JBL Charge 4 cracking while volume uping

Tony Stewart said:

Most likely the volume does not change at the zero voltage crossing (ZVS) and is just asynchronous pulse ticks, a feature avoided with ZVS sync'd volume steps found in some digital pots or volume controllers

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gophert said:

If it only happens while using Bluetooth communication to change your volume, most people are not so critical. Also, if you'd change volume while music is playing, you likely won't notice at all (unless it is a very quiet section of a song).

It is likely caused by terribly designed software on the speaker and a low-tech communication protocol from the microcontroller on the speaker to the digital potentiometer on your speaker - especially when there are chances that the speaker's buttons can be used to control the volume. Each time you control the volume with your phone, the speaker may be tapping the volume to a minimum then tapping back up to the target set point.

You picked that speaker because of the good price vs reviews. Feel lucky that you got a good quality hardware ( speaker) and audio circuit and the manufacturer skimped on the communication software and potentiometer instead of the reverse. You only notice when changing volume instead of crappy audio all the time and glitch-free communications.

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ILoveZed said:

The problem is that now I can hear a static sound in some songs with a lot of bass. A guy from the website where I bought it from told me that it would take a month to just see if there is something wrong with the speaker, because they send it to an official JBL service, which we dont have in our country, so they send it somewhere abroad. After they check the speaker they will decide if it can be repaired or if they need to send me a new one. I decided to keep the speaker for a little bit more and to send it. I am just sad that I won't have it for a whole month.

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gophert said:

The speaker is likely to clip with strong bass when the battery is low. You may also have unrealistic expectations of how much bass power a battery operated speaker can project.

Turn down the bass (if adjustable), or turn down the volume on songs with lots of bass. The clipping should go away.

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ILoveZed said:

I dont really know much about speakers, but I have friends with the same speaker and they dont have any issues like this. Is it possible to be something with my particular unit?

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gophert said:

Yes, you could have a bad power decoupling capacitor, a bum battery (can't handle the peak demands), a charger that turns off too soon (not enough headroom for the peak outputs at given amplification, or the DC bias is set incorrectly because of a bad resistor in the voltage divider network. Or, it could be any of those issues but imbedded in a dedicated audio amplifier chip. Who knows?

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