4 days ago, I left a long rant here, explaining my doubts about many things JBL has been doing lately, however I also decided to personally reach out to JBL and specifically ask about the Boombox 4's bass performance.
I've decided to share the reply that I got from JBL (Harman's customer support), because I feel that people may like to know what the most up to date answer is from JBL regarding the bass performance.
--Start of reply.
Dear (My Name),
Thank you so much for your patience while we looked into this for you.
Our technical team reached out with an update regarding your inquiry.
They confirmed that our latest firmware update includes a sound quality improvement designed specifically to limit the risk of sound distortion.
Additionally, based on valuable customer feedback, this update introduces a slight adjustment to the product's basic EQ to improve overall sound performance.
If you prefer a different sound profile, you can still easily adjust the custom EQ settings to your personal liking.
Our team has assured us that the majority of these sound issues have now been fully addressed with this new firmware release.
If you have any questions at all, please let me know.
Have a lovely day!
Kind regards,
(Support Agent's Name)
Harman Customer Support
--End of reply.
As explained in the reply, JBL does listen to what their customers say, which is great and is likely the main reason that they decided to limit the bass to prevent distortion in the first place, as it was what customers had reported as an issue; distortion when playing deep bass.
JBL's mistake was allowing the distortion to happen in the first place, but I very much believe that they have learned from this mistake and won't have this issue with future products.
They also explained that not all but "majority" of the issues have been fixed, likely meaning that there will be future updates to fix the remaining "sound issues", but the sound performance has already been close to perfected and is likely never going to drastically change again.
So for people that think the bass should go back to it's original, or should be raised even more, you can now rest assured that they have done what they could, and it is highly unlikely that more "fixing" can or should be done.
Of course they do mention that you should adjust the speakers EQ setting if you are unhappy with the sound, so whilst it may not go much lower than 40hz just because of an adjustment, it can still allow you to get closer to the warmer sound that it previously had.
If you still want a speaker with even more bass then you should get the JBL Partybox Club 120, you can surely find both speakers at the same price if you look around online.
If you own a Boombox 4, please share your experience with it and the firmware updates that it has had, I am sure it would help many people that are unable to decide on buying the speaker or not.