的：SoundBoks使用大约3,328 WH来玩113 dB。供参考，iPhone使用5WH。肯定令人印象深刻，但为什么重要的是，除了你担心功耗吗？影响比你想象的更大（见下一部分）。
2. Sensitive speaker units
SOUNDBOKS uses highly sensitive speaker units that require a surprisingly low amount of power to reach high volumes. For comparison, consider that speakers like the Devialet Phantom require a lot of power to play at high volume, while SOUNDBOKS speakers can get up to 40 dB louder with the same amount of power.
3.声学设计
这是指扬声器产生和分配声音的方式，这基本上是空气的脉冲。机柜设计的声音浴缸允许通过相对较小的空间推出最大空气量。“我们制作了频率良好，光滑，以避免疯狂的尖峰，”Jesper说。看 ”大声响亮吗？” below to find out why this matters.
But let’s get back to the efficiency point.
Now, About That Power
If cables were the nemesis of the 80’s (and 90’s, and 00’s, and…), batteries are the undoing of the mobile generation. Use one too many apps, download one too many emails, or play a few too many songs on your smartphone, and soon you’re out of juice. And smartphones are a small device. How are you going to power a large party speaker like the SOUNDBOKS with a battery?
Right now, explains Jesper, the people powering up festivals and concerts run miles and miles of cables. Generators need to be brought in. “The market lacks a good battery solution.”
SOUNDBOKS uses no cables. Its battery takes three hours to fully recharge, but then you get 30 hours out of it. As in, THREE-ZERO. That’s unheard of.
“扬声器电池不能使用大量的功率，”Jesper说。“所以挑战正在制作整个扬声器系统，从放大器的效率到扬声器的灵敏度，在低功率上运行良好。这就是为什么我们的工程是如此之胜 - 因为我们增加了较低的力量，“他补充道，”公司的领先工程师，确保肯定是信贷约翰尼格伯格。
那么他们如何做到这一点？
Jesper股票认为，通常的锂离子电池不仅不仅仅是持续的摇滚音乐会，它们也无法处理极端温度。他和他的团队想要在阿拉斯加人员以及撒哈拉沙漠，在户外享受良好的音乐。“所以现在我们使用磷酸铁锂，这是令人难以置信的耐温 - 它可以处理-20°C至+ 60°C的温度。我们希望发言人持续整个寿命。锂离子电池持续500次循环，而磷酸铁锂持续在2至4,000周期之间。它已经出现在市场上，只是不广泛用于消费电子产品，因为它更昂贵。“
更昂贵，是的，但声音不对廉价品质。它也是更环保的，补充说jesper。“它更贵，但它在各种方面都更加绿色。”
Gotta Protect Your Tunes
As anyone who’s ever gone to a concert or sporting event knows, things can get a bit rowdy. But really, what’s the worst that can happen to a speaker? Don’t people just dance around it?
Jesper shakes his head knowingly. “We’ve seen people pour beer on their speakers. They also jump on them.”
The festival scene, it turns out, is the perfect battleground for product testing—and that’s why the SOUNDBOKS is built to withstand a military onslaught (practically). “We wanted to build a speaker perfect for every occasion, and festivals are the most extreme events,” says Jesper.
Probably the most critical order of operations was to make it water-resistant so people can party literally anytime, anywhere.
“We water coated every part of the speaker that could possibly get damaged,” says Jesper. (Translation: they coated the parts with silicon and PCP to make them water-resistant.)
How Loud is Loud?
Yeah, the SOUNDBOKS is LOUD. Up to 119 decibels loud. That’s louder than the average PA system at a rock concert.
Problem for the neighbors? Could be. Problem for your eardrum? Depends on how high you turn it up and how close you get to it. As with anything of this nature, it’s the user’s responsibility to gauge how and when to use a SOUNDBOKS. If you know the coffee’s hot…
Jesper confesses he’s blown out his ears at concerts too. “People need to be smart enough not to put their ears right next to the speaker.” But he knows it’s also easy to forget about things like that when you’re in the throes of an awesome concert or party, and that’s why the team is doing all they can to soften the auditory impact of their speaker.
That’s where the acoustic design we mentioned above comes in. “We said, how can we avoid disturbing people a mile away? So we made the speaker go out on a wider audio range—so relative to its volume, the sound doesn’t travel as far. We also removed the frequencies where distortion is inevitable, and that gives you a better listening experience, not to mention being better for your hearing.”
A Future Small and Big All at the Same Time
No successful company can possibly sit on its speakers… er, laurels, and SOUNDBOKS knows that. But they never have.
“We were very entrepreneurial from the start,” says Jesper. “We realized [early on] there are a lot of people who want good outdoor speakers. We are considering more products down the road, but for now, our priority is to enter as many relevant markets as possible.”
Their early success notwithstanding, SOUNDBOKS might have a bit of a long road ahead, given the fact the speaker is much more expensive to manufacture. But if music fans everywhere have their way, SOUNDBOKS’ dedication to quality and the environment—not to mention their hot new speaker technology—might just help change the industry’s mind.
