Make your student house parties block-rocking with a decent speaker set-up

Just starting university? Whether you’re a skinny jeans-wearing, Strokes-loving indie kid, or a 1D worshipping pop princess, these wireless speakers and docks will get your house parties rocking...

10 Sep 2013


University is a rite-of-passage packed full of first-time experiences.
From managing your money and learning to cook, to living alone for the first time - these are things you'll call upon time and time again as you navigate the choppy waters of adulthood.

The above lessons are pretty important, but perhaps the one that trumps them all is learning how to throw a decent house party?


When I arrived at university, my past experience of house parties was of pretty cordial affairs punctuated by parents arriving home early and teenage lads standing in the kitchen in awkward, furtive clusters.

However, after a month in our halls of residence I understood the house party to be an entirely different beast, where drink flowed liberally, morals were loosened and parents saying 'now would be a sensible time to stop' were hundreds of miles away.

The lynchpin on which all this hangs is music, but with such hedonistic chaos unfolding around you you'd be pretty daft to bring your CDs and records down from your room.

Keeping the party lubricated with block-rocking beats from your iPod, phone or tablet is a much safer idea - and here are a few of our favourite speaker set-ups for doing just that.

Whether you're a skinny jeans-wearing, Strokes-loving indie kid, or a 1D worshipping pop princess who never misses the X Factor, these speakers are a great shout.
Lightweight and totally portable, they can go pretty much anywhere you want.

Sony XDRDS16IPN speaker dock

Sony Speaker Dock

The fact you can put your tunes on your iPhone nowadays may mean you decided to leave your trusty old iPod back at the parents' ranch. After all when packing for your new life, pots, pans, posters and pasta have to take priority. But even without your iPod you can keep your freshers' house party lubricated with a steady stream of big-room tunes as this Sony speaker dock is compatible with your iPhone as well. With it only weighing 1.65kg, finding room for it when packing should be a doddle too.

Whether using your phone or iPod, just plug it in to the dock and load up the playlist you spent all day fretting over. If your new best friends dance around your living room like its Studio 54 in the mid-seventies rather than a small terraced house on the outskirts of Birmingham in 2013 then you've cracked it.

If your self-proclaimed status as a champion of hip underground music doesn't quite work out, and your playlists clear the dancefloor faster than a drunken uncle at a wedding, all is not lost.

The crowd wants chart dance, pop something they know - flip the switch to DAB radio and restore your credibility a Radio 1 mix - disaster averted.

JBL Flip Portable Wireless Speaker

JBL Flip Wireless Speaker

Your kitchen floor has been transformed into the dancefloor of a small, provincial club. It's sticky with spilt lager and wine and as that hot girl from your tutorial - the one you're amazed actually showed up - grooves on the slippery tiles the best you can muster is a heart-in-mouth wince. You try and give the floor a rub with your housemate's towel on the sly and hope for the best.

At least she won't trip over the wires to your speaker though. Why? Because there aren't any: the JBL Flip allows you to have a totally banging party without a wire in sight, so you can concentrate on chatting to the dream girl rather worrying about her tripping over. Whether your music is on your laptop, tablet or smartphone you can play it wirelessly through this speaker. The fact it works with multiple devices will also come in handy if you didn't get around to copying those newly downloaded tracks from your phone to your laptop before everyone rocked up.

Think it's going to take just a few more well-chosen tracks 'til she realises how cool you are? With five hours' battery you should have plenty of time to find out for sure.  

Jambox Wireless Speaker

Jawbone Jambox Wireless Speaker

If you're running with the cool crowd at uni then the Jambox is the speaker for you. With a design that slots in right beside your slip-on Vans and vintage parka, the Jawbone Jambox describes itself as a 'modern classic' and will let that group of lads who are into all the right bands know you've arrived. And if your new hipster friends are still umming and ahhing over its credentials, all you need to tell them is it pays lip service to a Beatles track on its product blurb - this is a product made by folk down with all the right cultural signifiers.

But what does it actually do? Well, it's another wireless speaker, described as "your phone's best friend".
Jawbone reckons you can play what you want, when you want, where you want - it works with your phone, your iPod, your laptop and more.

It's small enough to go where you go, so if you end up at someone else's party and the music isn't quite there you can start your own mini-party in a different room. The Jambox - a cool speaker, for cool people, who like cool music - just don't use it to play S Club 7.

So there we have it, a few of our favourite speakers to help you make a name for yourself on campus for throwing the parties everyone wants to attend. Tell us which one you like the looks of in the comments below…