How Do You Turn Off Altec Lansing Blue Tooth Water Proof Speaker Power on Message

The new $149.99 Life Jacket 3 is an update to Altec Lansing's Life Jacket Bluetooth speaker lineup. The rugged, waterproof Life Jacket 3 floats, and can project audio at reasonably high volumes, making it well-suited for outdoor use. Altec Lansing also includes a solid array of accessories, including a mounting kit for bikes. It's too bad, then, that the digital signal processing (DSP) employed by the speaker is dialed up to such a high level. You don't need to be a sound snob to notice the dynamics of any given track getting squashed as the volume seems to dramatically raise and dip. A more subtle approach to DSP would have resulted in a very different listening experience, but as things stand, the Life Jacket 3's greatest gifts are its rugged design and useful accessories, while its audio performance is merely decent.

Design

Measuring 4.7 by 8.6 by 4.2 inches (HWD), the rugged, rubber-lined Life Jacket 3 is available in dark gray, with blue, teal, or red highlights. If you've seen the Life Jacket 3's smaller sibling, the Mini Life Jacket 3 , they are virtually indistinguishable except for size—the Mini is obviously smaller, and uses smaller drivers, but their contours and layout are nearly identical. Both speakers are rated IP67, meaning they are waterproof up to 1 meter. And as mentioned, the Life Jacket 3, like its sibling, can also float. Behind the speaker grille, the Life Jacket 3 employs dual 2-inch neodymium drivers and a rear-firing passive bass radiator.

On the top panel, the Life Jacket 3 has a power button that doubles as the play/pause control—hold it in to power up or down, tap it to control playback. You can also answer calls or end them with this button, or tap it twice to go into Voice mode (which summons Siri on iOS devices). The plus and minus buttons work in a similar manner—tap them to adjust volume (this works in conjunction with your mobile device's master volume level), hold them in to navigate tracks.

Unfortunately, it's relatively easy to accidentally skip a track when you mean to adjust the volume if you're not paying close attention. Various other combinations of the buttons being pressed allow you to pair the speaker with another Life Jacket 3 and assign left and right channels to each, or go into pairing mode. (The Life Jacket 3 can pair with up to three devices so you can listen to one, and take calls from another.) The top panel also acts as an NFC pairing zone for compatible devices.

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The back panel houses a snap-shut compartment that protects the micro USB port for charging (a micro USB cable is included), a 3.5mm aux input (a short audio cable is included), and a USB port for charging mobile devices using the speaker's battery. A threaded hole on the bottom panel connects to the included mount system, allowing you to clamp the Life Jacket to any number of cylindrical surfaces, like a bike's handlebars.

Altec Lansing estimates battery life to be up to 30 hours, but your results will vary based on your mix of wired and wireless playback, and your volume levels.

Performance

The digital signal processing used by the Life Jacket 3 is not subtle. It aims to prevent distortion at higher volume levels by limiting the dynamic peaks of louder moments in tracks—particularly bass-heavy ones. But the result often sounds like volume is dipping when things are loud and raising drastically when there's a quieter moment. It will drive any audiophiles out there insane, but it's enough to irk even those who are less picky.

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On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," the Life Jacket 3 flirts with distortion at top volume levels. It can get much louder and deliver a stronger sense of bass response than its Mini sibling, but anyone looking for a big bass sound is going to need to spend more money. At moderate volumes, the sense that the drivers are teetering on the edge of distortion disappears and the Life Jacket 3 delivers a clean, mids-focused sound, albeit one that dips and raises whenever there's a short break in the audio onslaught.

Bill Callahan's "Drover," a track with less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better idea of the Life Jacket 3's overall sound signature. Bass-forward speakers can often imbue the drums on this track with far too much deep low-end, but the Life Jacket 3 delivers the drums with a modest sense of bass depth—nothing that will be mistaken for thunder or an overactive subwoofer. Callahan's baritone vocals get a solid, rich low-mid presence that's matched with some crisp high-mid edge that brings out their contour, as well as the attack of the guitar strums and drums. But again, when the dynamics of this track change—at the bridge or the chorus, for instance, and then back into the verse—you get DSP volume dips.

On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop's attack gets plenty of high-mid focus, bringing out its sharp edge, while the sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat are delivered with a decent sense of depth—but nothing like a subwoofer could bring. The vocals manage to float brightly over the multilayered mix, without ever sounding too sibilant. But there are still those dips wreaking havoc on the dynamics.

Conclusions

In the $150 range, plenty of speakers employ DSP to limit deep bass dynamics (and some other frequency ranges, too) that tend to cause distortion. But the Life Jacket 3 tamps down the dynamics too often, unnecessarily—it's hard to get past this, as it coats every song like an effect you can't disable. The Life Jacket 3's saving grace is its rugged build—and if you need a waterproof speaker that floats more than you need excellent audio, this one is worth your attention. But consider some of our favorite options in this price range, like the Soundcast VG1 , the JBL Charge 3 , the Sony SRS-XB3 , and the EcoXGear EcoCarbon . Many of these options are water resistant (they may not float or be submersible), and they all offer a stronger audio experience for outdoor listening.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/altec-lansing-life-jacket-3

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