Hi Everyone,

I am new at this forum, I recently bought me a pair of JBL L65 Jubal (the first one). The speakers in is fair/ok visual condition but with refoamed woofers, this was done for about 2 years ago. This is my first pair of JBLs so everything is very "new" to me. Iīve had a few pair of speakers before, but never anything in this size/caliber. I am currently testing them out in my livingroom and I find some things a little bit different from my other speakers, probably some of my problems can be tuned, please hear me out.

As reference I use a pair of Yamaha HS-80M. Of course, this is a much smaller speaker with only a 8" woofer. And it is active too.

Amplifier: Tested both Akai AA-1200 and Luxman R-1050
Signal: Macbook Pro C2D.
Room: approx 24 squaremeter. Blank walls.
Speaker position: 65cm out from backwall. 180 cm apart from each other.
Listening position: Approx 260 cm from speakers.

I am used to listen to the Yamahas, I use them as my computerspeakers and I am quite pleased with them, they got nice dry,accurate,punchy bass and lots of detail. Sometimes i find the highs a little bit sharp.

I have listened to my JBLs for two days now, trying to get the most out of them. Initially I am pleased, they are good performers, better than my other speakers in the livingroom. The first thing that hit was the amount of bass and this is actually my only problem. I find it sometimes muddy and unaccurate, is it supposed to be like this? I have adjusted the bass slightly less than zero on both amplifiers (you can forget loudness). On the adjustable filters on the speakers I have set both mids and highs to +3. I also put the speakers on 3 cm thick rubberfoam pieces, trying to get rid of some floor vibrations. I am quite confident that the foaming is correct and it is the right woofers.

It is difficult to me to put it in to words but sometimes I feel that the bass is more suited for movies than music. I have quite a lot of "rumble" and "standing waves" in the room. I have tried the "dirty sock trick" but in my case the socks where clean Didnīt experience much improvement...I took them out.

As I live in a apartment I canīt play too loud, but I find them more suitable for higher volume, when you play louder you get more "punchyness". But I canīt play like that, my neighbours would kill me.

I am using Itunes and if I use the Eq. there and drops 125 Hz totally I get rid of a lot of the "rumble" but I also lose some information in the music.

I have read all(all I could find anyway) threads about L65s in the forum and some say that you should put them on a stand and that is not a solution for me.

Does anyone know if the bass is better in the L65A with the 122A bass? I also bought a pair of these, but the woofers need refoaming.

Very thankful for answers and help!

/Filip