[jespertt]

Hi Ghuntley and everyone,

Jesper, CEO and cofounder of SOUNDBOKS here.

Ghuntley, I’m sorry to hear about you and other people’s issues after the latest update.

This is new information to us, and is definitely not something that is intended. Nor does it have anything to do with the batteries.

In the newest firmware update, there is no audio updates to the SOUNDBOKS Gen 3. I spoke to our engineers, and their best guess is that there is something in the filetransfer of the update that went wrong, and therefore that you should try reupdating the firmware.

You can do this by going into the updates section in the app, and pressing re-update. I'll keep an eye on this thread, so please let me know how it goes and i'll liaise with our development team.

Again, my apologies for the issues that you are experiencing.

Jesper, SOUNDBOKS - [e-mail]

EDIT: there was a note in the original post where one of our customer support team members had said that the update ''dampen their sound more than it should'' - a note is that this is where it gets a bit more technical; our support team member mistaked the speaker for SOUNDBOKS GO (our other version), where we have pushed out an audio update. In that audio update, there is implemented a tweeter protection mechanism, that limits the volume increase on the tweeter when it gets too hot. That can in some cases limit the dB a tiny bit (we're talking something that's not hearable), but in some cases there is a calibration error on the base temperature of the tweeter, making it think it is way hotter than it is - which can make it dampen too much. That is a bug, and we're working on fixing that - but again, that is on the SOUNDBOKS GO, and has nothing to do with the SOUNDBOKS Gen 3 that the author has.

EDIT 2: A few people have commented that my original explanation is not a likely answer when more people are experiencing this issue. I am currently liasing with our engineering team, and will get back as soon as i know more.

Thanks to everyone engaging! We're working on solving the issue for GHuntley and other customers as fast as we can.

[Aeolun]

How could a problem in the filetransfer of the update successfully update the system, and then reduce the output volume as a side effect?

I also seems like that wouldn’t make sense considering multiple people appear to have the same issue.

[gaius_baltar]

This just sounds as a bad excuse ... a corrupted fw update apply with no checks? Not even a MD5? And magically reduces output power with no other side effects? Should sounds funny but this seems just another case of IoS (internet of sh*t) devices being retroactively crippled by the vendor.

Also, no way to skip the update? Shady as usual.

Also also: why the hell connect a speaker to the internet? Extra shady.

Also also also: Coincidentally, forcing this update and dropping the problem to the users seems cheaper than fixing the reported problems in the battery and charger. Shady as a black-hole now.

[dereg]

This is an extremely bad faith response to a statement that Jesper did not have to make. It is clear that the firmware may have caused unintended behavior and it's clear that the team is looking to remedy it. I have no idea how the construction of your entire comment is at all part of one in this discussion rather than an ideological rant at an industry as a whole but, whatever it is, it's a rotten piece to an otherwise civil conversation.

[gaius_baltar]

> This is an extremely bad faith response to a statement that Jesper did not have to make.

I take Jesper's comment as an official response from the company, it's the CEO speaking after all. The comment also says that input from engineering was received, and this implies in some coordination and a thought-out response. This rules out commercial staff or other non-technical folks just saying what "looks like" to be the cause.

> It is clear that the firmware may have caused unintended behavior and it's clear that the team is looking to remedy it.

But, then why hide the problem? A ethically correct response will be "as an emergency measure, this update will reduces output to prevent the batteries from <marketing lingo for bursting into flames>. Please contact us to schedule a free HW fix or a replacement for non-faulty unit."

> I have no idea how the construction of your entire comment is at all part of one in this discussion rather than an ideological rant at an industry as a whole but whatever it is, it's a rotten piece to an otherwise civil conversation.

Perhaps I was too rant-y, but I am very used to see these "a software update removed features from my appliance" stories, from what I think that this industry itself is already rotting. Well, we are even becoming used to say to non-technical folks "never apply the updates, specially if the vendor seems to be pushing it too hard", with the expected drawbacks for security updates.

[rasz]

Did you perhaps miss the second CEO post where he doesnt admit to lying

>In the newest firmware update, there is no audio updates to the SOUNDBOKS Gen 3

and instead just skips past it stating that the update does indeed

>change in the signal processing for the tweeter

CEOs are politicians, they lie all the time.

