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JBL Charge 3 - EQ tweaks to improve the sound

2016-10-06
hi guys and welcome here is the JBL judge 3 and today we are going to tweak it or at least try to improve the sound a little bit since its released some months ago there were lots of controversial opinions about the speaker with many claiming it to sound muffled others are more satisfied with it but I also rather belong to those who think treble response could be a bit better there is even some discussion within my channel with people asking how can the sound be improved with an equaliser some even emailed to JBL harman kardon well it's the same company why does it sound so much more muffled than the JBL judge 2 and why there is no update which improves the sound and so on well if looking a bit closer I think that the charge 3 is a much better speaker than the judge to us yeah there is some treble problem but the bass is much fuller you can play much louder and much more control than the old version also without the strong processing but JBL harman kardon obviously had to make some compromises i mean a speaker that small with such strong bass which can also play loud the treble had to be may be taken away slightly it already suffers from intermodulation what is this year when drivers full range drivers move due to strong bass it compromises high frequencies which you can hear is some kind of side effect let's say so the charts we already suffers from this and if they raised treble maybe even more it would suffer more and they had to well to take it down but at normal listening levels it just appears muffled and and it could be definitely improved when looking at a frequency response measurement I did at the very beginning when this becomes released you can see yeah that it measures really flat and natural just that there is some slight dip at around 5 kilo Hertz and then treble starts rolling off already around twelve point five kilo Hertz so above twelve point five is not much there is still a slight raise above but with a later update you can see that obviously they included some low-pass filter so maybe to minimize inter modulation but it didn't really help much so they didn't improve treble but yeah took it even away and sadly someone claimed with the latest update which which was two days ago that the treble has improved a lot and I should perform it I did and I did another measurement and there is no change maybe even slightly worse than it was before so it would be of course interesting to see how treble can be improved the problem also is that the JBL charge 3 you can see this deep at 5 kilohertz if we compare it with another speaker like the Bose Soundlink mini you can see that in this area the Bose has a boost so the JBL chari definitely appears more muffled just because the Bose is more boosted but in reality that JBL has then much letter frequency response also much better treble as you can see it rolls off at 12 kilohertz while the Bose already rolls off above 10 kilohertz so there is no upper treble at all with the Bose Soundlink mini still I'm also not that satisfied with the speaker for normal listening levels it it has nice bass but it's missing this nice Sparkle that's why I thought yeah I will take my my equaliser app and we will try improving it slightly so I created a curve as always and I did just what was seen in the measurement I took I'm here at around 13 kilo Hertz with the upper band I hope you can see this and I posted it 10 DB I could post it in more but let's say this is OK and I have another band which is at around five point five kilowatts and I also boosted it for 3-4 DB to to overcome this deep and make it more more of a flatter so let's listen to a song from Salter freesia first without EQ and then I will activate the queue so that you can hear the difference it's always I'm of course using high quality binaural microphones so please listen with headphones so you can really hear all the nuances so now without the queue I will increase volume slightly now I will activate the queue and you can probably hear that it became clearer more sparkling what are the queue and I think it me improves of X's if we disable equalizer again it becomes really muffled with the queue make the final track this is playing with kill now which sounds of course okay but if I disable equalizer yeah it sounds muted and a big tool to gain with pull it out try out trick this is without EQ no and with a Q you can hear this upper trebles pocket becomes much better without introducing that much of any additional I mean it just has two drivers so the foreign drivers have to produce both treble and bass of course they struggle I will deactivate Q again and you can get it it becomes more muffled because the higher we turn volume the stronger you can try without but it's not so obvious with this song it's Varitek he'll their intimate relation becomes much more obvious because there is some bass and the treble is quite we find this is with EQ now without you can hear that that level has this strange character again with the Q's volume because best would be some dynamic adjustment I will deactivate EQ again and you can hear that it starts soundly it starts really sounding muffled I will activate EQ game so it's much better the problem is also the human ear which of course has no linear frequency response are the lower the volume gets the low it becomes sensitive for low and high frequencies that's why both boosts bass and treble at low of low levels if we have a look at the frequency response measurement again you can see that the charge 3 remains always the same regardless of loudness level while both really boosts treble and bass at the same time so the human ear you had to compensate for this loudness loss of the human ear you know it's a pity that JBL doesn't apply any dynamic adjustments they could take away treble and bass just like they do now for high levels but at low levels it could get along with a bit more bass and also with a bit more treble boost so yeah but I think well some slide trailer yeah EQ adjustment just like here with with some