JBL 705P / 708P

[watchnerd]

Little 5" speakers have no right producing this amount of lower bass. There's usable extension to the mid 30s. That's probably what's going to be the salient characteristic people will notice about these speakers at first. As one gets settled in to listening it becomes more apparent that clarity and precision is really what these are about. Keep in mind my experience with other speakers is fairly limited. I'm a long time Magnepan fan, had Newform ribbons for a decade, and was made to question the wisdom in my previous purchasing decisions by trying LSR305s on a lark. In relation to those, these are quite a bit more refined and more sturdily built.

I hate myself for asking this question because it's so semi-stupid, but:

Would you say the 705p is more suited for music or video/cinema?

Reasons I ask is a) JBL's marketing of the 7-series for broadcast monitoring and b) the popularity of the 70xi series with the home theater crowd.

I don't ever recall reading on GearSlutz or similar about people using the 7-series to monitor / master music.

 

[Thomas savage]

EH GAD, really?
Send em back!

Because they are not here..

 

[Sal1950]

Because they are not here..

Patience grasshopper, how many speakers ya need.

 

[watchnerd]

One thing that didn't really occur to me about them before acquisition is the thermals. There is a 250Wx2 chip in it plus the DSP/DAC so each one is putting out a just little less heat at idle than a cheapy 100Wx5 receiver. I'm definitely going to implement a remote power switching system because turning them all on/off is starting to feel a little too much like a 1st world problem.

It also appears they removed the ability in the software to turn off the front LEDs in addition to not being able to adjust the rear LCD brightness. Gaffer's tape fixes those issues but

I did get to play around with the EQ filters and my first pass with it implementing REWs generated generic EQ off of a moving mic measurement seemed alright but didn't quite hit the targets. I think that's more of a operator error though. Using an Audyssey32 receiver, I got phase error warnings so I guess the amp/dsp may be inverting absolute phase.

BTW, are you using the digital or analog inputs?

 

[Sal1950]

My JBL's sound like ...,

By the way, I like this version much better.

 

[Thomas savage]

By the way, I like this version much better.

I'm not even going to play this, Iv got a feeling I'm going to need to maintain plausible deniability

 

[12B4A]

I hate myself for asking this question because it's so semi-stupid, but:

Would you say the 705p is more suited for music or video/cinema?

Reasons I ask is a) JBL's marketing of the 7-series for broadcast monitoring and b) the popularity of the 70xi series with the home theater crowd.

I don't ever recall reading on GearSlutz or similar about people using the 7-series to monitor / master music.

BTW, are you using the digital or analog inputs?

Easy question first: analog inputs.

As for the other one, Asperger's [Engaged]:
I think the quality of music content mastering is so inconsistent that I'm developing my own pet theory as to why people say these X speakers are better for music vs. the Y speakers for home theater. The simplest explanation may be that X speaker has a variety of inaccuracies that happen to coincidently mask or diminish the flaws of the majority of music that the observing listener uses to evaluate the speaker. Whereas, the Y speaker happens to not mask these flaws and makes it unmusical. People who have overlapping musical and hobby preferences self-select socially on the internet and all agree (through relaying similar personal experiences that agree with one another) that speaker X makes their music listening so much better than speaker Y which happens to be just fine for watching tv/movies. I trust the simpler, functional philosophy that speakers attempt to reproduce audio. Some are just worse at it than others.

To more directly answer the question, I have a feeling that one may become more disinterested (disillusioned?) in listening to some of their music with these speakers since differences in mastering results will be apparent.

As for the lack of gearslutz reporting data, I think people who are professionally using the M2/7 Series are too busy working to post on message boards during the workday and are too tired in the evening to push their opinion on to tinnitus sufferers pretending to have super sensitive hearing.

 

[watchnerd]

Easy question first: analog inputs.