[Mo3]

I agree the response sounds like a bad excuse, but what could possibly be a reason for doing this on purpose in the first place?

[gaius_baltar]

That's a pretty nice question. If that response was intended for a non-technical audience, I could said that the company was expecting it to be believed. But it was posted directly on HN, so I have no idea.

[vertis]

Agreed, this explanation doesn't make any sense. It seems very unlikely that it's a (successful) bad update unless there are deeper problems with their update process that allow it to be a problem for multiple people.

The authors broader points are valid as well. Firmware updates should come with changelogs.

[jespertt]

We have integrity verification, so this is extremely unlikely, but as it is an easy check, we recommend trying this out. If you try to re-upgrade, and it skips the “transferring” step and goes directly to “Ready to patch”, it means that the previous upgrade had been successful with no corrupted data and that you have had the correct firmware on your speaker. (In this case it will be a very fast process) If however, it started to transfer files, it is worth to wait until the transfer step is completed to make sure you have the right firmware.

In the meantime, we will continue to investigate internally in SOUNDBOKS, and try to figure out why some users are experiencing this, when we are not experiencing it ourselves, and it has not occurred in any of our testing.

[mgsouth]

Sorry, no. From a technical standpoint it's ridiculous. If there's even a minimal amount of error checking, a failed update would be akin to a shotgun blast, not a laser beam. Is it theoretically possible for it to cause just one highly specific problem? Yeah, but extremely unlikely. And its only "an easy check" _for the supporting engineer_. For the customer it's very inconvenient, and is very transparently just busywork to make the customer go away for a while.

Speaking from my own management experience, it's OK for me not to understand a technical issue as well as the person I've made responsible for a task. But you have to have complete trust in their judgement and "communication accuracy." Free advice--take a good hard look at what else you've been told. I'm not saying someone is deliberately lying, but pressure and skill shortcomings can lead to untrue statements.

You might also take a good hard look at what you've said and done. You get lots of points for directly speaking with customers in this forum. But it doesn't sound as if the technical side is your wheelhouse (which is OK, that's not what your job is), and you may be having "hair on fire" issues. That can very easily lead to making decisions and demands which are impossible for your team to fulfill, or lead them to making risky technical choices. A startup "failure is not an option" or "go big or go home" or "YOLO" mentality can easily go overboard can make it impossible for them communicate the true situtation to you _or even to themselves_.

[jespertt]

Will liaise with the engineering team and revert!

[iasay]

Crazy shit like this happens all the time. However assigning a cause is a little early.

Years ago I wrote a firmware loader for an industrial Z80 system. All it did was read a file over the serial port into RAM, jump into it and then overwrite the EEPROM. I got a page quantity calculation completely wrong. It didn't update all the memory pages. Because the changes were fairly small and the code was assembled rather than compiled and the test cases were fairly light, it was released to clients. It still worked absolutely fine but the status LED didn't work on the device in a specific situation because the update CALL never got executed because it was neatly in a previous page that didn't exist any more.

Of course this was reported as (1) hardware had completely failed (2) the LED had broken and (3) it only works sometimes. All of which weren't true. No one had even mentioned that they had recently updated it. So I can see how it happens.

Thus the tyranny of unexpected behaviour is a deep and dark passage lined with monsters, misinformation and bad assumptions. You have to tread very carefully and not say things too soon because it makes you look even more of an idiot when you have to backtrack later.

[granos]

Crazy issues like that definitely do happen. But, this speaker output power issue being due to a file transfer error doesn't feel right. Do the perform any kind of integrity checking on the fw before installing it? Even an md5sum on the package seems like it would almost certainly have caught this. Either this wasn't caused by a file transfer problem, or their fw update process has some serious design issues.

[HelloNurse]

Even easier than file integrity checks: testing the loudspeakers with various combinations of output level, musical material and battery states. They would have noticed.

[jespertt]

A few notes regarding the latest firmware:

The sound profiles have not been changed at all. The playback time is exactly the same as before, i.e. 5 hours on max volume in Power mode. (confirming the SPL is the same) The settings for the woofers have not been changed at all. The contribution of tweeter sound pressure level is only a minor fraction of the total SPL for the speaker and since the woofers’ SPL has not been changed, the total SPL should stay the same as well.

