Size comparison: Marshall Stanmore II at the top and Woburn II at the bottom.
In Marshall's line-up, Woburn II and Stanmore II are the first and second largest bluetooth speakers. Woburn II is more like a living room speaker whereas the Stanmore II is more like a shelf speaker.
In summary, owing to its extra 50 W woofer (a HUGE difference), Marshall Woburn II is not only louder than the Stanmore II, but it's also more satisfying to listen to - even at lower volume levels.
Now let's get to their bolts and nuts.
In summary, owing to its extra 50 W woofer (a HUGE difference), Woburn II is not only louder than the Stanmore II, but it's also more satisfying to listen to - even at lower volume levels.
Loudness
Although the Woburn is louder, Stanmore II is still significantly loud. For most people, at full volume, it's even drunk party level loud.
In their product manuals (Manual of Stanmore II [PDF] - Manual of Woburn II [PDF]), you can see that the maximum sound pressure level of Stanmore II stands at 101 dB.
Whereas that of the Woburn II is at 110 dB.
In their manuals you'll also see that the Stanmore II is equipped with 2 pieces of 15 Watt Class D amplifiers for the tweeters and one piece of 50 Watt Class D amplifier for the woofer.
The tweeters are smaller amplifiers are able to vibrate quicker. They're responsible for producing high frequency sounds.
Whereas the woofers are the larger amplifiers, placed at the bottom of speakers, under the tweeters. They produce lower frequency sounds.
In addition to these exact amplifiers in the Marshall Stanmore II, Woburn II steps up its game and brings in an additional 50 W woofer in the table.
Now this is what I call a huge difference.
Having an equally powerful, extra woofer is a game changer. It's like equipping the same airplane with two more engines.
Marshall Stanmore II.
Now you might think to yourself that the difference in the decibel department doesn't seem to reflect that much of a difference: 110 vs 101 dB.
But there's one part you got wrong there: Decibel scale is logarithmic, not linear.
This means that the difference between them is FAR more than the difference between two speakers at, say, 51 and 60 dB.
Same amount increase in the dB scale, but far different results.
So, in reality, assuming everything else is equal, a 110 dB speaker will almost be twice as loud as a 101 dB speaker.
But loudness isn't the only advantage you get with an extra woofer. There's another advantage, and to most people (including me and probably you), it's even a more important one.
Sound quality
Let me tell you something right off the bat.
The sound quality performance you'll end up getting from a speaker will always depend on your room acoustics - particularly room dimensions and speaker positions.
The impact of the combination of these two is actually so strong that in most cases, it doesn't even make sense to utter a single word on sound quality without speaking of them.
This is also why it's not unusual to see completely different reviews of the same speaker.
In one case the speaker might be placed in a sweet spot inside the room and hence the user might be satisfied. In other cases the same speaker might be ill placed and hence user might even have returned it.
The point most people miss here is that it mostly isn't even about the engineering behind the speaker itself. It's about where you place the speaker inside which room.
So, in order to solve this problem, I've partnered with Acoustics and Audio Engineering PhD Andrea Cicero from AC Acustica and created Soundton - a simple, 2D, browser accessible online speaker placement calculator.
With Soundton, now there's a way to figure the sound quality of most speakers before you buy them.
Read more about its working principles at soundton.com/documentation/.
The end colormap provides you the locations with the best (green) and worst (red) acoustics.