LSR32 Preliminary Report

[mikebake]

Some of us are approaching the cross roads of restoring/ building vintage JBL systems (using original schematics & parts) while also contemplating the proposition of building state of art diy systems using the latest hi end JBL parts......

Or a combination of both!!

The new (better) stuff is the future vintage stuff anyway; might as well get in on it at the beginning of the game, eh??

MBB

[Tom Loizeaux]

I found a dealer this week who had a pair of new (demo) LSR32s. He said he'd let the pair go for $1300. He said he couldn't play them for me because no one wanted to hear them so it was to much trouble!
He also said the LRS subwoofer has been very problematic. He said that over half of them had major amp problems and that JBL was not making them any longer!
That kind of puts a damper on my fantasy of a 32 stacked on top of a LRSsub on each side!
They were pushed by JBL as something superior and very special, but they've found very little acceptance in the pro audio world.
I'm curious about these hi tech studio monitors.
Any info?

Tom

[speakerdave]

I've always thought it really fascinating how readers of audio reviews can convince themselves (I include myself) they've been informed how a piece of audio gear is going to sound. I believe that in the future this will be studied by students of rhetoric and credulity.

Right now I have a pair of these speakers in the living room and I find it difficult giving a flea fart about what some lazy dealer somewhere has to say about them. For me it's enough to know how cool it is that Miles Davis has been showing up at my house lately.

I would never let somebody like that deter me from listening to a speaker if it were at all possible to find some to sample. Maybe this guy would let you take them home with an understanding you could bring them back if you wanted.

As for the scuttlebutt about the LSR series--I don't know what the explanation would be for the LSR series not being a success with the studio jockeys--I don't even know if it's true they are not. I do know there can be all kinds of reasons for success or failure in a market that have nothing to do with the quality of the product. You can go out of business in this town offering good basic value. Besides, do you think all the discs that get printed are all that great?

I would try to find a pair to listen to and make up my own mind. Just so you know, I bought mine before I heard them. For me a trio of very definite affirmative comments from Drew Daniels, Greg Timbers and Stereophile Magazine made it worth a shot, especially the first two, who were saying that the LSRs had superceded some of their own best work. Why worry about some pissant in a salesroom?

More later.

David

[Tom Roper]

Originally posted by Tom Loizeaux
They were pushed by JBL as something superior and very special, but they've found very little acceptance in the pro audio world.
Tom

Translation: It's a vintage classic before its time.

I don't know the reasons. But JBL monitors have been in studios for so long, it just seems the natural order of things that when they come out, you hang your hat on putting something back in that trumps it, even if in reality, it doesn't.

People can be so fickle about sound. One fellow was commenting about the visionaries at TAD he met at Cedia. He's overwhelmed by the sound, the mystique, the aura, and wholly smitten. Later, someone told him TAD was owned by Pioneer. Suddenly it was a mental General Protection Fault, cancel and reboot. JBL may suffer from that malady, a victim of success.

[speakerdave]

I think this is right. Most of the prices are quoted from Giskard's posts. I pulled the network off the miscellaneous parts list.

385-00020-10 - SUB BAF, LSR 28(DCST) $22.96 USD EA
382-00096-01 - GASKET, HORN, LSR28P $2.90 USD EA
252G $233.46
C500G p/n 331366-001 $150.02
053Ti p/n 123-10003-00X $122.00
129-30003-00 Network assembly SAR 32 $114.75 USD

The total is just under $650. You have to buy lumber, vents, finish, input connectors, and make the cabinets. That pair of demos for $1300 sounds like a pretty good deal. I've seen used pairs go begging on eBay for $1250-$1350. They move at about $1000, less than Jubals with original boxes. I think it's a bargain.

You will probably want to add a subwoofer. The point of my earlier rant about making kits available with other woofers is that you could save by buying the tweeter and midrange, replicate parts of the crossover, select your own woofer to go lower if you want, and make appropriate modifications of the crossover, but that wouldn't be easy and I think the manufacturer would do well to do some of the engineering for such projects.

