Soundfreaq Sound Platform Review

Before beginning this review, it is of medical importance to decide just how much of a Soundfreaq you are. I may speak for myself only here but a little bit of Soundfreaqery every now and then is a good thing, but do you consider yourself a full time member of the freaqy elite? And if so, are you in need of a platform for your sound? Read on, friend, read on.

Review: Design, Build Quality

The Sound Platform is beautiful, a mixture of glossy durable plastics, metal and orange LED’s that come together in a piece of of design that just exudes class. The best way to describe its design (if you haven’t already gazed lovingly at the images included in this review) then it is a sort of box on box affair, although my description does it no justice.

Along the front are a series of touch sensitive buttons for volume, track control (although I have no idea why you’d need this) and selecting the source (of a possible Aux, Bluetooth or iPod). There’s also a little orange screen that displays what’s going on with the dock, a connector for your iPod and three little toggles which can be used for turning their “EQ3″ (more in this later) mode on and off and one for bass alongside a treble controller. In reality the bass and treble controls are more for aesthetic and are less practical than you might have hoped. Another nice touch is the little door hidden in the side of the dock which magnetically hides a tiny remote control for use if you’ve got your iPod in the dock. In our usage we found it perfectly serviceable.

The dock is mains powered and the cable looks almost exactly like that of a laptop, with a big brick in the middle. There is no battery powered option although if there was, I’m not sure what use it would be, still it might be nice to have one just in case the need arises.

Sound Quality

What’s great design without good sound? Why, it’s a pair of Dr. Dre Beats headphones (pause for laughter….). Anyway, the sound on the SP isn’t too shabby at all, treble is well represented with EQ3 turned off and while hooking it up to my laptop during a party meant that the room filled with sound easily and didn’t damage too many ears in the process. With EQ3 turned on however, the sound changes quite dramatically with bass ramping straight upwards , the midrange getting a fair shout and highs are equalised meaning there’s a nice bit of separation to the sound. In general though the sound is perfectly adequate and a marked improvement from many cheap iPod docks and built in laptop speakers.

In general use

Naturally, the first thing I did when getting it out of the box was hooking up my iPod Touch (a stupidly simple process in which you turn on bluetooth and tell it to connect), at which point your iPod will prompt you to download their special app for playing music though it. The first thing to note about the app is that there is actually no point to it, the standard music app works perfectly well and I found nothing of of use in the dedicated app other than a few annoying bugs.

The bluetooth connection works flawlessly, there’s no discernible drop in audio quality and I happily wandered around my (modest) house while keeping the music playing upstairs, it’s a real treat to be able to control your sound without having to be tied via wires and made letting people choose music that much easier.

Where I think the real advantage is (at least for me) is use as an alternative audio source for your laptop. Laptop speakers are classically weak at music and being able to connect via bluetooth and have all your music streaming wirelessly across the room in real time was something I’m genuinely going to find hard to live without, though it is worth noting that when watching video you will notice half a seconds gap between mouths moving on the screen and sound coming out of the dock, it’s not too noticeable but if you find yourself being particularly anal about sound and audio syncing up perfectly it might get on your nerves a bit.

Wrap up

The Sound Platform isn’t cheap, it’s £200 pretty much everywhere you look. And while it is strikingly handsome and produces decent enough sound, you have to ask yourself whether you’re going to find use for the bluetooth features it provides? I think the answer to many people will be “yes”, it is a genuine delight to not be tied to your speaker and after a couple of weeks it becomes a real drag using anything but it for playing a few songs.

8/10