First impressions - Fugoo Bluetooth speaker!

I just received the Fugoo speaker yesterday so my own review will be coming up soon. Unfortunately it is going to be in German this time, sorry folks, but there are already some great and detailed reviews of the Fugoo in English, like that from Gadgetmac, Mashable by Brent Butterworth, Tom's Guide etc. but Fugoo is currently starting to offer their speaker in Germany for the first time, though any German review is still missing, so I will hopefully be the first one to close this gap!

As you can see my son is already pretty excited about this new toy. He even managed to drop it once, but  there is no need to become worried, as the speaker is extremly rugged and well protected inside the "Sport"-jacket. I also received a "Tough"-jacket which looks like a tank. Of course I will test this too, although I am a bit afraid of my floor getting damaged if my son manages to drop it again inside this one.

My first impressions are very positive indeed. Although I immediately became annoyed by the much too loud voice-prompts, you can deactivate them completely with some button presses. There are lots of different combinations to enable different modes, you probably have to learn them by heart, but the Fugoo can do lots of things, the limiting fact is that it has only 3 main buttons and the power-button, so look forward to some finger-acrobatics.

The sound is pretty smooth. It is by far not as heavy as on the Bose Soundlink Mini, but the Fugoo sounds more natural with very clear mids and perfectly tuned treble. There is plenty of bass, reaching quite deep, it is not as boosted as on the Bose, but the Fugoo nevertheless never sounds anemic. You really get a sense of punch and there is "real" bass, unlike most other portable speakers I have tried, including the JBL Charge, UE Boom etc. I think the Fugoo can compete pretty well with bigger speakers as well, becaues when I directly switched between the Fugoo and the Soundblaster Roar, I preferred the much more open and less boomy sound of the Fugoo, without that much upper bass, but with more low bass instead compared to the Roar.
As the Fugoo is nearly omnidirectional you don't need to care about placing or aiming it at you. It sounds just good, wherever you put it, even on the floor from above it sounds gerat, regardless if you are listening from behind or from the front, as it has all drivers spread to all sides.
Volume control is synced with the player, which is great because you can also control start/stop and track skipping directly from the speaker, if you intend to use it mounted on your bike with your phone hidden somewhere in your pocket for example.
The only thing I noticed is that maximum volume might be a bit low for some. Currently it is by far not as loud as the Bose Soundlink Mini for example, but I still have an older Firmware (01.00.14) installed, so I will hopefully be able to compare it with the latest 01.00.46 firmware which is claimed to improve sound quality and overall loudness! I will try to prepare some comparison videos as well as detailed frequency response measurements. Of course there will be also a comparison to the Soundlink Mini, and maybe the UE Boom, but after having listened to to the Fugoo for some minutes only, I can already claim by now that the Fugoo is just a class above the UE Boom with a much more mature sound, while the UE Boom can play considerably louder, but just sounds like a tin-can speaker, not a grown up system!

Please be patient and give me some time to prepare everything!

Review: Soundfreaq Pocket Kick - more style than substance?

There are so many portable Bluetooth speakers on the market right now, that it is really hard to follow all of them. Apart from the big boys like JBL, Sony, Bose, etc. I sometimes ask myself if I might be missing something not trying out some of the cheaper ones, most of them being no-name brands designed and built somewhere in Asia.
What is still missing though is a really pocketable speaker with good sound. With "good" sound I mean something really outstanding that manges to wipe the floor with all other offerings. Similar to what Bose did in the Jambox-class when they announced the Soundlink Mini, just smaller and more pocketable.

I have tested both JBL Micro Wireless and TDK Trek Micro (you can see my comparison video here), and although both seem to be best in their class, they still sound like tiny pocket speakers, without any mentionable low-frequency output.
Meanwhile a Mini Jambox managed to substitute my old FoxL as pocketable speaker that I used to carry around with me most of the time. Although the Mini Jambox is not the holy grail either, it sounds pretty good with some additional EQ-tweaking especially when Liveaudio is enabled as well (read my review here).

