JBL m 552

[Rafael]

Hi all,

any opinions about the jbl m 552 crossover? This device is available at EURO 149,00 here in germany. Is it china made or a good old u.s. made part? Any experience about sound and building quality from forum members would make me happy.

Thanks in advance, Rafael

[frank23]

I have an M552, it is very nicely built with lots of internal connectors for different drive modes [there is a PDF manual available].

The sound is fair, but general opinion here seems to be that passive crossovers sound better.

Personally I also don't like the internal CD EQ for the 236x and 238x horns when using them for these horns

as zilch says, they might work fine for other horn / driver combo's

frank

[Zilch]

I have 552 and 553. They're the standard against which I compare passive crossover performance, attempting to get single-amp passives to sound as good as bi- and tri-amp using them.

The internal CD compensation works especially well with 2407H and other re-entrant ring-diaphragm compression drivers on constant directivity horns, +/- 1 dB in this case:

http://audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=90134&postcount=4

JBL has apparently discontinued them, but they frequently appear on eBay in the $100 range.

There's also a Behringer equvalent, X-PRO CX3400 which sells for $125 new here. Gonna try that one myself, as well....