Music on a jobsite was once a luxury not allowed by many old school builders, but now nearly a necessity for many of us. It seems that all the major power tool companies have entered the jobsite audio market with radio/speaker sets with Bluetooth connectivity and auxiliary inputs to handle just about any audio source. Ryobi’s latest offering is the One+ 18v Score™ Wireless Speaker Set. These speakers are available in pairs, consisting of one primary radio/speaker and one secondary speaker, or singly as one secondary speaker to be added to the previously mentioned combination. I wanted to see what the Score™ system was about, so I borrowed five speakers and five 18v batteries from my friend Ray Brusca for a bit of testing. First impressions were that the speakers are compact and unobtrusive, have simple-looking controls and are of not Ryobi’s arresting green color, which would have been a tough match for most interior decor! I was pleased to see that each speaker came with its own plug-in power source for times when that’s more suitable than tying up an 18v tool battery. [There is an explicit warning against connecting the battery and the plug-in module at the same time.]
The heart of this system is Skaa technology, one that allows a transmitter in the hub speaker to broadcast to as many as four receiving speakers. Bluetooth tech only allows connectivity to one device, so the advantage in connection alone is considerable. Skaa also claims much better fidelity than available through Bluetooth.
If the first impressions of the hardware were good, those of the directions were not. It’s easy to see the difference in a Primary and a Secondary by looking at the tops. (I prefer the Skaa names: Hub and Satellite.) The hub has an LED screen and an input jack, controls for scrolling through input options, radio frequencies, station presets, “bonding” and volume controls. The satellite has only a power switch, volume controls and a “bonding” button. I found it a little bit hard to learn what to do with those buttons. Admittedly it could be that I’m slow on the uptake when it comes to manuals, but it took me a while to “cluster” the speakers with the “bonding” buttons. Or should I have been “bonding” the speakers with the “cluster” buttons? I’m not sure that one wouldn’t be better off ignoring the instructions and just turning the things on a pressing some buttons. I tried following the instructions with one set and fiddling blindly with another with similar results.
I tested Ray’s Score system in two places: at home on three different floors, and in the workshop, a 40′ x 12′ space with challenging acoustical demands. The Skaa tech is not much affected by walls, so it was amusing and interesting to control input to all five speakers with my iPhone and hear the results in the basement, first floor and second floor. As interesting as it was, it wasn’t as powerful as I would have liked, and it suffered from lack of tone controls. As an old rocker, I sometimes like it loud, and one or two of these don’t have quite as much oomph as I would like to further diminish my hearing.
I brought these to the shop the next day and found that to be the place where they shine. With all five spread around one room, there is enough volume to please me and to be heard over a lot of the shop tools. In a room 40′ long, it’s easy for sound to drop off drastically from a single source as you move away from it. This brings up a particular strength of the Skaa Nadja transmitter technology, counter-acting the lag you might expect from a speaker emitting the same sounds 40′ (or more) away from other speakers. To quote Skaa’s web site: “Nadja surgically corrects the latency on the Hub speaker, ensuring that audio emanates from the Hub and all four Satellites precisely synchronized.” I’ll attest to the accuracy of this claim, as I can walk anywhere in the shop and enjoy perfectly synchronized sound.
The shop is a bit on the dusty side, meaning it was best to return Ray’s Score speakers before I had tried them as much as I would have liked. Ryobi was then kind enough to provide me with a set so I could continue.
There’s more than one way to gather five Score Speakers. The most sensible is to get two sets consisting of a Primary and a Secondary each and add one Secondary sold on its own. Any hub can be converted to a satellite simply by scrolling through its menu until its Skaa icon appears. It’s easy to pair the hub with a Bluetooth source.
I find that I like to set the speakers at full volume and then modulate it with the iPhone controls. There is one slight drawback to this: if I switch out of Bluetooth mode to FM radio, everything comes at full volume! I have not found a way to control the satellites from the hub when in FM mode, meaning I have to quickly turn it off and adjust each satellite individually. I’m hoping that there’s a way that I simply haven’t found. And yes, I looked to the manual. It’s not a big issue with me because radio in my neck of the woods is so bad that I rarely listen to it, but I imagine it will be the same with an auxiliary input. I’ve asked the Skaa folks about it and am anticipating a reply shortly. If radio is good where you are, you’ll like the 5 station presets and the seek functions available.
[I received an answer from a representative of Skaa. A hub that’s not in Bluetooth mode cannot control the volume of satellites. He added that “Ryobi has recently identified this as an issue which needs improvement and has asked us to provide a solution. So no solution yet, but we’re working on it.”]
I’ve concluded that the One+ 18v Score Wireless Speaker set is just about ideal for the shop, very good for an open-plan house and not bad for a series of individual rooms. It is clearly good for outdoor use as at the beach or a picnic, but I won’t go into that because I look a bit dimly on those applications. I haven’t tested for run-time on the 18v batteries yet, but will report that it goes for a long time. Pretty nifty!
Thanks to Ray Brusca, TTI and Ryobi for providing the speakers and batteries for this review.
-dvl
Leave A Comment