We at Digital Trends are luckier than most because we sample hundreds of wireless speakers each year, separating the wheat from the chaff and studying products worth owning. And yet, even me get tired of the dizzying amount of options out there. Who can keep up with all these brands? Which ones have the right mix of features and sound quality? Which company is doing something special to break through all this noise? The fact that we’re writing a review of the Vava Voom 22 should tell you something: these speakers are worth a serious look.
Out of the box
As soon as you take the Vava Voom 22 speaker out of the box, you’ll understand why it won a Red Dot Design Award. These speakers are pleasing to the eye and constructed in a simple yet effective manner.
A first glance tends to zoom in on the Voom 22’s unassuming statue, smooth gray grille material, and minimalist control knob layout. A closer look reveals a 5V/1A USB charging port to power the device and a 3.5mm jack for wired connection to just about any source – and that might just include a TV or turntable with a built-in preamp, for starters.
The top of the speaker is adorned with a series of useful capacitive control buttons for power on/off, Bluetooth pairing, forward and reverse, volume up and down, play/pause and bass boost (left to right).
The speaker seems to be a little lighter than we expected. Weighing in at 3.9 pounds, it doesn’t feel particularly robust in the build quality department, but then again, we’ve heard plenty of quality speakers that didn’t feel like gold bricks when we picked them up.
Under the hood
Vava is happy to point out that the Voom 22 has a self-amplified 20W subwoofer, but it appears to function as a mid-bass driver, with a 0.75-inch tweeter powered by a 10W amp handling the upper mids and treble. In total, that’s 30W of digital amplification for one speaker. Buy a pair (and we’ll suggest you do just that) and you’ll get up to 60 watts of power for your stereo system.
The Voom 22 is pleasing to the eye and constructed in simple yet effective ways.
The specs point to incredible bass production, and as we move towards the setup, we think it might be possible with the right DSP equalization. There’s plenty of cabinet space, and the port on the back suggests that designing these speakers to sound full and robust was one of Vava’s main goals.
Finally – and this is why Vava can call the Voom 22 a “truly wireless speaker” – we turn our attention to the built-in battery, which the company says will allow the speaker to play for approximately 4-6 hours depending on use. In other words, you’ll get about four hours if you play the speaker loud, and closer to 6 if you listen at a more moderate volume. The speaker will also drain faster if you use it to charge your phone, tablet, or other USB-powered device like the Amazon Echo Dot.
Set
Setting up the Vava Voom 22 speaker is as easy and automatic as it gets. Turn on the speaker and it’s in pairing mode – just grab your device and select the speaker as your preferred audio output device.
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
When you add a second Voom 22 speaker, things get even easier. If you want to connect two speakers so that one is the right channel and the other is the left channel as part of a stereo pair, simply turn on the second speaker. The two speakers will recognize each other and one will take over the right channel while the other will perform left channel duties. To return to mono, simply turn off one of the speakers. You can always keep the speakers in separate rooms and use them independently.
You’ll get about four hours if you play the speaker loud, and closer to 6 if you listen at a more moderate volume.
This is a big step in the right direction. It often takes a special app and some mixture of voodoo and prayer to pair two wireless speakers in stereo. One problem that this simple setup doesn’t seem to solve though is allowing the user to control which speaker picks up which channel.
To determine which speaker is right and which is left in a stereo pair, look at the LED indicator lights to the left of the power button on each speaker. The speaker with the flashing LED will be the left channel and the speaker with the solid LED will be the right. If you think you’ll have trouble remembering this, we suggest you pull up this stereo channel test video on YouTube to determine which speaker is right and which is left, and adjust the placement if necessary.
Speaking of setup: these speakers behave very much like a quality set of bookshelf speakers when set up in stereo mode. You’ll want to play around with how far they are from the walls behind you, as this can affect the bass response, so you’ll want to space them evenly and about as far as you’re sitting from them for the best picture. We also suggest placing them on the edge of the surface they are sitting on to reduce sound reflection.
Performance
In short, the Vava Voom 22 performs far beyond what we expect from a speaker in this price range. At $130 for a single speaker, the Voom 22 is already a killer deal, but Vava is offering a pair of speakers for $220 — that’s a $40 savings — and that’s a pretty bad price in our book.
For our review of the Vava Voom 22, we used Spotify exclusively (high quality audio enabled) and started with a single speaker. Surprisingly, we weren’t blown away by the bass – and that’s a good thing. Bass was present but not overpowering, and sound quality was balanced even at low volumes. For those looking for light background music playback, the Voom 22 will do just fine.
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
We then pushed the Voom 22 a bit to see how it performed at slightly higher volumes. We thought fun here, so we turned on the bass boost feature and – wow! – the bass came to life. At this point we’ve got a decent dose of punch, with lots of low-frequency resonance. This speaker certainly fills a room and does well in outdoor entertainment scenarios.
Vava claims an extension of up to 60Hz, but we saw the speaker frequency drop closer to 80Hz under most conditions. We were able to improve the extreme low frequencies a bit by placing the speakers in a corner, but then a bit of murkiness came into play. Overall, during our evaluation, we preferred a slightly more open placement.
We then added a second Voom 22 for stereo listening and placed the speakers on speaker stands as we would for high-end bookshelf speakers or a powered monitor. At that point we sold two speakers for more careful listening. We were pleased with the Voom 22 imagine and soundstage pairing, with clear stereo effects, continuous sound from left to right, and placement of instruments at specific points within that soundstage.
In stereo mode, we felt less need to boost the bass as doubling the bass frequencies helped improve the musicality of the speakers. However, when we decided we wanted to play, turning on the bass boost put a smile on our faces. The speakers sound amazing, especially for the price.
However, the Voom 22 are not perfect speakers. We noticed occasional stereo phasing as sounds seem to go from the right channel to the left where they don’t belong and then back to the right. This was only noticeable when we sat right in front of the speakers for our most careful and critical listening, but it was a problem that came up regularly. We believe this is a side effect of wireless stereo pairing and we are talking to Vava about this issue.
Setting up the Vava Voom 22 speaker is as easy and automatic as it gets.
Additionally, if we tip our hat to our picky audiophile, we have to say that the Vooma 22’s speaker cabinet is sonically reverberant when played loud or with strong bass, coloring the sound a bit. Also, there’s something going on in the upper midrange that’s a bit stingy. We noticed that some of the vocal tracks were a bit aggressive and the crunchy distorted guitar was a bit too forward for our taste. Surprisingly, we were less aware of this effect with brass instruments, where we expected it to be particularly present.
With those criticisms made, we don’t think most listeners will have a problem with these picky questions. These speakers are aimed at audiophiles – they just happen to perform so well that they deserve our harshest review.
Conclusion
Overall, the Vava Voom 22 performs extremely well for its price. Their easy setup, robust sound, impressive loudness (volume level) and beautiful looks make them worthy of serious consideration. Frankly, the Vava Voom 22s are an incredibly good deal – especially in a stereo pair.
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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn