Everest Listening Impressions

[Zilch]

Yup, I been thinking about rolling off that spike.

It's not that I can hear it, but that I believe what goes on up there matters.

Pushing in more power for UHF than necessary may be counterproductive. It certainly is with 2431H and 2435HPL....

[merlin]

Hi All,

I just thought I'd share the experiences I have had as I am out in Tokyo from the UK for a few days visiting around the Audio Show.



The Everest is being used both in the Harman room as seen here and also in the Accuphase setup. I had already seen a pair in the flesh in a small Dynamic Audio store in Shinjuku the day before (all stores seem to have a pair!) but my first listen was under show conditions.

First impressions are of a tremendous purity to the midrange, a bell like clarity that told me the 476be is a real honey. We listened in both rooms extensively and both me and my collegue had to agree that at the end of the day we were disappointed. At the show the Everest was utterly sublime from about 200hz upwards, but a bit of a mess, slow and bloated below. I was crestfallen to be honest. I had flown halfway around the world to be disappointed, but knowing how misleading shows can be, and convinced that Greg had overseen a lot better loudspeaker than we were hearing, we decided to go into Akaribara the following day to find a good dem room.

We were lucky. Being Sunday, we had the whole McIntosh/JBL room at Dynamic Audio to ourselves and could listen to our heart's content with our own raucous music. Finally the Everest delivered. And delivered big time. The midrange was still outrageously good, some brass and cymbal work was spooky, and now the bass was really kicking in and causing grins to appear. Any of you who think the DD66000 will be bass light should wait to hear it. Let's say it's generous.

I still thought it needed a bit more control if I was being a perfectionist, but I suspect the answer is to stick a dirty big Crown amp on the low bass 1501AL and biamp from there. But the new Everest certainly competes with products from elsewhere at the price point and to my eyes, drops them all in the design and style department. Don't expect them to sound like older JBL monitors. These are a modern low distortion tour de force. I have to consider selling the car!

Anyway, a couple of pics from the show








Tokyo really is heaven for JBL lovers. Yesterday we managed to find, 4343, 4430, 4425, 4344, 4345, K2-5500, K2-9500, K2-9800, Everest DD66000, 4348 and 4338 all for sale and all within a square mile of each other. We finished the day in a remarkable little side street listening to a wonderful Paragon and sipping green tea. A must have is the recently published Stereo Sound 60th Anniversary Book. Well done to Don for that one - now I understand his Tokyo trip!

[Earl K]

Merlin

Thanks for that ! You sure said all the right things for me .

Also, they sure are beautiful / my heart skips a beat everytime I see a new picture of these lovelys .

[jim campbell]

nice but that setup costs as much as a decent house.

[Titanium Dome]

nice but that setup costs as much as a decent house.

Here in SoCal, you could get at least five pairs for the cost of an entry level, 800 sq. ft. house in a dumpy neighborhood.

[jim campbell]

i dont doubt it but i recently read that only 11% of people in your area can afford to own their own homes.nice if you are already on the scoreboard but i really dont understand how people make it.i guess that i have a hard time understanding why audio gear has such a high price tag given the accumulated body of knowlege.are the innovations of todays speakers worth the price?could vintage stuff be copied.the only drawback i can see about jbl from the 70's/80's is that they are simply not available in sufficient quantities

[sfellini]

Here in SoCal, you could get at least five pairs for the cost of an entry level, 800 sq. ft. house in a dumpy neighborhood.

HOUSE? Ha! In DC, you'd get TEN+ pair for a 2-bedroom condo
(but in a nice neighborhood ).

Steve.

[johnaec]

It's apparent that the LF works OK, but I'm just curious - since one 1501 rolls off above 150hz, won't it act as a passive radiator to the other one above that, since they're both in the same chamber? Or has JBL somehow implemented that into the design parameters?

John

[4313B]

It's apparent that the LF works OK, but I'm just curious - since one 1501 rolls off above 150hz, won't it act as a passive radiator to the other one above that, since they're both in the same chamber?

No. It isn't a passive device, it's mechanically and electrically damped, and has a resonant frequency well within it's intended operating bandwidth. Remember that a passive radiator is tuned to a certain frequency just like a port is. For all intent and purpose the 1501AL that doesn't operate above ~ 150 Hz is inert above that frequency.

There could potentially be a problem with a shared volume if the drivers varied sufficiently in their physical characteristics. Fortunately the 1501AL's, and 476Be's for that matter, exhibit excellent unit to unit consistency.

[johnaec]

Thanks for the info, Giskard.

John