The Soundfreaq Pocket Kick seems to be a direct competitor to the Mini Jambox, with equally stylish looks but cheaper and maybe better sound? There are already some videos on Youtube comparing the Pocket Kick to the Mini Jambox and it seems Soundfreaq was so convinced about their new speaker that they even sent out review samples together with Mini Jamboxes and some special switching units, so that the reviewers could compare both speakers directly by switching from one to the other.
Also iLounge gave the Pocket Kick their best rating, therefore I was curious how good it really sounded and if it was that much better than the Mini Jambox, which I could grab for 100� recently. The Pocket Kick cost 89� and was not that much cheaper, thus directly comparable.
Let's see how the Pocket Kick fares against the Mini Jambox in my own test.

First thing you notice, it comes in a pretty simple packaging, nothing uber-stylish like the Jambox. Just a speaker, an USB-wire and an aux-cable. The speaker looks pretty good though. It looks different than most other offerings and it doesn't seem to copy the design Mini Jambox directly, but looking at the side of both speakers with all the ports a stronger similarity cannot be denied anymore.

Both Pocket Kick and Mini Jambox are roughly the same size. The little bit more height of the Pocket Kick  the Mini Jambox makes it up with more length, but the Mini Jambox is also slightly slimmer.

The Pocket Kick comes in different colors, mine came in platinum, but it can also be had in either black or "gold", which rather looks like beige.

Unlike the Jambox which is updateable and has tons of interesting features like multipoint pairing, Liveaudio, wireless stereo pairing with another Jambox etc, the Pocket Kick has only speakerphone capability and can stream music nothing else. This is not a bad thing for a speaker, it just has to sound good, doesn't need to be a coffemaker too. Therefore I was mostly interested how good it sounded and if it was considerably better than all the competition in this regard.

In reality the sound is clear and thin. The treble is boosted that much, that due to missing lower frequencies it tends to sound really harsh. Some might take this harshness for detail, but the treble is just boosted compared to the rest of the frequency spectrum. I wouldn't like to listen to music with the Pocket Kick, especially at lower levels, where you only hear mids and treble. Although there is a passive radiator built in firing to the back, you won't hear much of it without pressing your ear against the back of the speaker. Things improve a bit if you turn volume up close to the maximum, but the sound never really becomes full-bodied. Although the top volume of the Pocket Kick is a little bit louder than that of the Mini Jambox, there is already quite a bit of distortion noticeable with bassheavy recordings, while the Mini Jambox remains pretty clean. At close to maximum volume both Mini Jambox and Pocket Kick sound similar regarding bass response with the Pocket Kick still being clearer due to boosted treble, it is at lower levels where the Mini Jambox will sound fuller, with more bass and an overall more powerful sound. Especially if you turn on Liveaudio, the Mini Jambox will wipe the floor with the Pocket Kick producing a much broader sound stage, much better bass and comparable treble detail.
I was pretty underwhelmed with the Pocket Kick to cut it short. I have prepared a video where I compared the Pocket Kick to the Mini Jambox at lower levels (slightly above medium volume) and at maximum volume for both, where you can also hear the difference in loudness, which is not that much if you ask me (I measured about 2-3dB).

Here some measurements at levels from 55dB to maximum volume. You can see that there is hardly any dynamic sound processing, as all curves are nearly parallel. There is a strong downwards tilt to the left, which shows the imbalance of bass and treble. The Pocket Kick is just much too light on bass or much to bright to really be acceptable for listening to music. The measurement in grey is off-axis from 37� above and shows that the Pocket Kick is not extremely directional, as treble won't suffer that much when not positioned well.

Compared to the Mini Jambox at 65dB (orange curve) you can see how much more bass the Mini Jambox is able to produce, while in reality not being a bass heavy speaker at all.

It is only at higher levels (here 85dB) where the Pocket Kick starts to catch up with even slightly deeper bass than the Mini Jambox, but due to the overdone treble, you won't notice it that much.

If the Pocket Kick was considerably cheaper, I wouldn't complain, but for the asked price you can get much better sound, although from bigger speakers (like the Sony SRS-X2, or JBL Flip etc). The Pocket Kick has definitely its looks and is pretty well built, but I wouldn't like to listen to music with it.

+ small
+ nice design
+ well built

- harsh treble
- hardly any bass
- not very loud
- noticeable distortion at maximum volume
- pretty limited on features

Infinity One - the better Pill XL?

