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JBL LSR305P MKii and Control 1 Pro Monitors Review

dukanvadet

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Could you do an on axis measurement with hf trim one step down? It just might make the on axis almost perfectly flat (with a little bass bump)?

Edit: I looked at the manual and it seems HF trim sets in at 4.4khz so i guess this wouldnt help
 
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daftcombo

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What is the most amazing is that, seing the on-axis response, one would say that the 305p will be overly bright, or would want to use EQ to bump the 300Hz-700Hz region a bit.
But Amir's conclusion are different: this speaker has a good tonal balance, and you CAN'T EQ that region just like that for better sound.

This kind of reviews will be a game changer.
 

MZKM

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As a suggestion, unless the performance is non-symmetrical, could you only post horizontal off-axis from 1 side instead of 2, it just is too many lines for 1 graph.

EDIT: For vertical off-axis I think you can stop ~ +/-45° (even less for towers), I hardly think many people will be listening at +/-70° vertically.

EDIT #2: The 305 has some excess treble >10kHz, did you try the HF trim?
 
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LDKTA

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Good lord... Thank you so much. The amount of valuable data in this is ridiculous and truly appreciated.

My Subjective Experience:
I never got a chance to play with the 305s, however, I do own the 308s (now being using for my desktop — used them as mains in my living room and dedicated listening room — replacing B&W 805 D3s — and they are truly excellent) and I’d recommend them over many loudspeakers in the consumer audio world (or “Hi-Fi) costing upwards of $2k (and in my case a pair of loudspeakers for $6k — which I find to be shameful). As for the residual noise, in my living I was unable to hear it at my listening position of roughly 8ft (and later roughly 7ft). It wasn’t until my AC would go off and it’s really late at night that I was able to hear a very faint hiss... I cannot say it actually bothered me though due to the sheer performance the LSR 3 Series delivers (and the fact that in everyday normal listening, the noise was practically inaudible). In my dedicated listening room (at a listening position of 7.3ft or so from the monitors), audibility of the residual noise rose irrespective of the AC. Although I still wasn’t bothered by it considering I was planning on upgrading to the 7 Series anyway. After moving them to my desktop, plugging both monitors into the same outlet reduced the residual noise to the point where audibility is still is of no real concern (at around 3ft — the hiss is very quiet I’ve grown use to it. As I type this right now, I can barely hear them).

Being aware of the structural integrity of the cabinets (you can feel them vibrating during playback), I cannot say resonances were actually audible in any of my time listening to the 308s. Through hundreds of hours listening, I could not hear any sort of resonances as I’d hear in a loudspeaker like the ELAC Debut 2.0 B6.2s... As for output, in both my dedicated room (11’ x 13’) and living room (open space to kitchen hall way — roughly (13’ x 17’), they could lead me out the room (with headroom and still sound excellent), so this was never a problem. I can wholeheartedly recommend these loudspeakers any day of the week because at its price point (especially when buying used), I cannot think of a single loudspeaker (DIY or commercially) that could outperform them. I believe it is absurd how inexpensive these monitors are. There are no real faults I could find with these monitors, off-axis listening is great, they’re quite accurate, bass response is excellent (especially with room gain) and they’re incredibly addicting to listen to.

Again, I just want to say thanks for your efforts as I’ve never seen such a review that objectively evaluates a loudspeakers performance with breadth and depth. It is actually amazing.
 
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Gedeon

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The review is really well exposed and in a didactical and progressive way but I'll need several readings, and a few days to slowly understand all the data.

Great start.
 

oldsysop

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Amir: you can put in the graphics 10Hz, 20Hz ... 1000Hz. ?
Thanks for all the work.
 

Thomas_A

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What is the most amazing is that, seing the on-axis response, one would say that the 305p will be overly bright, or would want to use EQ to bump the 300Hz-700Hz region a bit.
But Amir's conclusion are different: this speaker has a good tonal balance, and you CAN'T EQ that region just like that for better sound.

This kind of reviews will be a game changer.

Whether it has good tonal balance can be discussed. If the simulated room response looks like that also measured at listening position, I would not prefer that. The range 300-1500 Hz is lower in level than the 2000-8000 Hz. I would prefer the opposite.
 

Thomas_A

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In the distortion graph the "in-room" response looks better than the simulated one. What are the differences?
 

Interference

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From what I have seen in teardowns, these use a STA-series digital amplifier, so that means the analog signal is fed through an ADC.

As a consumer, I would not be very happy at the idea of spending money on a DAC just to have the signal re-digitised by the speaker.

Here we need to waste money on a DAC just because the manufacturer is better off not providing a digital input altogether.

I would like to see more studio monitors with digital inputs (and DSP controllers for those: as of today if I wanted a physical knob on a stand-alone device to control the volume of a digital stream the options are quite limited).
 

Karu

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Wonderful. As there will be more measurements coming, how do I compare one vs say three others, say there will be graphs for JBL, Genelec and Neumann, potentially quite close to each other - stillvisually looking at one graph vs another? Or some kind of overlay?
 

daftcombo

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We need a kind of SINAD chart, for instance in the form of a calculation of the sum of areas (integrals) betwen estimated in-room curve & target. And rank them from highest to smallest.

See areas in green here:


1578653332659.png
 

oivavoi

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It only seems you asked ‘should we (I) be testing loudspeakers’, last week and now here we are, incredible Amir, really I never imagined when you (and Savage) started ASR it would become such a force .
You are single handedly reversing forty years of subjective tosh and restoring faith in sound engineering.
Keith

This!
 

MZKM

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We need a kind of SINAD chart, for instance in the form of a calculation of the sum of areas (integrals) betwen estimated in-room curve & target. And rank them from highest to smallest.

See areas in green here:


View attachment 45274
Amir stated he would try out the Preference Rating algorithm that Sean Olive devised, which has a probability accuracy of 0.86. I feel this could be improved as the algorithm doesn’t seem too complex and doesn’t seem to weigh frequencies differently (a high Q dip at 20kHz is much less worse than the same dip at 200Hz; that coupled with low-Q being worse than high-Q is also why doing the area between the two curves wouldn’t work well).

EDIT: Created a thread to discuss ranking speakers, as to not swamp this thread.
 
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milosz

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LOTS of data, lots of analysis. Not to kvetch, but I like to see time domain plots, too. Stored energy problems are not the friend of transparency.

Well, OK, maybe a LITTLE kvetching....
 
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