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  1. #1
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    Question JBL Array 1400 - cabinets are live!

    I was wandering if anyone else on the forum have Array 1400's?



    Gregg Timbers wrote that the "vibration free" enclosure was a prime goal to be met with the Arrays, but, the ones I have are vibrating like crazy.

    The sonoglass part of the enclosure is vibrating as if it was a passive transducer!

    Side walls, back walls are also vibrating, much more than Klipsch RF-83 boxes that cost ~10x less.



    For a 11K USD speaker I was expecting a well dampened enclosure. This one is as live as it can be.

    Did the quality of Arrays go down since they were being made in Mexico?

  2. #2
    Administrator Mr. Widget's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by dcolak View Post
    Gregg Timbers wrote that the "vibration free" enclosure was a prime goal to be met with the Arrays, but, the ones I have are vibrating like crazy..

    Did the quality of Arrays go down since they were being made in Mexico?
    Did he say that? I never heard him claim that, but whatever... as for Mexico, I imagine the cabinets are still being made in China... my "Made in USA" 1400 Arrays have cabinets that were made in China.

    I don't think the midbass of these speakers is the very best I have ever heard, but over all the sound is fantastic. We have one member here who had all sorts of buyer's remorse early on and then finally got his Arrays set up in a manner that he liked and has become a big convert... see if you don't as well.

    As for the vibration... do you hear a problem? This is what Stereophile had to say about the cabinet resonances. The entire review is here.

    Give 'em a good listen and if you don't decide that they sound better than your Klipsches or what ever else you have then I guess they are not the right speaker for you... but give them a chance. I tend to listen to my speakers sitting about 9-10 feet away so it is rather difficult to feel the cabinets vibrating.


    Widget

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    Administrator Robh3606's Avatar
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    The sonoglass part of the enclosure is vibrating as if it was a passive transducer!
    Do you mean the enclosure on the back of the horn?? Did you purchase them new?? If you didn't you might want to check to see if the screws that hold the horn enclosure in place are tightened correctly. The back horn is a press fit so you might want to make sure that it is tight against the horn all the way round.

    The cabinet ??

    Rob
    "I could be arguing in my spare time"

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Widget View Post

    As for the vibration... do you hear a problem?

    Give 'em a good listen and if you don't decide that they sound better than your Klipsches or what ever else you have then I guess they are not the right speaker for you... but give them a chance. I tend to listen to my speakers sitting about 9-10 feet away so it is rather difficult to feel the cabinets vibrating.


    Widget
    That's the question. Do you hear it?

    I've never invested any time in feeling my speakers unless I first thought I heard something that needed tactile confirmation. Too often these audiophile obsessions lead us to self-induced perceptions that take on a life of their own.

    An over-enthusaistic friend of mine who believes he hears better than I do, though we've no test to prove or disprove his belief about that, insisted that the octagonal cabinets on my PT800s had an annoying resonance. Since I believed at the time that he probably did hear better than I, I followed his obsessive belief that we could hear the cabinet resonance.

    So at his insistence we put in a frequency sweep disc and tortured those poor speakers until we found the offending frequencies. With a look of "What do you think of your precious JBLs now?" on his face, he insisted I go feel the cabinet while he ran the sweep again. Actually, I could feel plenty of vibration, but curiously could not localize the resonance with my ears. When we hit the offending frequencies, I did hear the sound finally, but not from my position. I localized it to the part of the room where we normally sit to listen.

    As it turned out, one of the Korean dolls we had on a shelf near the back of the room was making the resonant noise. I put a piece of felt under it--problem solved!

    Widget's advice is sound. Give them a good listen, maybe experiment with placement a bit, and if you don't like them, then they're not for you. I've heard 1400 Arrays in a number of settings and never heard anything like you're describing. I've never felt the cabinets while they were playing, so I can't say what vibrations might be felt.

    Rob may be correct that something is not tight or attached correctly, so check that, too. I have the SAM1HF units in my theatre, but they're in solid enclosures and not exposed like on the 1400. I've not heard anything from the SAM's beefy cabinets for sure.
    Out.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Titanium Dome View Post
    That's the question. Do you hear it?

    Rob may be correct that something is not tight or attached correctly, so check that, too. I have the SAM1HF units in my theatre, but they're in solid enclosures and not exposed like on the 1400. I've not heard anything from the SAM's beefy cabinets for sure.
    They were new, everything tight. The horns are vibrating in the rhytm of the top side of the enclosure, as if it was intentionally made that way, instead of containing the vibration - trying to let it free through the sonoglass resin?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Widget View Post
    Did he say that? I never heard him claim that, but whatever... as for Mexico, I imagine the cabinets are still being made in China... my "Made in USA" 1400 Arrays have cabinets that were made in China.

    I don't think the midbass of these speakers is the very best I have ever heard, but over all the sound is fantastic. We have one member here who had all sorts of buyer's remorse early on and then finally got his Arrays set up in a manner that he liked and has become a big convert... see if you don't as well.

    As for the vibration... do you hear a problem? This is what Stereophile had to say about the cabinet resonances. The entire review is here.