As a result of the above, we have not seen any SPL change in our measurements post-upgrade, and are not sure as to why some users are experiencing this.

Previously, i mentioned the notion of it being a data corruption issue. We have integrity verification, so this is extremely unlikely, but as it is an easy check, we recommend trying this out. If you try to re-upgrade, and it skips the “transferring” step and goes directly to “Ready to patch”, it means that the previous upgrade had been successful with no corrupted data and that you have had the correct firmware on your speaker. (In this case it will be a very fast process) If however, it started to transfer files, it is worth to wait until the transfer step is completed to make sure you have the right firmware.

In the meantime, we will continue to investigate internally in SOUNDBOKS, and try to figure out why some users are experiencing this, when we are not experiencing it ourselves, and it has not occurred in any of our testing.

Again, thanks for your engagement!

[HelloNurse]

Not the kind of excuses that a technical audience receives well.

[duxup]

If they knew that they probably would have more to say ;)

[stefan_]

While we are here, why is the firmware update said to take 1-2 hours? How many moon landers worth of data is that firmware?

[striking]

Bluetooth is slow. Even my Sony LinkBuds take like 15 minutes to update.

[jespertt]

Alright, a quick update after speaking with my tech team.

A while ago, we realised we are seeing some failed tweeters in Gen3. The issue occurs when a. playing with the battery and the power on the battery is too low, or b. playing with only the charger on high volume. In those cases, there is a possibility that for a couple of seconds, a high-pitched sound comes out of the speaker and the speaker will shut down afterwards, resulting in damaging the tweeter.

For this very issue: We have changed the failure mode in a way that it will not damage the tweeter during that shut down. We also made a slight change in the signal processing for the tweeter which further protect the driver from these sudden peaks.

The two things I mentioned above are the main changes in the latest firmware (2.0.1 and 2.1.1) for Gen.3.

I would also like to mention a few notes regarding the latest firmware:

The sound profiles have not been changed at all. The playback time is exactly the same as before, i.e. 5 hours on max volume in Power mode. (confirming the SPL is the same) The settings for the woofers have not been changed at all. The contribution of tweeter sound pressure level is only a minor fraction of the total SPL for the speaker and since the woofers’ SPL has not been changed, the total SPL should stay the same as well.

As a result of the above, we have not seen any SPL change in our measurements post-upgrade, and are not sure as to why some users are experiencing this.

Previously, i mentioned the notion of it being a data corruption issue. We have integrity verification, so this is extremely unlikely, but as it is an easy check, we recommend trying this out.If you try to re-upgrade, and it skip the “transferring” step and goes directly to “Ready to patch”, it means that the previous upgrade had been successful with no corrupted data and that you have had the correct firmware on your speaker. (In this case it will be a very fast process) If however, it started to transfer files, it is worth to wait until the transfer step is completed to make sure you have the right firmware.

In the meantime, we will continue to investigate internally in SOUNDBOKS, and try to figure out why some users are experiencing this, when we are not experiencing it ourselves, and it has not occurred in any of our testing.

Again, thanks for your engagement!

[jespertt]

Update: we now have a customer in our US Facebook Community saying that reupdated fixed his issue.

''My upgrade failed initially and impeded speaker output. Allowing the upgrade to run again resolved the issue without any further frustration or impact to performance.''

[mgsouth]

Q: Did the customer get exactly the same version with the re-update? Or was a patch or revert pushed in the meantime?

[freemint]

They have not stated they released a new version, did they. Firmware development and testing is slow. So you can assume it's exactly the same.

[mgsouth]

Actually, the CEO has commented several times that he was directing the engineers to revert. As a side note, is seems very unlikely that a company would want to treat a roll-back as a new release and first re-execute an already-run test suite; reverting is the "fail-safe" mode while you figure out what is going on.

[notwhereyouare]

those are the weirdest bugs, everything seems to work as expected until it doesn't.

Glad a customer was able to try reupdating and it fixed their issue. I wish the team best of luck tracking down how the upgrade flow got busted

[loloquwowndueo]

So you’re saying everybody else on the internet who is experiencing the same problem somehow had the same exact bit flipped for mysterious reasons and there is no integrity verification in the update process to catch this kind of thing. Also, the “bit flip” doesn’t cause a random crash (as is usually the case when that happens) but changes the functionality in a way that correlates with the updates to the web page related to being plugged into mains power which conveniently appeared at the same time in the website.