However, lacking that I think the finished speaker and the creation of your own subwoofer from about 50 Hz down would be worth the extra expense in the long run. Here's why-- really flat frequency response:

60 to 22K Hz +1, -1.5 dB

I think that specification is really a big deal. This spec and additional information about the speaker can be found here:

http://www.jblpro.com/pages/recording/lsr32.htm

David

[4313B]

Yeah, looks like a damn good deal. The S21-1 component system (124H, LE5H, 077, LX30) cost $565 in 1980. The EN3P enclosure could be bought for an additional $200 making the total $765.

23 years later one can buy all the components to make a system that sounds substantially superior to an S21-1 for roughly the same amount of money. Not bad at all.

BTW, notice how the 252G in the larger enclosure allows for a 6 dB down point at roughly 30 Hz with usable response extending into the mid twenties? Interesting.....

[speakerdave]

Originally posted by Giskard

BTW, notice how the 252G in the larger enclosure allows for a 6 dB down point at roughly 30 Hz with usable response extending into the mid twenties? Interesting.....

OK, I gotcha . . . thanks. I had been overlooking the details of those graphs, thinking they were just a comparison of the two woofers. The upper bass and lower midrange may change a little in the larger enclosure, but it's not that much larger, and it would most likely be quite close. That's still a nice compact enclosure, too.

In the LSR32 enclosure there is no bloom or boom in the bass.

These speakers can be driven pretty hard. I got home from work early the other day and turned my Mac 2200 loose on them with the SACD of Stevie Ray's Texas Flood, and they really deliver. Tommy Shannon's bass was very well articulated--distinct notes all the way down. Mingus on Mingus Ah Um the same. And on Copeland Conducts Copeland on Billy the Kid the kettle drums were all very clear and distinct and well-located. As for the rest of the frequency range, I'll have more to say about that.

200 watts is at the lower end of the JBL-recommended range.

David

[4313B]

"OK, I gotcha . . . thanks. I had been overlooking the details of those graphs, thinking they were just a comparison of the two woofers. The upper bass and lower midrange may change a little in the larger enclosure, but it's not that much larger, and it would most likely be quite close. That's still a nice compact enclosure, too.

In the LSR32 enclosure there is no bloom or boom in the bass."

Well 2.0 to 3.0 cubic feet was a "typical" volume range for custom 124A/124H systems so I thought it would be interesting to see how the 252G behaved as a replacement. There's no "bloom" or "boom" in a properly configured 124A/124H system either Unfortunately, the 124A/124H is quite old and the 252G has it beat in other areas that the BassBox 6 Pro software package can't even begin to show graphically. Anyway, it's nice to see JBL has basically retained the response characteristic that made the 124A/124H such a "punchy" transducer and then added in all the other goodies as mentioned in the literature. And they did it all without doubling the cost of the transducer

[herve M]

Hello Giskard.
Monitor Poll : LSR 32 vs 4425 . Your choice ?
Sound difference between 4425 and lsr 32 ?

[GordonW]

Originally posted by Giskard


Unfortunately, the 124A/124H is quite old and the 252G has it beat in other areas that the BassBox 6 Pro software package can't even begin to show graphically. Anyway, it's nice to see JBL has basically retained the response characteristic that made the 124A/124H such a "punchy" transducer and then added in all the other goodies as mentioned in the literature. And they did it all without doubling the cost of the transducer

Question: Do all 252Gs have 2" voice coils? I was just looking at one in my friends' local PA repair shop, and was a bit surprised that the coil was only a 2". I was wondering how that affected the sound WRT the 4" coils in the 124A? Yeah, I know, more modern technology, better performance out of smaller hardware... but there's still something about that BIG MOTOR thing...

It's also fun to note, that there's a 252F floating around out there... as in 2 ohms. Makes for interesting propositions for stuff such as Urei or Crown amps that can basically drive short-circuits...

Regards,
Gordon.