Harman Kardon which meanwhile owns some known audio brands like AKG, JBL, Lexicon, Mark Levinson and Revel will now also launch new products for their Infinity brand, one of them being the Infinity One Bluetooth speaker.

It is probably no coincidence that the Infinity One looks like a blown up JBL Charge 2, which was also just launched.
Similar to the new JBL Charge 2 the Infinity One also houses 2 opposing passive radiators, one at each end. And the drivers face forwards and backwards, making the speaker emit sound to the front and back with bass to the sides. This is not a fully omnidirectional approach, but pretty close and could sound quite convincing when put somewhere in the center of a listening circle.

The Infinity One is quite large already, making it rather comparable to the Beats Pill XL, than to smaller speakers like the Soundlink Mini. But it is 10cm shorter than the Pill XL and slightly slimmer and lighter overall, weighting "only" 1.3kg.

Brent Butterworth already did some measurements of the Infinity One and the frequency response although not entirely flat looks quite impressive with some deeper bass that the Pill XL cannot reproduce at all. I overlaid both measurements scaled to the same size with the thin lines representing the Infinity One while the thick lines belong to the Pill XL, and I think you can see pretty well, that the Infinity One has much more lower bass than the Pill XL which rolls off below 100Hz already, while the Infinity One still has usable bass at 50Hz. Although both have boosted treble as well, the Infinity One looks smoother without that strong dips and humps from the Pill XL and will probably sound more natural too:

(c) Brent Butterworth

What we also know is that the Infinity One won't be able to reach the same impressive loudness of the Pill XL, which is a pity, because Brent measured 102dB for the Pill XL, while the Infinity One only reached 93dB, which is nearly half as loud and thus not much louder than most other current portable speakers like the Soundlink III, TDK A33 etc. The Pill XL will probably still remain the "king of loudness", however with a less than ideal sound.

There's no word about availabiltiy yet, but as the first test-samples are already out, I guess it should be issued during the next weeks. It is already available for preorder on the Infinity site.

I would have loved to check this speaker out and put it through some tests and comparisons, but I am afraid I am not important enough to deserve a test-unit

Thanks to a friend, I was finally able to test the Infinity One, you can find my final review here.

JBL Charge 2 out now!

JBL already offers the new Charge 2 speaker without making a song and dance about it.
It is not yet available in any other stores except JBL's own online store and Crutchfield. There's no known availabilty for Europe either...

The new Charge 2 has dual passive radiators to the sides, and it seems it has dual drivers facing to both the front and back of the speaker making it nearly omnidirectional. The bass-response is claimed to be 75Hz, which is quite a gain over the 150Hz of the original JBL Charge speaker.

Now this could finally be the real contender for Bose's Soundlink Mini, with more features, better outdoor usability and hopefully better sound too? The old one was rather a bad joke to tell the truth.

Update: You can find my final review of the JBL Charge 2 here.

Review: AudioXperts EVA BLU - the portable Bluetooth speaker with wooden flavor

I am going to review a speaker which probably most of you will never be able to buy or even hear in person because AudioXperts as a company doesn't exist anymore! The EVA BLU was originally announced to cost 399$, but now there only seem to be some units left for the German market, with some dealers even offering prices below 200�, so hurry if you still want to get one or just read my own impression if it is worth at all.

I haven't even heard about AudioXperts before, but according to the info still found on the web it started 2 years ago as a new audio company specialized in luxury audio gadgets consisting of some former Boston Acoustics, JBL and Infinity members. They already had brought some products to the market, like the 4TV 2112, a virtual surround console that received raving reviews, with the EVA (enviromental audio) devices to follow, when the company unexepectedly had to close.
Therefore there are rather few reviews available about the EVA Blu portable speaker, which is ineed quite an interesting device.

The EVA BLU is a portable speaker made of bamboo and comprised out of 70% sustainable resources according to the manual. Even the box where it came in was obviously made out of recycled cartoon.
The EVA BLU is not as small as most current portable speakers as it already weights 2.2kg and has about 3 liters of capacity, but it has an own grip to be carried around and the battery life is claimed to last up to 6 hours, which makes it quite comparable to similar portable speakers like the Libratone Zipp which is nearly equal in size.