    Give 'em a good listen and if you don't decide that they sound better than your Klipsches or what ever else you have then I guess they are not the right speaker for you... but give them a chance. I tend to listen to my speakers sitting about 9-10 feet away so it is rather difficult to feel the cabinets vibrating.
    Here they are, words of Mr. Greg:

    "The industrial design of the system was quite a challenge. Having established a number of important criteria regarding the relative location and packaging of each transducer, it became necessary to consider a less conventional design. The LF enclosure needed to be heavy, solid and vibration-free. In addition, it needed to allow the horn module to sit as low as possible to reduce the center-to-center distance between the LF and HF drivers. The horn itself is molded from a high-density resin material, using an extremely thick wall section. This makes the horn heavy and acoustically inert."

    The enclosure (cabinet) is anything but solid and vibration-free. It is vibrating more than JBL S312II (my other speakers).



    The horn being acoustically intert is also false, it is vibrating as strong as the enclosure, almost like a transducer.

    I am really surprised.

    Regarding the sound, sometimes I feel there is a "box" coloration to the music.

    Sometimes the voice of the singer, for example Chris Isaak in Blue Spanish Sky gets divided in two.

    I can hear pefectly half of his voice coming from the woofer and the other half from the horn, as if two persons were singing.

    Maybe it's all the enclosure vibration that is smearing the voice?

    P.S.
    I already bought Arrays and sold my Klipschs


  7. #7
    Senior Member timc's Avatar
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    With a so close to wall placement, i will be surprised if you dont have a very strong combfilter effect from the woofers upper range.

    Hva you double checked tha phase of the horn, relative to the woofer?
    2213 + 2435HPL w/aquaplas + H9800 (Matsj edition)

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    Quote Originally Posted by timc View Post
    With a so close to wall placement, i will be surprised if you dont have a very strong combfilter effect from the woofers upper range.

    Hva you double checked tha phase of the horn, relative to the woofer?
    There is no way to connect horns in a wrong way, the phase should be ok.

    Speakers sound best at the current location, if I move them more from the wall they accentuate room nodes at the place I'm sitting.

  9. #9
    Senior Member grumpy's Avatar
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    Hi dcolak,

    I haven't listened to that Chris Isaak recording in quite awhile... but are you sure you are
    not just hearing more of what was recorded (e.g., a subtle over-dub)? If I think about it,
    I'll give it a listen again tonight.

    My second thought will be more controversial, and very unlike me to normally suggest:
    If you're interested in doing so, try isolating the CD player from the shelf. I'd have thought
    this idea to be full of crap until I did a blind test (was supposed to be regarding cables)
    where a CD player had to be lifted from the shelf to change the cables... I could reliably
    tell when the CD player was held off of the shelf -before- any cables were changed.

    The only engineering reason I could come up with was that coupled vibrations were
    causing the transport drive servo feedback to jerk around enough that error correction
    in the player was kicking in... a wild-ass-guess since I don't design the things.

    At any rate, the only cost to test is time and a bored helper.

    My third thought is that the whole cabinet is moving, essentially as a unit...
    either poorly coupled to the floor, or on a floor that is not stiff or massive enough
    to prevent such motion. This may not be the case, but just a thought...

  10. #10
    Senior Member timc's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by dcolak View Post
    There is no way to connect horns in a wrong way
    Oh? Is it fitted with connectors that only fit one way?

    Then i think you are troubled by comb filtering. This will give you dips in frequency response with one octave steps.
    2213 + 2435HPL w/aquaplas + H9800 (Matsj edition)

  11. #11
    Mctwins
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    Hi
    I think that you hear the room resonances more then from your speakers. If you have soft wall, not rigid, it could be a problem here.
    Thanks

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    Senior Member richluvsound's Avatar
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    Perhaps the doors are responsible in some way ! If the room is resonating ,anything in it will resonate also .

    Rich

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    "....

    What I can assure you is that Array 1400 sound much worse and show signs of distortion and muddled sound when giving them around 100W RMS compared to Klipsch RF83 that sound completely clean with that kind of power. With 100W RMS the enclosure vibration is being audible.

    ....."

    Well, Do you really think you are giving the cabinets 100Watts? If you are, and I am skeptical, then there will be distortion and vibration and all sorts of other things. Certainly your own hearing will be "over-driven" at that level and not very good.

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    Quote Originally Posted by withTarragon View Post
    "....

    What I can assure you is that Array 1400 sound much worse and show signs of distortion and muddled sound when giving them around 100W RMS compared to Klipsch RF83 that sound completely clean with that kind of power. With 100W RMS the enclosure vibration is being audible.

    ....."

    Well, Do you really think you are giving the cabinets 100Watts? If you are, and I am skeptical, then there will be distortion and vibration and all sorts of other things. Certainly your own hearing will be "over-driven" at that level and not very good.
    Yes, to be precise, I'm giving them 97W RMS (into 6ohm.)

    My room is 6x7m, no apparent vibrations of any kind. We do like to party and with Klipsches people were always screaming into my ear "turn it up!" no matter how much W I gave them. Of course, they had to scream into my ear for me to be able to hear them.



    With JBL Arrays, people are screaming turn it down it hurts our ears


  15. #15
    Senior Member Eaulive's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by dcolak View Post
    Of course, they had to scream into my ear for me to be able to hear them.
    I never let people screm into my ears, if you do, then no wonder your hearing is shot!

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