Drawing on its experience in the stationary speaker market, Yamaha manages to make a rather clean copy for its first step into the world of portable Bluetooth speakers. However, it remains far from offering “Hi-Fi” quality sound, as the Japanese brand promises, if that means anything.
The WS-B1A features a 55 m speaker supported by a passive radiator to give power to the bass. This design makes 360° listening complicated, because the single loudspeaker only radiates on one side of the enclosure. In addition, its behavior is particularly directive, and therefore the sound reproduction depends greatly on the listening position.
Facing the loudspeaker, the highs (6 kHz-12 kHz) are swallowed up by the high mids (2 kHz-6 kHz) and the extreme highs (12 kHz-20 kHz). This behavior has the effect of clearly bringing out instruments rich in harmonics such as cymbals, overdriven guitars or brass instruments. To make matters worse, the level of precision of the high frequencies is quite disappointing: the rendering is a little abrasive, even aggressive at times, revealing phenomena of sibilance.
To obtain a better rendering, it is necessary to shift slightly from the axis of the loudspeaker (approximately 30°). The high frequencies then seem much less aggressive and the speaker demonstrates its full potential with a homogeneous and balanced rendering. The bass response in particular is quite amazing, especially considering the WS-B1A’s compact size. Of course, we are far from the Bose SoundLink Mini, for example, but the WS-B1A transcribes kick drums, deep synth pads or electronic kicks very well. However, care must be taken not to stray too far from the axis of diffusion of the loudspeaker, otherwise you will hear a collapse of the high-mids, and therefore a duller/muffled rendering.
The WS-B1A transcribes surprisingly well the human voices that naturally emerge from the rest of the instruments. They may, however, have a slight nasal appearance, but nothing unacceptable. Yamaha’s speaker is also capable of deploying surprising power. However, you have to be careful not to push it to its limits, because distortion problems then appear and the bass sags too much. Finally, the Clear Voice mode only lowers the bass level to bring out the mids (and therefore the voices), but to the detriment of the overall rendering.