AlphaTheta Wave Eight Portable DJ Speaker Review

Video Review

First Impressions / Setting up

The AlphaTheta Wave Eight is a portable battery/mains-powered PA speaker, with trolley wheels, an extendible handle, and a big trick up its sleeve: Namely, the inclusion of a low-latency wireless system. AlphaTheta calls it “SonicLink”, and the speaker includes a handy matching wireless transmitter that lives in a compartment in the unit, and means you can plug the transmitter into any DJ gear and DJ without wires between the DJ gear and the speaker.

With up to an eight-hour battery life, IPX4 waterproof rating, and lots of flexibility for pairing with other Wave Eights to build a bigger system wirelessly, it’s an intriguing new product – so let’s take a closer look to see what it’s like in use, and talk about the competition. Then we’ll end off by discussing where this kind of tech might be heading.

Read this next: 5 Modern Technologies That Are Making Wireless DJing Possible

Design & build

The speaker is a compact, wedge-shaped and tough plastic design, about the size of a deep roll-on travel trolley. It looks the part – it has a pleasing Funktion 1-style club speaker design. The front of the unit has an eight-inch main speaker behind a tough grille at the bottom, and at the top, the tweeter.

Although the delicate tweeter is recessed and behind a partial guard, it is still exposed. I’ve never seen an exposed tweeter in speakers of this type before. It is exactly the height a curious toddler might poke a finger or a pen in and damage it, leading to an expensive repair.

The speaker has rubber feet on both sides and the bottom, although the ones on the sides are only glued on, and on the model we were sent, one of them was already peeling off. Make sure yours are properly glued upon delivery of your units, should you buy.

There is a pole hole on the underside so you can set these up on stands if you wish.

Low-latency “SonicLink” transmitter

Facing the speaker from the front, there is a handle on the right-hand side, but on the left-hand side is a rubberised cover, underneath which you find the transmitter for the SonicLink low latency. The transmitter is actually a box about the size of a pack of playing cards, with a pairing button, status lights for input and battery, and a USB-C charging port, alongside RCA stereo inputs.

The idea is that you detach this and connect it to your DJ gear in order to establish the low-latency wireless link with the main unit. It’s pretty cool and the cover does a good job of protecting it from the elements when it’s not in use.

Inputs, outputs & controls

Around the back of the speaker, you’ll find the bass reflex port at the bottom by the wheels, and at the top safely recessed are various primary controls including the on/off button, the battery level indicator, the main volume, various pairing buttons, a stereo/mono channel button, and a six-way knob for selecting the speaker’s mode. There are two music modes, two flat response modes, a vocal response mode, plus a setting to put the speaker into subwoofer mode.

The idea is that you can pair these speakers together wirelessly if you wish – so for instance you could have three, with a left and a right plus one in subwoofer mode, in which case you’d set the two “main” units into one of the low-cut modes. It’s a flexible design, and some thought has gone into this.

Also on the back is another rubberised panel that can be folded up to reveal more controls. Here is where you’ll find extra inputs and outputs, namely two XLR balanced line inputs, an eighth-inch minijack auxiliary input, a TRS balanced microphone input with level plus low and high EQ and a useful echo knob, a USB charging port (so for instance you could charge your phone from the battery in the unit) and an XLR mono line out. Finally on the back, again behind a splash resistant rubber port, is an IEC AC mains input.

Pairing & plugging in

Setting the speaker up depends upon how you want to use it. If you want to pair it with the wireless, you plug the transmitter into your music source, press the button on the transmitter and on the back of the speaker to pair them, and you’re good to go. And of course, if you want to use any of the wired inputs, you plug the corresponding cable in. Inputs are an either/or with the Bluetooth and SonicLink, likewise with either of these and the Aux In, but the Line Ins and Mics work all the time, regardless of the above.

Learn to DJ with us: The Complete DJ Course

There are physical channels for you to feed cables out of the back of the speaker, so you can usually close the back panel again once your speakers are plugged in, which is a nice addition.

So what’s it like in use? Let’s find that out next.

In Use

Power, settings & status lights

AlphaTheta only loaned us one of these speakers for review, so we didn’t get a chance to try pairing it with one more for stereo, or indeed with two more to test out the subwoofer. But I can tell you from just one that it packs plenty of volume, and that there is sufficient variety between the music and flat modes for you to pick an EQ that will likely work for you. AlphaTheta says it is “110W” but there’s no other official info regarding power.

