The Lowdown
The Brane X battery speaker is that rarest of things: a medium-sized battery speaker that can just about used by DJs because it has a low-latency line-in socket and has enough bass to handle the music we throw at it. If you’re looking for something that isn’t tiny but isn’t as big as the smallest single PA speakers either – for monitoring, for use at home, or even for tiny parties – this could be the one for you, and the bass truly is something to talk about.
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Video Review
First Impressions / Setting up
It is an attractive speaker, 3.5 kg in weight and about the size of a medium Sonos speaker, but with a nice easy carry handle for portability. It has squidgy feet on the bottom, the purpose of which will become clear in a second, and a grille around the front underneath which are two tweeters and two mid-range speakers.
Underneath and pointing down is a custom subwoofer – hence the feet. The top of the speaker has controls for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi pairing, switching the bass between low, mid, and high, volume, microphones on and off, and Alexa mode.
Around the back is the on/off button, a 1/8” TRS auxiliary input socket, and the DC input for charging and powering the speaker with the supplied power brick.
Setting up takes 2–3 hours to charge from scratch, although it comes with some charge. Turning it on, you can immediately hold your hand on the Bluetooth touch button to go into Bluetooth pairing mode. However, keeping your hand held on this goes into Wi-Fi pairing mode, which you’re going to need in order to connect with the free app.
Within the app, you can tweak the EQ, group with other speakers, and crucially switch the auxiliary input on the back to low latency mode (designed to use as a “soundbar mode”, but which makes DJing with it just about possible).
The DJ workflow now would be to use a lead to plug the output of your DJ controller or mixer into the auxiliary in on the back. Plonk the speaker down pointing at your room, at yourself if you’re using it as a monitor in a larger venue, or just in a suitable place in your practice room – and off you go.
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In Use
This is unlike any speaker I’ve reviewed before.
To start with, in order to get convincing bass out of it, it has magnets around the subwoofer, and you can hear the magnets engaging when you turn it on for a few seconds. It’s as if they’re being pulled into place.
If you have the standby mode on and haven’t played music through it for 15 minutes, the magnets disengage again. This is instructive, because if you then start some music playing, you’ll hear it – but you won’t hear the effect of the fully primed subwoofer for a second or so, and the difference is quite astounding.
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The bass from this is deeper than anything I’ve ever heard in a speaker of this size before, and it’s almost off-putting in that it kind of sounds separate from the mids and treble. This effect, though, soon disappears as you step back from the speaker, when the sound becomes far bigger than it has any right to be.
Therefore, as a tool for DJs, it’s quite unprecedented. You’re not only getting the low latency, but also the kind of bass that means it’s a serious contender for DJing the tiniest of parties with. Quite something for a speaker this size.
Versatility
It’s worth pointing out that, as a high-end device, it also has smarts – which means you could use it in other areas of your life. We are pretty keen on kit that can be used in more than one way here at Digital DJ Tips, and this speaker would be just fine in medium to large rooms as a general-purpose speaker, especially as it has Spotify, AirPlay, and Alexa built-in.
You could also plug two of them either side of your TV in the ultra-low latency mode to give you a pretty good pseudo 2.1 TV system as well. When on mains power, the speaker doesn’t auto turn off, so it can be on permanent standby for AirPlay and suchlike. This means that it acts like more traditional high-end home speakers in this respect – think Sonos and the like.
Limitations
It’s not perfect. Firstly while very low latency, that latency IS noticeable if you’ve come from a vinyl background, for instance, or want to scratch and need true zero. Most DJs (including me) will get on fine with it for day-to-day DJing, but it is still a thing. Also, there is a slight hiss that comes and goes, but is only audible when you’re having very quiet listening sessions. (As soon as you crank it up (anything past whispering), you will never hear it.)
You do need to watch the levels on your DJ gear. Despite having a digital signal processor built-in – and the ability to use another similar speaker for a kind of party mode (although do note you will lose zero latency, so you can’t do this as a DJ) – the DSP doesn’t cut out extreme frequencies. So, for instance, if you push the volume and then use a high-pass filter or a similar effect, you might hear some crackling.
Finally, and I’m not sure why this happened because it hasn’t happened recently, it went through a spate of talking to us for no apoparent reason. I could never quite catch what it was saying as I was never near it, but it was something along the lines of “this speaker needs an update” or another system announcement. I don’t like any tech talking to me without being spoken to first, call me old fashioned! Anyway, just a curiosity, not a deal breaker.
Conclusion
It’s a fantastic product if you’re looking for something this size, if you value good bass, and if you need a speaker you can more-or-less DJ through. I honestly can’t think of anything else out there with quite this mix of talents. Practically all the other modern portable battery Bluetooth speakers we’ve tested (yes, I’m talking about the ones with a line-in socket) have latency, which means they’re unsuitable for DJing. It’s not true zero latency (like Minirig) but it gets very close.
Read this next: The Problem With DJ Speakers (& How To Fix It)
For ultra portable use, we still recommend the tiny Minirigs (which you can read a review of here), but even their manufacturer realises that to get acceptable bass past a certain level, you’re going to need something more, and they sell a separate subwoofer. However, that immediately makes their set-up more fiddly and complicated. With the Brane X, you get both in one.
Of course, you could move up to the next size of speaker, which would be personal PA speakers – the type that you can mount on a pole or use as a wedge monitor, or indeed use in a very large home studio. There are lots of options in that category, and none of them have the latency issue because they’re designed for singer-songwriters, DJs, producers, and so on. However, they’re bigger and often overkill.
(Do look at the Soundboks Go as one example if you want to compare and contrast – here’s our review of that.)
Ultimately, if you want a speaker you can use to practise DJing, play barbecues, home parties, or use as a monitor in bigger venues, and you’re even slightly excited to hear what bass can come out of such a small speaker – because it will amaze you – then you should take a look at the Brane X. We’ve been impressed, and it’s now our go-to recommendation at this size of unit and price point.
