A quick look at party boxes
2024-03-17
As part of the last few weeks in school before writing the final exams here in Germany (the famous Abitur), it has become a tradition in my area to celebrate the so-called "Mottowoche". During this incredible week, the graduation year dresses up in fancy costumes with different themes each day (initial letter, time travel, childhood heroes etc.), most people consume an unhealthy amount of alcohol and we party with rather big speakers inside and around the school. This finally leads me to the topic of this one, my experience with increasingly popular party boxes...
In particular, we had the pleasure to work with a JBL PartyBox Encore that I bought myself and a rented Soundboks 3 - both of which clearly fit within the party box category, despite addressing different edges of the spectrum. The Soundboks is about the biggest, loudest and most powerful battery-powered speaker available not willing to compromise on performance in any category - resulting in a rather bulky package that's barely liftable and a high price of 800 to 1000 € depending on the seller and available promotions. With less than half the wattage, but also a delightfully small and light construction of less than one-third the Soundboks the JBL clearly aims at an audience willing to trade raw performance for everyday convenience and also price for that matter - ranging from 250 to 300€.
But the experience of using these sound production machines ranges much further than just the specs. For small to medium interior rooms even the JBL is more than sufficient, produces a really nice deep bass and can easily call the police for you late at night in case you live in an apartment building. Once the room increases in size to a gymnasium, lots of people fill it rather densely or you get to the outside however, you start to notice the limitations of the form factor, drivers and battery, which just lacks the oomph and have to work at maximum all the time leading to a rather mediocre battery life of 2 to 3 hours and an only somewhat enjoyable sound.
The same general principle applies to the Soundboks too of course with a noticable drop of strength when going outside et cetera, but its sheer power enables it to deal with much more demanding situations and just chew through everything you throw at it under normal circumstances. The loudness and bass is brutal, the battery runs for ages and is replaceable in case it eventually runs out (alternatively you can also hook up a 12V car battery) and multiple of them can even be wirelessly connected to each other to form one even larger virtual speaker. But in school with 400 people and more in a big echoey entrance room even this beast can be tamed and only real PA equipment dares to keep up - which is a remarkable result in and of itself.
All in all, I can clearly say now that with anything equal or bigger to the JBL I bought you will have a lot of fun at home and smaller parties, while the Soundboks even enables you to rock full house parties with ease and can be a real police attraction. Of course, we should all care about our neighbours and are responsible to not annoy the whole district to much - so keep in mind that with great power comes also great responsibility. For most people renting such a device will be the much more practical approach anyway and there the rental will help you find the right device for the job...