Did JBL lose the sound reinforcement market?

[robertbartsch]

I have not seen these systems in indoor or outdoor venues for a while now. What I am seeing I believe is the smaller flown systems from the French firm.

Is JBL now primarily a car speaker company?

[NickH]

I think this can be blamed on bean counters. There's many lower quality cheaper sound reinforcement companies out there providing sub par gear that makes the bean counters happy.
But they still rule the theater market though.

But I'm no expert.


Nick

[hsosdrum]

JBL faces stiff competition from many players in the tour sound game, but JBL is still very much a major player. Their VTX and Vertec line-array systems are widely accepted on artists' equipment riders and when properly deployed and processed (a requirement for any arrayed system) sound absolutely top-notch.

BTW, the "French firm" is called L-Acoustics, and they were the first company to successfully adapt the line array principle to large-scale portable sound reinforcement with their V-DOSC system back around 2000. One of the people responsible for V-DOSC is Paul Bauman, who around 8 years ago went from L-Acoustics to become head of tour sound for JBL.