Even the flap on one of the sides reminds me a bit of the Libratone Zipp, not to mention the woolen speaker cover. But especially the wooden body makes the speaker look quite unique and elegant among most other mainly plastic speakers.
Other similar sized speakers might be the Bose Soundlink Wireless Music System or the UE Boombox that I revied here (though in German) with the Beats Pill XL being slightly smaller and lighter.

The audio core of the EVA BLU consists of 2 2" drivers and 2 20mm tweeters with an additional passive radiator driven by a 30W amplifier. So nothing really special here and quite similar to many other Bluetooth speakers. With exception of the reset-button on the back, there are no real buttons, just touch sensitive areas. This is also one of its biggest flaws, and probably the absolute deal-breaker because the touch-buttons are the most unresponsive ones I have ever tried. There might be definitely some sample variation and not all of them are equally bad, but the power-button only works 1 out of 5 times, the worst being the Bluetooth button, where I had to initially fight about 1 hour to finally make the speaker switch from Aux or optical input to Bluetooth let alone to successfully pair my iPhone with the speaker as you have to keep the button pressed for some seconds, to force pairing mode. Once I accidentally switched back to Aux I nearly gave up trying to make Bluetooth work again, but when I finally managed thanks to my sweaty salty fingers, I haven't dared to change the mode anymore.

I noticed that when touching a screw on the back with one hand, while trying to power on the speaker with the other hand, it will work with a bigger chance, than just trying to press or touch the power-area, also pressing with more force seems to do the trick sometimes, but the volume-buttons as well as the mute button always work flawlessly, you just put your finger there gently, and the speaker does what it should. Sometimes everything seems to work better if the speaker is attached to the power cord than without. I think if AudioExperts still existed as a company, they would have sorted all out, but as the speaker is not produced anymore, we are probably dealing with some kind of pre-series problems.

If everything worked as it should, the speaker should behave pretty normally at least according to the manual it will remember 6 Bluetooth devices and should automatically pair to any of them being reachable. Unfortunately this does not work as advertised. You can pair as many devices as you like, the speaker will still always look for the last one paired and refuses to pair to another already paired one. You really have to re-pair all the others again, to make them connect to the speaker. As the Bluetooth button hardly ever works on my sample, you can imagine how easy this is!

There is no charging indicator either, so you will never know anything about the status of the internal battery, if it is charged at all or not. Maybe many won't even want to carry this speaker around, as despite giving quite a sturdy impression, the bamboo might get scrached easily as well as the front wool cover seems quite prone to get damaged. There doesn't seem to be any protective additional mesh below, the driver openings are only covered by the wool where it also tends to get stretched. The EVA BLU is not a speaker to be just tossed into a bag or rucksack, although the size would easily allow it, I am sure it won't look good for too long. It is rather meant for being brought to the patio or into another room, but it is definitely not a speaker for travelling or hiking... At least you could use it as a provisional flashlight, as the blue status-lights are so bright, they nearly manage to light up an entire room.

But how does it sound?
Well, pretty good actually if not even best in its class so far. It easily outplays the similar Libratone Zipp, which has a strange honky sound that I never got used to. In comparison the EVA BLU sounds very natural without any abnormal frequency bendings overblown bass or muffled treble. It impressed me quite a bit, because there is enough punch to the bass without sounding overdone, neither does it sound thin like many other speakers, despite the bass not reaching very low, but the bass is pretty nicely tuned, so that the speaker never gives a tinny or boomy impression. The same goes for mids and treble, which both manage to nearly give a bit of a 3D-stage. It is really a pleasure to listen to the EVA BLU. Turn it up to medium level and just enjoy the music, providing you are listening to a good quality recording with a higher bitrate. As the EVA BLU also supports AptX you can be sure to really get the best possible quality despite of lossy Bluetooth streaming. Although the EVA BLU even has an optical input, I am not sure why I should use this or for which purpose.

