Marshall Tufton

It’s a pleasure. Ultimate!

I just came back from a week of vacation with family and friends at a lake cottage. Except for sleeping, we were outdoors most of the time. One evening we had about 15 people around a bon fire, and it kind of turned into a dance party. So I had a good amount of time to listen to this Marshall Tufton. Also had it out on a boat (fresh water lake), and a little spray didn't hurt anything. First off, this speaker is very high quality built with a real metal grate on the front. The feet are semi soft rubber, and the corners are hard durable plastic of some sort. The volume, bass, & treble knobs are nice quality too, and smooth turning. Just below the base port on the back is a 3.5mm AUX port. Use this with a high quality cable and you'll get slight better sound than bluetooth. The actual weight, weighed on a commercial scale is 10.6 lbs. (4.81kgs) I agree with the guy who talked about this being "over bassed". I either had the bass turned to zero or at one or two, and treble turned up to 8 or 9 all the time. (see picture) Also see my Feb 2023 update with HD streaming vs Spotify. We used it mainly on bluetooth, and depending on production quality of the song, I could make slight adjustments. You can pair two phones at once, and found a partner with different music tastes to trade off playing songs. Worked out great. Experimenting with the speaker up against a wall or out in the open air, I found the treble could be turned down a bit when the midrange speaker behind the cabinet could reflect off the wall, but that also increased the bass a bit since the bass port was reflecting as well. When playing loud out in the open, I found the high end treble clipped a little bit, but not enough to bother a bunch of wine and rum drinkers! I found that plugging in my S22u with a dongle and cable into the AUX, the speaker would not clip quite as much as bluetooth. I plan on getting a good DAC to plug into. The battery is quite impressive. I had my phone volume turned up 90% and the speaker volume on 8 for around 3 hours, and still had 8 out of 10 bars of battery left. It would be really cool if you could put two of these speakers together via a cable. It would be easy for Marshall to add this feature, and they might sell two of these instead of one. Overall, I'm happy with the purchase. Portability vs Sound vs Battery life, it's got them all going on pretty damn well. I really like the simplicity of design and operation. Hope this helps a bit for someone looking to buy one. Edit: 4 months later. Still happy with the Tufton, but found out if you connect a CD player to the AUX on the Tufton, the sound is quite a bit better than Spotify. First I bought one of the cheap portable CD players off Amazon. "HOTT Portable CD player". Used a male to male 3.5mm, and the sound was absolute trash compared to Spotify. Returned that HOTT piece of garbage, and bought the Amazon Basics "3.5mm to 2-Male RCA Adapter Audio Stereo Cable", and hooked it up to my Samsung Blu-Ray player, and into the AUX of the Tufton. The sound is much better with a CD on the Samsung player than Spotify comparing the exact same song, as it should be. Much more balanced sound than Spotify, but don't bother with those cheap chinese portable CD players. They have crap audio circuits in them Update 02-23-2023..... The speaker absolutely wakes up when streaming HD or HiFi. The music through Spotify was dull and way too bassy. Had to turn the base almost all the way down. Spotify is 16bit, Amazon Unlimited is 24bit. The Ultra HD songs streaming from Amazon Unlimited sound full and clear out of this Tufton speaker, and allows the tone controls set to normal positions. The HD streaming from AU, Tidal, or any service with Hi Def, sounds better than a CD and makes this Marshal Tufton rock the way it was intended.

So first thing first, this speaker sounds......very incorrect. You do not need to be a trained audiophile to hear the big fat bass which makes every each song sound like a "hard rock" version of the original. Another problem caused by the over-exaggerated bass is that in many tracks, the drums and vocals are so close together that they lose their sense of spaciousness. This makes many tracks sound not quite like the original recordings anymore. The second con of this speaker is the volume knob. Unlike the electronic knobs on the Stanmore 2 and the Woburn 2, Tufton's knob is mechanical. This means that the volume adjustment on the phone and the speaker side cannot be synchronized. This is almost inexcusable for a 2020 wireless speaker. Normally, these two are very much deal breakers to me. They sound wrong, and inconvenient to use, why on earth I am not returning it? Well......the short answer is: I love it. Now, allow me to elaborate a little. First, it's just so damn sexy. It's one of the very few products I've used that looks better in real life than the advertised picture. It's not your typical Marshall amp shape either (like Woburn or Stanmore), it's too skinny to be a proper combo amp. But to me, it's that oddly long and lean body, along with Marshall's classic design elements and that leather carry handle that makes the Tufton look especially chic. Often, just watching it quietly sit in the corner has been aesthetically pleasing. Also, I like the volume knob even though it doesn't sync with my phone's volume control. It feels great at my finger, and most importantly, it adjusts the volume continuously and precisely. Second, it sounds bass-heavy, true, but insanely fun. I am not a bass-head. With any audio device, my primary concern is always on vocal rendition. One of the more amazing things about the Tufton is that while its low frequencies are exaggerated and even interfere with the midrange at times, the midrange itself is actually of very good quality. As with the bass, the vocal reproduction is not exactly accurate, but it's warm and has a thickness rarely heard in portable speakers. Currently, I also owned a HK Onyx studio 2 and Google home max, they both have cleaner and more accurate mids, but also lack Tufton's warmth and thickness in mids and that wild power in low-end. As a wireless speaker, it tends to be used in the kitchen, balcony, or camping site. In these situations where critical listening is not expected, I find I often prefer Tufton's slightly exaggerated warm tone. In sum, of the three wireless speakers I currently owned, the Tufton is probably the most "incorrect" sounding, and the most genre-specific one. But I find myself constantly go back to use it, to carry it around, and can't wait to introduce it to my friends.

Buena calidad de sonido

Great portable speaker! I am a very big Marshall fan. I own many of their guitar amps. I wanted a somewhat powerful, portable bluetooth speaker for when I'm working on tasks around the house. Sure, I can play with my cell phone speaker, but it isn't really very loud. Nothing Marshall is cheap. Let's get that out of the way. I absolutely feel us consumers are paying for the name, but I also feel it has good quality. The speaker enclosure is pretty heavy, but not like tons. I'm guessing a big speaker magnet. It has the basic controls, volume, treble, and bass, along with a button to wake it from sleep mode, and a battery charge LED graph. I forget the exact battery life, but they do state the maximum life is at 50% volume. I keep mine about 60%. It will easily play for several hours before needing to be recharged. Build construction feels like solid wood, well designed, somewhat heavy, but not insane. I really like the look. Sleek and modern. Very user friendly controls. I don't know what the bluetooth range is, but I have my speaker in the living room, and have walked to the garage and to the driveway, and it still plays. Easily 30 feet. It doesn't go concert level loud, but it still plenty loud given the size. I'm not an audiophile, but I feel the sound quality is very good. Not sure of the frequency response, but all ranges that I expect are definitely there. I also really like the leather handle. It's not cheap or flimsy, it feels like a good quality strap. If you can live with the Marshall price tag, I think you will really like this speaker. It's built well, reasonably light, good battery life, very good sound, and looks great.