There’s a light on the front that displays the status of the speaker’s wireless function. It lights up and blinks in green when using SonicLink, and in blue when using Bluetooth. Next to it, the power light flashes when the battery is charging, and goes red when the unit is being overloaded – a nice addition. Also there is a battery LED strip in the main controls compartment, and an additional volume limit warning.

Regarding music vs flat mode, indoors we found that the flat mode was the best, because it has decent bass without the extra boost provided by the music mode. Indeed, used like this, a pair of these would make a great DJ practice set-up in a big room, that could also accompany you to parties.

That said there is no more granular EQ available, so you will be EQing on your DJ gear if it’s not quite to your taste in one of those two modes – there’s no app for fine tuning, for instance.

SonicLink, Bluetooth & latency

SonicLink all worked as advertised – they say up to 10 metres of range, although initial pairing should be done within a metre of the speaker. As far as the latency goes, it’s certainly fine for DJing – this feels great in use, a bit like alchemy!

That said, if you are a laptop DJ with an older laptop and you already have some latency dialled into your software, bear in mind that this has to be added on top of the latency that’s added by the wireless, so you may just notice it overall. In practical terms though, it does what it says on the tin, which is give you a way of DJing without a wire between the speaker and your DJ unit.

Bluetooth was also reliable – although of course, this brings back the latency that for DJing we must always avoid. However, to use this as a general-purpose speaker just to play music through from any source, Bluetooth is there and it’s fine.

In practical terms, you should expect the battery to last less than the eight hours if you’re playing at full volume. We didn’t play it at full volume until the battery went flat, so I can’t confirm exactly how much less battery life you would get by doing that, but that is pretty much always the case with this kind of speaker. We’re going to guess that the eight hours has been tested at about half volume by AlphaTheta’s engineers – which is still pretty loud.

Read this next: The 4 Types Of Loudspeaker Every DJ Needs To Know About

Quality-wise, it sounded good to us – punchy but warm, and very loud. As suggested above, it’d be possible to use this speaker (or more likely a pair of them) as an all-round system, to have in a (large) home studio as your monitors, and then to take with you out and about, which would be a pretty neat all-round set-up. I’d say a pair on stands with another as a subwoofer would be good for 50-75 people, ie a small party.

Conclusion

There’s a lot to like here. Just as a PA speaker, it sounds great, and we loved the options for pairing wirelessly with extra Wave Eights. It’s practical with the wheels and the telescopic handle, but it’s also not too heavy just to carry with the built-in carry handles as well.

With that mounting hole underneath, it’s possible to put two of these on poles, and have a third as a subwoofer, all wirelessly – doing this could result in a really neat wireless DJ system of a type that hasn’t really been possible until now.

Learn to DJ with Digital DJ Tips: The Complete DJ Course

DJ gear with SonicLink?

I have to say, that with the launch of the Omnis Duo at the same time from the same brand, it would have been so cool to have the wireless technology built into the Omnis Duo, so you wouldn’t need to use the transmitter at all – an opportunity missed there, I think.

Read this next: AlphaTheta Launches All-In-One DJ Controller & Portable Speaker

It’ll be interesting to see if the company launches DJ gear in the future that does have such a transmitter built in. (The Omnis Duo does have wireless out – but it’s Bluetooth only!)

But just to reiterate, you can use the low-latency wireless with any equipment because of the transmitter that comes with this unit.

Wave Eight vs Soundboks

There is an obvious competitor on the market, which is the similarly priced Soundboks speaker. Very different in style, that one is more a classic rectangle design and frankly more rugged, with the additional advantage of switchable battery packs.

However, using it with DJ gear wirelessly involves the purchase of an extra transmitter unit (it uses a system called SKAA), and that’s where the AlphaTheta unit shines, because it already comes with one.

I unfortunately didn’t have the SoundBoks unit to hand to run these side-by-side, as it’s in our other studio, although I would suspect the SoundBoks would be louder, frankly, because I’ve never heard a louder PA speaker of that type before in my life!

The future of wireless?

Looking forward, another interesting thing to watch will be where this technology takes us, because with Bluetooth 5.4 and extra advances made by Qualcomm in the gaming world, Bluetooth with ultra-low latency is already a reality – so it could be that in a few years time there’s no need for extra tech like SKAA and SonicLink in order for DJs and musicians to be able to play wirelessly.

For now though, this is an interesting product that does a lot right, and does something different to anything else on the market. I just worry about that tweeter.