Everything is not perfect though. The EVA BLU sounds best at medium levels up to about 70%. It still sounds good at maximum volume, but some obvious limiting kicks in, which might sound pretty nasty depending on the music. Very dynamic mixes will start pumping with stronger drum-kicks and you can still hear a little bit of distortion on the kick-attack. Both together can ruin the listening pleasure and it reminds me a bit of how the Libratone Zipp equally suffered at high levels.
Apart from that everything remains pretty distortionfree, is is only the high dynamic peaks which make the speaker or the DSP struggle a bit. There is no obvious compression like on all Bose speakers, but rather volume-limiting as a whole. This can be heard when you start playing a song at high level, then after the first beats you will notice that overall volume will suddenly drop slightly. Bass level is kept high even up to maximum volume, although there is a slight bass reduction at higher levels, it is not that obvious to become disturbing.
Although the EVA BLU sounds usually very good even at maximum volume, in reality it doesn't play that loud. A smaller Sonos Play:1 will play louder, although you will definitely notice quite strong dynamic compression. The Soundlink Wireless Music System can also play much louder, but also with very noticeable processing. The EVA BLU reaches a maximum volume slightly below the TDK A33, which surprised me a bit, because I expected quite a bit more power out of a claimed 30W system which is also quite a bit larger than the A33. The EVA BLU should be capable of a high enough volume for most situations, but it is definitely not a party speaker, but rather meant for pleasant listening.
If you like listening at really low levels, the EVA BLU won't convince either. It doesn't have any loudness algorithm built in, and although it won't sound thin at lowest levels as does the iLoud for example, it doesn't sound impressive either, you really need to turn up volume a little bit to get the best out of it. Around half volume the EVA BLU really shines and outclasses most other portable speakers I have heard.
Although the EVA BLU has its own volume control independend from the volume control of your streaming device, you could even leave the speaker just at its maximum level and control the volume from your source only. There is no volume dependent equalizing, similar to what Sony or Bose does, so that with their speakers you might get completely different results depending on how both volumes are set one to each other. There is also hardly any hiss noticeable even when the EVA BLU is cranked to the maximum, which seems to prove that indeed some high-quality components were used. Many speakers I have tested do have lots of hiss even with the volume turned down to the minimum.

I compared the EVA BLU to some speakers I had at home, and prepared a video switching between all of them.
I recorded this video with the EVA BLU volume set to about 60%, which made the smaller speakers like Sony SRS-X3 or Bose Soundlink Mini sound less than ideal, as they were already close to their volume limit. At low levels I nevertheless prefer the SRS-X3 over the EVA BLU, because due to the DSP processing the Sony can maintain a fuller bodied and clearer sound even at lowest levels below 50dB.
You will also hear how strange and sculpted the Beats Pill XL sounds compared to the EVA BLU, the same goes for the bigger Soundlink Wireless System, the only one being the iLoud which manages to keep up somehow in neutrality, with only some stronger bass-punch missing.

I also prepared some frequency response measurements. Interestingly it doesn't measure completely flat despite sounding that good, the TDK A33 measures much flatter, but sounds worse .
There is a bit of a bass-bosst and lower treble boost, while upper treble has even quite a strong roll-off, which in the graph looks not that different from the Soundlink Mini.
You can see that the bass level is already slightly reduced at 75dB. The EVA BLU also sounds 2.5dB louder when plugged in, but the overall sound doesn't change regardless if played from battery or mains. There is some stronger high-frequency loss when listened off-axis from higher above (grey curve @65dB) and you can also see that there is no bassboost at lowest levels as the first 3 curves up to 65dB are completely parallel.

Here some further direct comparisons at 65dB, first the Soundlink Mini, which is 1/4 the size, but manages to produce an equally full-range sound with deeper reaching bass at lower volumes. Even at 75dB, where the EVA BLU already reduces bass, the Soundlink Mini still plays more powerful. It is only the overall tuning that makes the Bose sound more muffled and boomy, although not that visibile from the graphs, the EVA BLU has a more refined sound (EVA BLU is always shown in blue)

Compared to the TDK A33, the TDK has a more linear sound and measures pretty well. But it is missing the deeper bass of both the EVA BLU and the Soundlink Mini to really sound perfect, as it rather has a honky character.

The iLoud measures similarly linear with the deepest bass of all of them reaching down to 50Hz, but with a too low amplitude to really make the sound full-bodied enough. The graph of the iLoud has a tilt towards left and therefore makes an overall too thin impression to really be called balanced. With some stronger bass it would be definitely one of the best sounding speakers. Due to missing any dynamic sound processing, the iLoud sounds worst of all at lowest levels, as the deeper bass is hardly noticeable at all.

