jpw
01-28-2016, 07:04 PM
I have sold JBL for over 40 years but never had the time to visit their facility. So I made my bucket list trip from Iowa (over 30 hours driving time) to LA to JBL this week. Jim Garrett, Kevin Voecks and Chris (engineering) were all kind to spend time with me. All in all it is a very worthwhile and interesting visit. It does not appear that any particular person is in charge or dedicated to doing these tours. For this reason the presentation seemed slightly disorganized and fragmented. They had a smattering of vintage JBL and HK products there but I was expecting something closer to a museum feel showing JBL's timeline documented with their important products of the day. I think they should add an introductory AV presentation covering the history of JBL, their design philosophy and all of their milestones over the decades. This would be both informative and impressive. They already have a theater room to do this in if they wanted to.
I listed to speakers in three different rooms.
Room 1 (medium sized about 15 x 20) had the new ML 200 wpc integrated amp and the 4367's (which I already own) set up. It had serious room resonances in the bass of 10db or more. This caused other listeners that were there to be far less than impressed with the 4367's. They were left to wonder whether it was the speaker or the room. Being in audio sales my whole life this is never a good situation when you are trying to explain away problems by blaming the room. Perhaps it was just poor placement in the room as the speakers were close to being the same distance from the sidewalls as the back walls. Either way this room is doing them no favors as the S3900 had similar problems. They either need to find the sweet spot to minimize the resonances or use a different room.
Room 2 was probably half again larger with the LSR models and the M2 set up here and sounded much better. The LSR-305 really impresses for the money. The M2 (the first time I have heard it) is obviously lower in coloration than the 4367 with far better bass linearity and extension. I expected the better bass etc from the M2 being active and EQ'd but did not expect it to be so much more natural sounding overall. Active speakers are the way to go. It's too bad they do not have any traction on the the consumer side of audio.
Room 3 is their Synthesis home theater room. LCR Everest's biamped with 800 watt amps top and bottom plus 4 subwoofers total, one in each corner. They played the gunshot scene from the movie Open Range. They warned us about the SPL's but even so everyone flinched in their seats. I grew up hunting and know the sound of live gun fire. Even though the gun shots were EQ'd to make rifle fire sound more like a shotgun, they were still startling real. Absolutely no strain or distortion. We were told the system would actually play considerably louder than they played it for us.
The speaker shuffle room was smaller than I expected and only allows mono (one speaker at a time) comparisons which are blinded with curtains. I did not get to hear or see an actual demonstration of the shuffle. A small disappointment. Using listener preference data from these blind listening tests, I was told that JBL designs to a frequency response curve that they claim is near universally preferred to flat response. A wild guess would be more mid bass gently built in. Being a purist I don't agree with this approach as I feel output should match input. If the general public wants to hear more bass, put in on the recording, don't alter the playback response of the speaker. However purposely building in some sort of speaker coloration is so common, even at the high end of audio, that I have accepted high quality EQ as my solution.
One last observation. In stead of just thanking people for coming, JBL needs to have a mechanism in place to translate the enthusiasm and excitement consumers feel in the moment into sales on the spot. Perhaps they could offer special pricing to the customer with the actual transaction and delivery to be arranged through their closest local dealer.
All in all a very fun day and highly recommended. Kudo's to all at JBL for taking time out of their busy day to make my day!
I listed to speakers in three different rooms.
Room 1 (medium sized about 15 x 20) had the new ML 200 wpc integrated amp and the 4367's (which I already own) set up. It had serious room resonances in the bass of 10db or more. This caused other listeners that were there to be far less than impressed with the 4367's. They were left to wonder whether it was the speaker or the room. Being in audio sales my whole life this is never a good situation when you are trying to explain away problems by blaming the room. Perhaps it was just poor placement in the room as the speakers were close to being the same distance from the sidewalls as the back walls. Either way this room is doing them no favors as the S3900 had similar problems. They either need to find the sweet spot to minimize the resonances or use a different room.
Room 2 was probably half again larger with the LSR models and the M2 set up here and sounded much better. The LSR-305 really impresses for the money. The M2 (the first time I have heard it) is obviously lower in coloration than the 4367 with far better bass linearity and extension. I expected the better bass etc from the M2 being active and EQ'd but did not expect it to be so much more natural sounding overall. Active speakers are the way to go. It's too bad they do not have any traction on the the consumer side of audio.
Room 3 is their Synthesis home theater room. LCR Everest's biamped with 800 watt amps top and bottom plus 4 subwoofers total, one in each corner. They played the gunshot scene from the movie Open Range. They warned us about the SPL's but even so everyone flinched in their seats. I grew up hunting and know the sound of live gun fire. Even though the gun shots were EQ'd to make rifle fire sound more like a shotgun, they were still startling real. Absolutely no strain or distortion. We were told the system would actually play considerably louder than they played it for us.
The speaker shuffle room was smaller than I expected and only allows mono (one speaker at a time) comparisons which are blinded with curtains. I did not get to hear or see an actual demonstration of the shuffle. A small disappointment. Using listener preference data from these blind listening tests, I was told that JBL designs to a frequency response curve that they claim is near universally preferred to flat response. A wild guess would be more mid bass gently built in. Being a purist I don't agree with this approach as I feel output should match input. If the general public wants to hear more bass, put in on the recording, don't alter the playback response of the speaker. However purposely building in some sort of speaker coloration is so common, even at the high end of audio, that I have accepted high quality EQ as my solution.
One last observation. In stead of just thanking people for coming, JBL needs to have a mechanism in place to translate the enthusiasm and excitement consumers feel in the moment into sales on the spot. Perhaps they could offer special pricing to the customer with the actual transaction and delivery to be arranged through their closest local dealer.
All in all a very fun day and highly recommended. Kudo's to all at JBL for taking time out of their busy day to make my day!