JBL’s New Speakers Use AI to Silence Your Favorite Song’s Worst Guitar Solo

Back in my day, EQing instruments out of songs was a real pain in the ass—even if you got all your low and high filters just right, the results were far from perfect. Just ask every soul song I tried to sample in high school. But this is the age of AI, and JBL is trying to use new frequency-filtering tech to make the process a little bit easier.

JBL just launched the BandBox Solo and BandBox Trio, a pair of speakers meant to automate the process of pulling out “stems,” which is music-speak for isolating sounds (guitar tracks, drum tracks, and vocals) from one another after they’ve been assembled. The idea here is that by removing those parts of songs, you can plug into the speaker and play (or sing) along, though I guess you could use it to mute the parts of songs you don’t like, too. Hey! An AI jam session that maybe doesn’t suck!

From what I can tell, the feature works by simply pressing an on-device button, which begins the isolation process. From there, you can use the JBL companion app to choose which element of the song you want isolated and by how much.

As someone who learned to play guitar this way—playing songs through speakers and then playing along with an amp—I can’t overstate how awesome it would have been to have something like this built into an amp while I was learning. To make things even better, JBL’s Stem AI, as they’re calling it, also works without an internet connection—no sending songs to the cloud and waiting for them to be processed.

There are differences between the BandBox Solo and Trio, and the biggest are size and input. The BandBox Solo is an 18W speaker that’s much smaller and meant for individual practices, since it only has one input. The BandBox Trio, on the other hand, is a 135W speaker that has four total inputs (it’s meant for groups) and also on-speaker controls for EQ as well as an LCD screen. Both are battery-powered, and the BandBox Solo can get up to 6 hours of life, while the Trio can get as much as 10. The Trio has a replaceable battery, though, so you could swap it out for a fresh one if needed. Both speakers have some included effects like chorus and reverb, as well as amp modeling for modern or vintage sound, and both can be used with Bluetooth as well as wired.

As exciting as the Stem AI feature sounds, I’ll have to hear the results myself to believe they’re as good as JBL would suggest. And if they are? Well, the BandBox might be one of the coolest amps you can buy right now. The BandBox Solo costs $250, while the BandBox Trio costs $600, and both are available for pre-order from JBL’s website starting today. Both are expected to ship starting on March 1, with retail availability starting then, too.