I think the EVA BLU is a very good sounding portable speaker and I have yet to hear a better sounding one, let alone one below 200�. It doesn't sound unnatural in any way and is really a treat to listen to. But for a speaker it is too large to really be called portable. For a stationary speaker it is too underpowered to really be able to substitute a bigger stereo.
A much smaller Bose Soundlink Mini could probably even keep up soundwise, if Bose didn't decide to boost both bass and lower treble that much at all costs. Because of this the Soundlink Mini sounds quite artificial, but when trying both outddors side by side with some ambient noise, it was hard to choose between one of them. The Soundlink Mini didn't sound that much worse, while the EVA BLU lost most of its indoor-advantage.
If the EVA BLU was half the size while maintaining the same audio quality, it would really be one of the best portable speakers around. I have tried many of them, and none really came close. The Soundlink III sounds pretty similar to the Soundlink Mini thus having the same boosted bass, the Denon Envaya seems to have been tuned for a sound quite similar to Bose, only the Sony X5 sounds better, but it doesn't have the power at higher levels to really keep up.

It seems as if there was still enough room for a really good sounding portable speaker. None of the current models really manage to satisfy audiophile needs. The EVA BLU shows how it could be done. Just improve on the hardware-side and shrink it a little bit.

Now let's wait and see, what other companies might come up with in future...

Measuring speakers, a first apporach

I hope there are some readers out there who appreciate my work of doing speaker reviews and comparisons. I am not really sure, because the comment sections remain mostly silent, therefore it is not easy for me to judge if I should evolve my reviews even further, or if it would be just wasted effort.

Experiencing "sound" is mostly a matter of subjective and personal taste. Describing sound to someone else is even harder, espcially for me being a non-native speaker.
Therefore I introduced my first comparison videos 1 year ago, which were still very clumsy and not recorded that well. But I continued to improve the recordings as well as optimize my whole recording setup. My idea was that two or more speakers could be compared pretty well to each other by just listening to them, without having to write a single word. When hearing two speakers on your own and noticing the change in sound when one switches over to the next one, this would be the most objective sound comparison I can provide. Of course everyone listens with different speakers, or different headphones, so everyone will be hearing something else, but the relative difference between two speakers will always remain the same. I also doubt that my recording microphone is as linear calibrated as it is claimed to be, thus there will always be some deviation from the pure original sound already starting with the microphone. But as long as both speakers are recorded in the same way, with the same microphone etc. they should still be comparable pretty well.


Meanwhile I think to have managed a kind of standardized setup, where I can record various speakers successively without even having them at hand at the same time. I have my recording room that you can see in the image below, which always remains the same. It is a small room we use as a garderobe which is acoustically quite dampened compared to normally furnished rooms. It is still not comparable to a real anechoic chamber, but all speakers sound considerably more "pure" in this room, that's why I chose it for my recordings and for all further measuerments.

I usually have a fixed distance to the recorded speaker and I have my fixed volume levels which I derived from the Soundlink Mini and continue using them. So I could even build up a data-base with all the recorded speakers so far, so everyone could switch "live" between different models for their liking. Unfortunately I have too little experience, how to achieve something like that, I am not a programmer, so I won't be able to manage something like that.
Recently I discovered Sonic Sense Pro Audio, doing something very similar, but in a much more sophisticated and professional way with the only difference that they are comparing professional recording equipment, studio monitors and headphones instead of cheap portable speakers.
But I found their headphone recordings particularly interesting, where you are given the chance of listening to various different headphone models and comparing them to the original source tracks, you must have a listen! I wonder which you think sounds closest to the original source!

Of course I cannot afford any of the recording equipment Sonic Sense uses, nor do I have the time to perform such complex tests, but I would like to add some more data to my reviews which might somehow prove what I am hearing and why this or that speaker sounds that way and not the other.

