Happy Easter 🐣 (Patreon)

I am currently chilling with my son in the nature while visiting my parents. As always I took the UBoom X with me to spend some time with it and listen carefully how I could improve it more.

My initial goal was to offer something as natural sounding as possible, but due to different placements, indoor/outdoor use, placement at the ground or elevated etc there is no way to achieve this with just a single sound profile, therefore I had included several settings for different use cases and would have added even more if Earfun had let me.

The only thing I can still do now is to tweak the existing ones. Some have suggested to get rid of modes like Boom xXX or Ground O while I noticed that these modes can often give better results outdoors than all the other modes, therefore my plan is to retain them but especially improve ground O which was a bit rushed when I did it due to the deadline from Earfun. Original Ground O should offer the most bass possible due to the boost from ground reflections without the boominess you would also get, at the same time I thought by facing the speakers up you could get some kind of omnidirectional sound if treble was boosted enough. I want to keep that idea but refine it a bit, as currently I simply think the overall bass amount is too high while not being that well integrated with the rest and getting out of control too quickly. I want it more similar to desktop mode but rather become a kind of desktop+ for outdoor use. I also want it to sound better with regular placement, with ground placement you need more treble anyhow as you mostly listen from above, so it should become a more universal setting.

As indoor is the „basic“ tuning for this speaker my main goal is to optimise this first, as some have detected issues in the response I want to get this simply right. Although I had opted for a rather flat response with indoor I may tune it brighter this time as many complain about a too warm sound or not being clear enough, although I had demonstrated before that perfectly flat studio monitors sound even warmer and more muddy than indoor. But I personally would have also liked a clearer sound especially at lower levels which was not possible to achieve due to the limitations of the dynamic EQ. The only way would be to tune it brighter from scratch and maybe compress treble more at high levels if necessary. I want to keep the overall sound still as flat as possible but will probably raise treble earlier than now, which would result in a sound more similar to the Helsinki with boosted tuning, which also has the treble boost starting already pretty low.

Once indoor stands and sounds „better“ than now I will transfer these changes over to indoor+ and do some equivalent adjustments to the other modes. This will be lots of work as I need to listen and measure in various locations. I am not sure when everything can be finished. Some don’t like the stereo enhancing, but without the speaker sounds just bland, so why not use a Stormbox Blast instead? I tried to keep the effect as discrete as possible especially with regular indoor the difference with or without is marginal, the effect increases with indoor+ and is maxed with outdoor+. I could offer an alternate firmware version with stereo enhancing disabled for all modes but this would require some readjustment of the response for all modes.

Some have already asked if they would get the new firmware for free if they already got the current one. Honestly it’s impertinent to ask this from me with all the effort I had already put into all this while not getting anything in return from Earfun. Just to inform you: until today 82 purchased my custom firmware. You can do the math how much I „earned“ with this, which is just ridiculous. I am sorry but with that attitude I simply cannot survive like this. The current firmware will remain as is, the new one will be a new one, those interested in any possible improvements are free to get this one too.

Thanks for your understanding and wish you a nice time with your beloved!