Got it.

[stoltzmann]

From the article:

>Now, as a reminder - I own two speakers - both speakers have had their performance nerfed by this firmware update.

So even not counting everybody else on the internet with the same issue, I find it quite unlikely that there would be the exact same transfer failure on two separate units.

This definitely sounds more likely to be a software issue.

[vertis]

+1 for the CEO engaging

-10 for an implausible explanation.

[garyfirestorm]

Speaker output is tuned to input power and is probably stored in a file. Somebody grabbed a wrong file for the ‘speaker calibration curve’ while building the new update patch. Shouldn’t happen/doesn’t happen - we have seen internet infrastructure going down due to bad updates on routers - this is not entirely implausible.

I do work with audio stuff in auto industry.

[Aeolun]

That’s entirely possible, but then they shouldn’t explain their fix as: “You might have done something wrong during the upgrade process, please try again and if it starts downloading it should be fixed after.”

That’s just trying to hide the root cause.

[vertis]

Sounds accurate, but this is not what the CEO was suggesting. He's also now suggesting that they can't replicate it on their own devices.

[jespertt]

Previously, i mentioned the notion of it being a data corruption issue. We have integrity verification, so this is extremely unlikely, but as it is an easy check, we recommend trying this out. If you try to re-upgrade, and it skips the “transferring” step and goes directly to “Ready to patch”, it means that the previous upgrade had been successful with no corrupted data and that you have had the correct firmware on your speaker. (In this case it will be a very fast process) If however, it started to transfer files, it is worth to wait until the transfer step is completed to make sure you have the right firmware.

In the meantime, we will continue to investigate internally in SOUNDBOKS, and try to figure out why some users are experiencing this, when we are not experiencing it ourselves, and it has not occurred in any of our testing.

Again, thanks for your engagement!

[HelloNurse]

The suggestion to re-upgrade suggests that you have silently replaced the problematic firmware update with a different package.

Don't you see how not providing changelogs and explanation looks suspect? Can't you admit a mistake, if it's only a forgivable case of not testing far-fetched usage scenarios properly?

[jespertt]

Will liaise with the engineering team and revert!

[jespertt]

Fair point. As a note, it's definitely not all users that are experiencing the problem, but I will liaise with our engineers and revert!

[dpratt]

You’re correct, it’s not all your users, just the ones who set their output above ‘5’.

[jespertt]

Nah - that's just not true. We've pushed this update to tens of thousands of units over the past week - and we have not seen this issue reported before gHuntleys post, and then subsequently in the comments to his post in our community.

Previously, i mentioned the notion of it being a data corruption issue. We have integrity verification, so this is extremely unlikely, but as it is an easy check, we recommend trying this out. If you try to re-upgrade, and it skips the “transferring” step and goes directly to “Ready to patch”, it means that the previous upgrade had been successful with no corrupted data and that you have had the correct firmware on your speaker. (In this case it will be a very fast process) If however, it started to transfer files, it is worth to wait until the transfer step is completed to make sure you have the right firmware. In the meantime, we will continue to investigate internally in SOUNDBOKS, and try to figure out why some users are experiencing this, when we are not experiencing it ourselves, and it has not occurred in any of our testing.

Again, thanks for your engagement.

[dpratt]

I find it fishy that you haven’t connected the dots between “firmware update meant to mitigate speaker cone damage under specific power delivery circumstances” and “user experiencing unexpected power reduction at all power delivery circumstances”.

Blaming the user here is not endearing you to the community.

[sitkack]

Where is the blame? I see a lot of dog piling on a person who is genuinely trying to fix a problem.

[jespertt]

For some reason i can't reply to your next post, dpratt - so i'll reply here. I'm not intending to blame the user. I am merely saying that this is not something that all users that set their output above 5 experience.

It is definitely possible that there is a link; as i said, we're investigating, and in the meanwhile we recommend to try to reupdate as we have customers where that has fixed the issue.

[dpratt]

My intent here is to not be hostile or seem dismissive, but rather attempt to show you what your responses appear like to your customer base.

