These arrived yesterday after purchasing them new from a US music store on Ebay. I tried buying locally but got nothing but grief from the Canadian JBLPro distributor to the point that I gave up.
These speakers are intended to be my bedroom speakers in addition to being the primary computer speakers (a bit of overkill for that purpose). I've been using powered monitors for some time for this application and it was the meltdown of one of the amps in my previous NHTpro M-00/S-00 sat sub monitors that led me to seek a replacement. I opted for the larger 4328P in the hope that it would eliminate the need for a sub (more on this later).
My first impression is that these speakers are frigging huge. The picture does not do them justice. They are at least 10 times the size of the NHT's. For scale, the computer display is a 21" monitor and the speakers are taller than this (they look shorter in the photo because they are set back of the monitor). Build quality is good, but not great. In particular, their weight is not commensurate with their size so that they don’t seem as solid as I expected. The box proclaimed in big letters “Designed in the USA” and in smaller letters, “Built in China.” This is the sad fact for virtually all manufactured goods these days.
Hooking them up was no piece of cake. I now have more wires than I imagined possible for two speakers. There is a digital coax that connects the computer to the left speaker, another digital coax cable from the left to the right speaker, an Ethernet cable between the two speakers, a USB cable connecting the left speaker and the computer, calibration mic cable and two power cords for a total of 7 wires.
I am fortunate that one of my computers has an S/PDIF output since I have not been able to make a successful analog connection. The only analog outputs I have are stereo 1/8” mini jacks and the only analog inputs are either XLR or ¼” phone plugs. I purchased a connector to convert a stereo 1/8” mini plug to two mono ¼” phone jacks and then using standard phone cables into the speakers. However, I have yet to get a signal at the speakers with this setup. I’ve taken the ¼” phone outputs from my NHT sub to the JBL’s and this works fine so I know it is not the speakers. The problem with that configuration is that I cannot bypass the sub and its highpass filter which defeats the RMC feature of the LSR’s.
The software installed easily enough, but every time I started it up, it was in demo mode and would not recognize the speakers. Eventually, I found the option setting that allowed a connection to be established with the speakers. This was not obvious in the manual.
The first thing I did was run the calibration routine. This is very easy to accomplish. Once the calibration mic is in place, it’s a one button press, and 30 seconds later, the system is calibrated. The RMC feature is less sophisticated than I thought, at least in the frequency domain. Because of the Project May experience with DEQX, I expected (probably unrealistically) a comprehensive DSP solution. As best that I can determine, there are only three things that RMC can do. It can: 1) automatically level acoustic output from multiple speakers at the listener position when the speakers are not equidistant, it can apply time delays to keep a multichannel configuration time coherent when the speakers are not equidistant, and it can apply a single notch filter to each speaker to mitigate room modes in the bass frequencies. What it cannot do is comprehensively tune the frequency response of the system. For example, one of my speakers is located in a corner, while the other is not. There has to be a boundary effect that is increasing bass response over a wide range of bass frequencies with little or no effect on high frequencies. All that RMC did was take down the overall level of that speaker by 0.5 db across all frequencies. RMC also detected two room modes (one from each speaker) and created one -10.5db notch filter for the left speaker at around 100 hz and one -10.5db filter at around 150 hz for the right speaker. As far as I can tell it did nothing else.
The question is how effective is RMC. The answer for me is very effective. Even though it is not as comprehensive as I would have wished, it makes for a substantial improvement that can be tested by engaging and disengaging an RMC bypass button. Without correction, the bass response is distinctly muddy with a one note quality that disappears when correction is applied. There’s some further tweaking I would like to do with EQ, but overall, the bass response is very good.
However, I’ve come to the conclusion that I will opt for the subwoofer when it is available. First off, the bass response is about 10 hz shy of what the NHT system had with its dedicated sub and I miss that bottom reinforcement. However, there is another aspect of the JBL system that I did not anticipate. The 8” bass driver is good down to at least 50hz and this puts out a lot of bass energy that is coupled to my desk. My desktop turns out to be somewhat resonant which creates a problem. The problem is almost entirely psycho-accoustic and not significantly audible. I can feel the bass feedback from my desktop and into my hand and arms as they rest on the keyboard. It made me perceive the bass response to be boomy and resonant. However, if I lift my arms off of the desk, close my eyes and just listen, the bass response seems fine. I’m not sure if I can overcome the mental tricks that are being played here and adjust accordingly. However, my guess is that the dedicated sub would greatly mitigate this issue since it would decouple a significant portion of the bass energy from my desktop with a floor placement.
Aside from bass response, the mid and high end response is superlative. It is an extremely detailed monitor that has vastly greater resolution than my NHT’s. More importantly to me, I cannot detect any degree of power compression so that it sounds spectrally the same as volume increases. The NHT’s would noticeably change character at higher volumes, to the point of becoming strained and fatiguing.
Imaging is also greatly improved. For the first time, the soundstage is wider than the spacing of my speakers. I’m guessing that the wave guide with its controlled response and minimal boundary reflections at mid and high frequencies is responsible for this. However, there is no change to the front/back image focal point so that my complaint about nearfield monitoring remains. The performance sounds like it is located 3’ from your face, which considering the speaker location, is probably unavoidable. Regardless, it is not natural and remains my biggest issue with nearfield listening in general. It’s too much like listening to a very big pair of headphones. Stand back, and this issue goes away. The LSR’s sound incredible as room speakers from a midfield distance where they completely disappear and are replaced by a near holographic 3D reproduction.
As I said, I’ve only had the system for a day, so my detailed assessment will likely evolve over the next while, though I doubt if my main impressions will change much. In general, I have no regrets and have not heard anything that sounds nearly as good at their price point. The only thing that I would change is that, now that I have come to the conclusion to go for the subwoofer, I probably would have been better served with the 4326P. Since the only real advantage of the 4328P is incrementally greater bass extension that will become superfluous with the sub, I would rather recover of some of the desktop real estate and go with the smaller 4326P.
