INTRODUCTION

   If you've happened to own a set of floor standing speakers or a set of good bookshelf ones and you also own a compact portable wireless speaker then you obviously know exactly just how different these are not only in terms of size but also in regard to audio quality/clarity and available power/volume. However since you can't carry floor standing and bookshelf speakers with you everywhere you go noone can really deny the many benefits of owning a good portable speaker. Unfortunately portable wireless speakers may never be able to compete their wired counterparts in terms of available volume but over the years many companies have done their best to come as close as possible in audio quality and clarity with surprisingly good results (always for such compact speakers). One such company is Allocacoc with their brand new audioCube Portable WOOD Edition.

   Allocacoc was founded by Yixia Jiang and Arthur Limpens, two industrial design engineers from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Since its inception, Allocacoc focuses on setting a different standard. Such a standard is not limited to a country’s borders, so we had a strong international focus already from the beginning. In fact, our first order did not even come from the Netherlands, but from Germany. Eventually we want to get at least one of our products into every household worldwide, from the richest household in NYC to the most remote one in Malawi. A different standard does not stop at just our products. It bleeds into everything we do.

   Unlike most portable wireless speakers in the market today the audioCube Portable WOOD Edition by Allocacoc doesn't feature just two speakers faced towards one of the sides (directional) but four that can deliver unique 360 degrees audio (omnidirectional). The reason i say can is because the audioCube can be placed anyway you want so you can either have all 4 speakers blasting on all sides or have 3 facing front, rear and upwards and the 4th downwards thus using the surface you place the speaker on to amplify bass. Each of those 4 speakers/drivers is 52mm in diameter and features a frequency response of 40Hz-20KHz with 8 Ohm impedance and a signal to noise ratio of 90dB. To further improve bass levels Allocacoc placed a vibrating membrane (plane) on one of the sides which also doubles as the on/off power button. Other features include a wooden enclosure, Bluetooth v4.0 connectivity, wired 3.5mm connectivity, play/pause and volume up/volume down/previous song/next song controls and a 1600mAh (@12.6V) rechargeable battery pack which can provide the speaker with enough juice for up to 12 hours of music playback. So how does it perform?