My Bathroom Audio Solution

Audio in the Bathroom

I have been seeking a "good" bathroom speaker.   There are many options and functional aspects to consider when it comes to mixing water and electronics.  In this article I plan to hit these points while explaining how and why I got to the conclusion that  finally reached (somewhat accidentally).

Crappy Speakers

I, like I believe many of my fellow Americans, wish to continue my audio listening experience as I go through my day. This includes the time when I am showing.  Many times I have wanted to have access to a video experience while showing, and there are solutions to this question, but none that are possible to implement smoothly and evenly. 

While there are many possible ways to get audio into the bathroom, there is no simple method that I had found until recently.  Initially, I had thought that I would want a speaker that would hang from the shower head or stick to the wall of the shower.  There are several problems with this solution.

Firstly, most shower speakers sound terrible, they have no bass because, to overcome the noise of the shower, they must be loud and tinny. The only decent solution is to install good speakers in the bathroom.  Secondly, most people are not willing to spend the currency to install great speakers in the bathroom, because they will so rarely be used to their potential, the solution is left mostly to the wealthy.  The third issues is power.  As we probably all know, water and electrical power do not mix well in the hands of carbon-based life.  Portal devices that have that terrible tin-sound are often battery powered.   And plug-gable devices must remain near an outlet, which are often scarce around faucets. The final issue is that outside of disuse.  Speakers that sit in a bathroom will likely get mold or corroded over time due to the high moisture content of the room. 

Smartphone in a Bag

Another consideration includes a plastic locking bag to contain a mobile phone, but there are yet more issues to overcome in this concept.  While it is entirely possible and quite inexpensive to purchase a sealed plastic container for one's smartphone, the interoperability of said device is terrible.  It's hard to press the buttons and human hands rarely handle wet plastic deftly.  Of course the bag could be mounted a wall or hung like a lanyard from the shower head, but alas, the ever-presence of video is then lost if one turns about for any reason.  Additionally, sound works best when it has access to whichever medium your ears are currently submerged, usually air while showering. A bag has a strong tendency to block the audio causing it to sound muffled.


In short there are two sides to this problem.  Either deal with terrible audio quality or spend some serious coin to install a proper system that will resist both moisture and disuse. 

The Accidental Answer: Insignia Voice

I came upon the solution, albeit a compromise, when Best Buy was having a sale on it's in-house brand Insignia.  Insignia produces some of the most capable and inexpensive Google Home Speakers.  For the price of a Google Home Mini you can get a large, portable, bass-capable, alarm clock speaker.  I grabbed 2 of the larger battery-op devices when Best Buy was having a 75% off sale. 

These units are portable, have decent sound that includes bass, can be controlled by your voice, and are reasonably priced.   I was looking for more ways to up my whole-house audio game and discovered the value of the speaker was so much greater than anything that Google directly offered.  While Google does have some interesting designs, the Insignia speaker is a strong competitor, even if it isn't as pleasing to the design-eye.

Now when I want to continue my audio experience in the shower, I unplug the speaker, and carry it into to the the bathroom.  I can talk to it for music or begin casting to it from any player device.  It can easily get loud enough to blast over the noise of the shower at 50% volume. 

Admittedly, I have not tested the full extent of the audio experience.  I rarely spend more than 30 minutes in the bathroom.  But I am told that the speaker can last up to 5 hours before it needs to be reconnected to a power source.   This solution is a great compromise, between installing a costly system in the bathroom and terrible audio.  In fact it is neither poor quality, nor high cost.

Last thoughts: Uninterrupted Audio

I'd like to make a comment regarding the concept of casting audio from a smartphone to a speaker.  While there are probably hundreds of good waterproof speakers on the market, most of them are Bluetooth-based and accept primarily audio from smartphones, there is an inherent problem that I have discovered in doing that.   I want uninterrupted audio.  Wi-Fi connected devices, particularly Google Home audio via Wi-Fi have an advantage over Bluetooth in that they do not include notification sounds in the stream.  Smartphones use Bluetooth to send notifications, the Wi-Fi connection that this speaker uses does not include any notifications and thereby no interruptions.   Yes, it does support Bluetooth too, if you want that.

Get Outta My Head: Micro LED TV

Samsung's Micro LED (Modular) TV

I'm not going to say, "I told you so", because I am just grateful that such a thing came into being.  It was going to happen eventually, and it only took 22 years.  Granted, the concept in it's physical format is real -- expensive, but I am certain that it will come down in price to the point where the cost is negligible.

History

Back in the mid-90's when I was first in College at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, Hitachi and Sony both approached the school with a proposal and grant money.  The sum was on the order of $5,000,000 if some engineering group could figure out how solve the problem of air bubbles in the Liquid Crystal Display forming process.   No one at the school developed a viable solution, to my knowledge, but it got me thinking about the future of display technology. 

I designed the first concept of what I was certain would be possible in 2000 when I began my elective courses in Electrical and Materials Engineering.  By the end of 2002 my thesis stated that it was possible to develop a circuit to control the electroplating of organic polymers onto silicon (the early days of OLED).  This tech concept led me to postulate on what would eventually become what the MicroLED TV is today.

Idea

The scope of the idea that I had was that at some future point, we would have modular screens all over our homes and that if one module broke, it could be easily replaced with a trip to the corner market. People would pick them up or replace them as needed, not as a full piece of equipment.  The modularity would allow consumers to use anywhere from one to hundreds and swap them in and out of whatever unit they wanted at the time.

If anything, even if know one every recognizes me for having the forethought, just the mere fact that a 20+ year-old prediction came to fruition is enough for me