Some time ago I ordered a cheap Dayton iMM-6 calibrated measuring microphone for mobile phones or tablets to fool around with it a little bit. There are lots of different audio-apps for iOS which provide FFT spectrum analysis. Some are really expensive, so I settled for "Audio Tools" from Studio Six Digital as it seemed to be the only one which could also read the calibration-file of my microphone.
But now all problems began. How should I measure a speaker? Is pink noise precise enough, or should I use a sine-sweep instead? Which distance should I choose to the speaker? Which room? The simple iOS apps don't provide any gated measuring, which is more or less standard on most desktop-programs like REW etc and allows a quasi-anechoic measurement with any room-influence being eliminated. But I wanted to keep things as simple as possible, just attaching the microphone to my iPhone and having a mobile measuring tool.

As the iMM-6 microphone has a headphone pass-through I was able to hear what the microphone was actually measuring. I noticed that when playing pink noise through a speaker and moving it slightly to the left or right or turning it, the resulting sound changed considerably. I already noticed the same with my audio recordings. A perfectly centered perpendicular positioning of the microphone gave worse results than rather setting it up slightly offset with the speaker turned away a little bit, which usually gave the clearest sound with most portable speakers that suffer from a rather directional sound. It might also be interference of both drivers resulting in comb-filter effects, when the microphone is setup exactly within the center of both drivers.

Then I tried to elaborate a typcial measuring procedure. I should probably measure a speaker from various fixed angles, I also thought that a speaker with dynamic sound adjustment should be measured at different volume levels in order to show how the overall sound changes with the actual volume.
I tried to demonstrate this with the a quick measurement of the Bose Soundlink Mini when it was playing at 30%, 50%, 75% and 100% volume. You can clearly see that from 75% upwards the lowest frequencies are already reduced considerably resulting in a more compressed frequency response. At 30% and 50% you see an obvious bass-boost as well as a lower-treble boost above 2kHz and a strong treble roll-off starting at 12kHz which probably is the reason why the Soundlink Mini has the tendency to sound muffled.

This measurement is smoothed with 1 octave, unsmoothed the curves show much more humps and notches, which  are probably the result of early room-reflections interfering with the original measured signal.

To minimize room effects I even tried performing some outdoor measurements. During night it is mostly silent, so I set up my "portable measuring studio" in the garden and tried the same measurements outdoors to have a direct comparison with the indoor measurements.

Unfortunately also the outdoor measurements showed lots of interference, probably due to the nearby house and the ground. You would obviously need a much larger open space and a higher distance above the ground to really get quasi anechoic results. Both measurements look as if they could be a completely different speaker, in this case the Sony SRS-X3 was measured from the same 50cm distance with the same fixed level of 70dB:

All this made me finally order another calibrated USB-microphone, so that I am currently trying to manage some better measurements with my notebook and REW to see if the results are really more significant than what I got from my first quick and dirty approach.
A first measuring test with the miniDSP UMIK-1 microphone and REW of the Bose Soundlink Mini at various distances in my usual recording room shows how much the results change depending on distance from the speaker. At 1 meter there are already too much room reflections to be regarded as representative.

I also tried some further measurements in our living room, here is the result for 100cm distance, compared to the 100cm measurement from our garderobe and as you can see due to stronger reflections the living room measurement has considerably stronger bass:

If I manage a reliable measuring-workflow I would like to measure every speaker I currently have at home as well as every new speaker that I will review in future to be able to provide additional frequency response data, which will hopefully be able to add some objective insights into the real frequency response of a given speaker. You can already find my review of the Mini Jambox here, where I tried to add lots of frequency measurements and comparisons.

There are some other ressources which also provide speaker measuring data. I highly regard Brent Butterworth as professional speaker-tester, here you can see his measurement of the Beats Pill XL at various angles:

Compared to my outdoor measurement at 60dB and 70dB with the Dayton iMM6 microphone (unsmoothed):

And here my indoor measurement with the new miniDSP UMIK-1 (smoothed with 1/48 octave):

Also lesnumeriques has already measured lots of different portable speakers, here their measurement of the Pill XL:

On the other hand I am not really sure what they are actually measuering. Here you can see their measurement of the Bose Soundlink Mini, which looks so much different to what I am getting:

It seems to be quite an effort to complete a whole measurement for one single speaker including setup, measurment from all angles, with different volume levels, and maybe even with different sound modes. So keep your fingers crossed that all this won't get out of my hands quickly and stay tuned for some speaker measurements in future!