As for the other one, Asperger's [Engaged]:
I think the quality of music content mastering is so inconsistent that I'm developing my own pet theory as to why people say these X speakers are better for music vs. the Y speakers for home theater. The simplest explanation may be that X speaker has a variety of inaccuracies that happen to coincidently mask or diminish the flaws of the majority of music that the observing listener uses to evaluate the speaker. Whereas, the Y speaker happens to not mask these flaws and makes it unmusical. People who have overlapping musical and hobby preferences self-select socially on the internet and all agree (through relaying similar personal experiences that agree with one another) that speaker X makes their music listening so much better than speaker Y which happens to be just fine for watching tv/movies. I trust the simpler, functional philosophy that speakers attempt to reproduce audio. Some are just worse at it than others.

I agree with most of that. But...

All speaker design is a compromise, and I can see, for example, HT buffs not valuing timbral accuracy and imaging as much as low distortion / high SPLs, and vice versa for "music lover" speakers.

For me, the ultimate "music lover" speakers are Vandersteens.

 

[Thomas savage]

No uk stock till the end of August I'm told ( after asking for a week with no response)

JBL in the uk are shite.

 

[watchnerd]

Does anyone know how the 705p and 708p work in a multi channel setup over Ethernet? I saw a short video on the sweetwater and it seems like that's possible. I'm not sure whether there would need to be an outboard processor to handle that setup tho.

You can definitely configure it over IP using Itonato, but I don't know about using the network as the actual music stream.

 

[watchnerd]

No uk stock till the end of August I'm told ( after asking for a week with no response)

JBL in the uk are shite.

Gotta protect PMC and ATC.

Did you get the wee little 705s or the biggun 708s?

 

[Thomas savage]

Gotta protect PMC and ATC.

Did you get the wee little 705s or the biggun 708s?

All I got is fresh air but I'm ment to have the 5's .

 

[watchnerd]

All I got is fresh air but I'm ment to have the 5's .

Can't you just order from online and have them shipped to the UK?

https://vintageking.com/jbl-705p-7-series-master-reference-studio-monitor

 

[Thomas savage]

Can't you just order from online and have them shipped to the UK?

https://vintageking.com/jbl-705p-7-series-master-reference-studio-monitor

Once I'm done paying duty and shipping etc that will a fair bit more expensive.

 

[watchnerd]

Once I'm done paying duty and shipping etc that will a fair bit more expensive.

Or just smuggle some back in your luggage next trip across the pond.

 

[Thomas savage]

Or just smuggle some back in your luggage next trip across the pond.

Well that's tempting... I'm coming over in September.

 

[watchnerd]

Easy question first: analog inputs.

Which preamp?

 

[amirm]

FYI, Dr. Toole was asked about his opinion of JBL 705/708 vs M2 on AVS Forum. Here is what he had to say: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/89-sp...viewed-speakers-ever-made-9.html#post54607258

Seems like they may be too good for Thomas and hence the reason JBL UK doesn't want to send him one.

 

[12B4A]

Which preamp?

I'm using the pre-outs from a Denon receiver with RCA-XLR cables. It's mainly just switching my sources and converting the HDMI LPCM audio to analog since I don't even use it to do the DD/DTS decoding anymore.

FWIW, I did a deep dive on the processing module in the 705P to see what JBL chose for their ADC/processing/DAC chips. It sure seems like they chose some really solid chips. I wouldn't be surprised if the folks here have already seen it over on AVS but I'll put it here for fun:

• Cirrus Logic CS5361 ADC
• ARM AT91SAM9G25
• SHARC ADSP-21489.
• TI (Burr-Brown) PCM1796 DAC

 

[watchnerd]

I'm using the pre-outs from a Denon receiver with RCA-XLR cables. It's mainly just switching my sources and converting the HDMI LPCM audio to analog since I don't even use it to do the DD/DTS decoding anymore.

FWIW, I did a deep dive on the processing module in the 705P to see what JBL chose for their ADC/processing/DAC chips. It sure seems like they chose some really solid chips. I wouldn't be surprised if the folks here have already seen it over on AVS but I'll put it here for fun:

• Cirrus Logic CS5361 ADC
• ARM AT91SAM9G25
• SHARC ADSP-21489.
• TI (Burr-Brown) PCM1796 DAC

Did you find what the amplifier chip set is?

I think it's a TI of some kind.