An answer of “The best explanation we have right now is that you incorrectly applied the update” does not inspire confidence.

[AshamedCaptain]

It could also be for example that when the firmware fails to check out at boot, the speaker enters a "safe mode" where the volume is limited for some lawyer-related reason. And that the update tends to frequently fail to apply, or actually always fails to apply.

Still, "firmware update meant to mitigate speaker cone damage under specific power delivery circumstances" is pretty damning, and it's not the first time I see this. Nokia also did the same kind of update to a device I owned, a couple decades ago. The excuse was practically word-for-word, and also claimed speaker damage could occur if you didn't install it.

I didn't install it and the device actually had speaker damage... about 5 years afterwards, and because instead of a cable or a proper solder job, they had used a spring to connect the speaker to the PCB and it had wore out. Totally unrelated to the speaker cone or any type of high volume issue.

[Wowfunhappy]

Please allow your customers to downgrade to an earlier firmware.

Bugs happen, and that's okay. However, users need the ability to roll back to a working configuration, so they can use the product as they bought it instead of a different one which was swapped in later.

[causi]

Why is there such thing as a mandatory firmware update for a set of speakers? Now I'm not an audio engineer, but frankly I would never purchase hardware that hostile to user agency.

[Jcowell]

I can see a mandatory update in the form of legal requirements. For example I think Apple had to implement headphone safety limits in some countries leading to very frustrated customers .

[Wowfunhappy]

I own a pair of dumb speakers without any firmware. Am I legally required to throw them away?

[mindslight]

Often, including in your example, "legal requirements" just means the risk-adverse desires of the legal department, which doesn't really address the core concern of why a company should be forcing users' devices to implement the company's desired policy post-sale.

Furthermore in the case where there really is law passed that mandates device firmware be updated to certain functionality, the ability of the manufacturer to force that update onto an end user should be viewed as a security bug in the original firmware.

[pjc50]

Are firmware updates signed/authenticated/hashed? It would be tragically hilarious if this was the outcome of of a single flipped bit in the transfer.

[thedanbob]

I was going to say, if the speakers will happily apply a corrupted firmware update they’re doing something horribly wrong.

[jespertt]

Will liaise with the engineering team and revert!

[capableweb]

From the customer support message the article author received:

> to dampen their sound more than it should

Wouldn't this mean that the update should have dampen the sound (so there was an update to the audio), but something went wrong so it dampened it too much?

[jespertt]

This is where it gets a bit more technical; our support team member mistaked the speaker for SOUNDBOKS GO (our other version), where we have pushed out an audio update. In that audio update, there is implemented a tweeter protection mechanism, that limits the volume increase on the tweeter when it gets too hot. That can in some cases limit the dB a tiny bit (we're talking something that's not hearable), but in some cases there is a calibration error on the base temperature of the tweeter, making it think it is way hotter than it is - which can make it dampen too much. That is a bug, and we're working on fixing that - but again, that is on the SOUNDBOKS GO, and has nothing to do with the SOUNDBOKS Gen 3 that the author has.

[capableweb]

Thanks a lot for taking the time for leaving a thoughtful reply!

Hope you/author manage to figure out the issue in the end.

[dpratt]

This does not pass the smell test, and your response borders on user-blaming. If this was only one person experiencing the problem, it wouldn’t be an inappropriate response, but if you have wide swaths of your user base describing the same problem, it’s inappropriate of you to hand wave it away by essentially implying that the user has somehow incorrectly applied the update.

[brk]

What specific functionality was this mandatory firmware update meant to address? I do not see that in the article, or your response.

A mandatory update implies a critical fix, it would be helpful to understand what warranted this update in the first place, and how that might relate to SQ, SPL, etc.

[jespertt]

A while ago, we realised we are seeing some failed tweeters in Gen3. The issue occurs when a. playing with the battery and the power on the battery is too low, or b. playing with only the charger on high volume. In those cases, there is a possibility that for a couple of seconds, a high-pitched sound comes out of the speaker and the speaker will shut down afterwards, resulting in damaging the tweeter. For this very issue: We have changed the failure mode in a way that it will not damage the tweeter during that shut down. We also made a slight change in the signal processing for the tweeter which further protect the driver from these sudden peaks.