slight hump at 5 6 kilohertz and another hump at 13 kilo Hertz helps already with this yeah it's a pity that JBL didn't do anything or cannot or they don't want to I don't know maybe they want you to buy the next version the best would be to include just Twitter's so that the main drivers of food and drivers would be cut off at let's say 2 3 kilohertz you wouldn't get any Internet elation distortion bass could be pushed even stronger because JBL has really great bass processing JBL harman kardon both the Harman Kardon go and play you can see over there and JBL at charge 3 they outperform all others because in regarding in distortion-free bass put the strongest songs and this thing doesn't fart doesn't do anything if you play such songs on both or any others because you know even the river starts struggling little bit but Hammond cotton outperforms the bill play a six you can see over there which cost thousands this costs 300 or 400 and it plays much stronger at higher levels I mean it's different again at low levels as the bill play has quite a bit of a bass boost even much stronger than the common card on but the Harman Kardon remains completely unimpressed even at maximum volume with the strongest tracks just like the JBL charge 3 it's only that the treble starts sounding a bit strange due to inter modulation so best would be to include Twitter's someone claimed that they responded there is no place within this speaker for tweeters which is a complete if you look at at the fugu at the small one it's 2 or 3 times smaller than the JBL charge 3 it has two Twitter's at both sides it would be enough to add Twitter's even on top as Twitter's have a much less directional sound and full range drivers and you could even yea get a closer on the directional speaker because then you hear the mid frequencies anyhow you're just missing upper frequencies from behind so Twitter's a bath would be maybe the best solution not here would like with the JBL extreme but really up there somewhere no need for or even maybe one driver at the front one at the back just like many others dunno like the the leakage also has driver spread to the side so there is lots of potential still still there the charge free is already really great in this size but there is room for improvement lots of improvement adding Twitter's making the sound more only directional by by placing the speakers on opposite sides adding some dynamic adjustment I mean it's all there they are able to do it but they probably they don't want or they can't or I don't know maybe they are just some morons doing what some someone else tells them but they don't think by themselves so I really hope and I think in future we'll really get lots of grades because the GBA tracks for will be probably even better I hope they don't make it bigger but keep the size for this size it's already pretty impressive and you can improve it with some slight EQ as we've seen but best would have been here to to add Twitter's to may be optimized drivers a little bit put them at the opposite side for a more only directional sound so yeah this was it to tell the truth I really don't use the charge three that often because for home use if I'm going from the kitchen to the bathroom and so on I prefer even this small Xiaomi me as it sounds much more balanced and and has better treble therefore it's a pity s such a great speaker stands around unused it has great battery life really impressive at mixing volume more than six hours but yeah this intermediation problem this muffled travel and everything what impresses me is how well JBL manages to control the bass with the Harman Kardon gameplay and with the JBL charge 3 they didn't or they were not able with the extreme which tends to distort if the peak becomes too strong you hear something not so with the GBH a3 and with the Harman Kardon going play you will hear when I do my my video about the Bo play a six you will hear how how ridiculous it suddenly starts sounding above half volume this is horrible a speaker 4000 euros I mean I got it for way way cheaper but anyhow it's it's horrible and the Harman Kardon coin play compared this to two words really it's the same with the JBL trashed winter bose soundlink mini the Soundlink mini starts doing really strange stuff at higher levels why this charge three plays normally just like it was recorded of course there is some bass reduction at higher levels it's it's normal the small drivers cannot be moved like that but it's still way better than many others because for example if had the sony xperia which sounded better with treble but also started to compress quite a lot at high levels so you lost all Peaks and the Sun became more sausage while here you could hear any attack so JBL has definitely the best processing of all JBL Harman Kardon of all companies I have tried no yet they just need to optimize it even further with dynamic adjustment with whatever yeah this was just a video about I don't know how to tweak the JBL charge 3 yet best week would be to add - Twitter's here at the upper side most of the time you will listen to the speaker from above I mean you place it on the ground seat and the the sound should emit a bit more upwards therefore it's stupid to place Twitter's here they should be either here or directly at the top so you can also hear it well from behind so far I think nobody really did something like that yeah let's see what the charge for will look like and sound I hope it will sound even better than this because this has some really nice hi-fi high end touch to it just missing this treble definition but bass is already better than many other larger speakers we've heard the bass boom is quite a bit larger but struggles with bass and this one plays completely clean so yeah nothing has to say about the charge 3 for anyone who likes it yeah continue liking it for those who don't like it yeah maybe let's wait for the successor model success in model the JBL charge for let's hope gabion improves it to exceed even more until then yeah let's stay tuned and see you in the next video bye bye
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