This is a review and detailed measurements of the JBL 4319 Studio Monitor, 3-way speaker review. It is kindly loaned to me by a member who bought it from Japan and had it sent to me. Apparently that is the last of the production before they switched to building them Malaysia. The 4319 is still in production and costs US $4,000 although I see it advertised for much less at US $2,495.
The 4319 naturally has an old fashioned studio monitor look which I now strangely find attractive!
As you see, it barely fit in my lightbox so it is a "giant bookshelf" speaker if you want to call it that. This is what it looks like on the inside (JBL picture):
The back panel shows split terminals which I used for some measurements:
I didn't want to mess with the grill so made my measurements using it. Note that there are two controls to adjust mid and the highs. I centered them visually and measured them as you see in the picture:
Looks like I left the highs a bit "hot." Sorry about that. Hard to see it on the measurement stand. When I received it, both were set farther to the right.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
All measurements are referenced to the tweeter axis with frequency resolution of 2.7 Hz.
Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker can be used. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
The good news is sensitivity at or above 90 dB depending on how you average the curve. This means you will be able to get to higher loudness or with less amplification power for the same loudness.
The bad news is that we have a chewed up response with pronounced dip around 800 Hz and directivity error around mid to tweeter driver (2 kHz). And of course a peaking response above 3 kHz but perhaps this could be adjusted with the dial on the speaker.
The above causes the estimated room response to have rather high treble energy:
Here is our early reflections that sum with the rest of the measurements to produce the above graph:
Since we have dual terminals in the back, I broke the connection between them and measured the tweeter+mid and woofer separately and got this composite graph (room compensated):
We see peaks and dips in the woofer before dying down. It appears to be comb filtering, i.e. another delayed source mixing with it. The tweeter has the same dip though at the offending 850 Hz or so which I can't explain.
While we are on this graph, let's look at the distortion data, this time filtered for room response (which would have made low frequency worse due to room modes):
We are used to seeing low frequency peaks that go off the chart but not here. That large paper woofer is doing a good job of playing loud but without a lot of distortion. Here it is in absolute level:
Impedance dips are controlled so this should not be a hard speaker to drive:
There are fair number of kinks in there which you can see better when I zoom in:
Here is our waterfall which again has room compensation:
We see the issue near 1 kHz. Frequency response is a bit poor so it doesn't show a narrow peak where our problem is.
Here is our horizontal directivity plot:
The directivity width varies with frequency and we have sudden dips and peaks.
Vertical directivity in non-coaxial designs is usually not good but this is worse than normal:
Speaker Listening Tests
I did not have a low stand to put the 4319 on so used the same I have been using with bookshelf speakers. This placed the tweeter a few inches above my ear level. The positive is that that woofer can generate a lot of bass. The cabinet resonates a lot but when I put my ear to it while playing female vocals, I could not hear much at all. So most of the cabinet resonances are at lower frequencies which we can see from waterfall plot.
The bad news is that not much that I played on the 4319 sounded that good. It was kind of boxy and closed in with some brightness at times. I thought being old school speaker, it perhaps is a better fit for older music. So I queued up The Girl from Ipanema on my Reel to Reel tape deck and boy, did it sound disappointing.
Conclusions
Both objectively and subjectively I was disappointed in the results of JBL 4319. We have advanced in understanding what makes good sound at home since this speaker was designed. I can see its appeal in its look and pedigree but it sure is not for me. The woofer though is low distortion and produces copious amount of bass which combined with higher efficiency, would pair well with low power amplifier. Perhaps such use with a tube amp to change its response and/or playing with controls would make it sound better. For this reason, I did not give it the lowest score possible, but one step above.
Overall I can't recommend the JBL 4319 unless you like looking at it more than listening to it.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Out of imagination for another lame joke so simple request: please donate what you can using : https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The 4319 naturally has an old fashioned studio monitor look which I now strangely find attractive!
As you see, it barely fit in my lightbox so it is a "giant bookshelf" speaker if you want to call it that. This is what it looks like on the inside (JBL picture):
The back panel shows split terminals which I used for some measurements:
I didn't want to mess with the grill so made my measurements using it. Note that there are two controls to adjust mid and the highs. I centered them visually and measured them as you see in the picture:
Looks like I left the highs a bit "hot." Sorry about that. Hard to see it on the measurement stand. When I received it, both were set farther to the right.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
All measurements are referenced to the tweeter axis with frequency resolution of 2.7 Hz.
Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker can be used. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
The good news is sensitivity at or above 90 dB depending on how you average the curve. This means you will be able to get to higher loudness or with less amplification power for the same loudness.
The bad news is that we have a chewed up response with pronounced dip around 800 Hz and directivity error around mid to tweeter driver (2 kHz). And of course a peaking response above 3 kHz but perhaps this could be adjusted with the dial on the speaker.
The above causes the estimated room response to have rather high treble energy:
Here is our early reflections that sum with the rest of the measurements to produce the above graph:
Since we have dual terminals in the back, I broke the connection between them and measured the tweeter+mid and woofer separately and got this composite graph (room compensated):
We see peaks and dips in the woofer before dying down. It appears to be comb filtering, i.e. another delayed source mixing with it. The tweeter has the same dip though at the offending 850 Hz or so which I can't explain.
While we are on this graph, let's look at the distortion data, this time filtered for room response (which would have made low frequency worse due to room modes):
We are used to seeing low frequency peaks that go off the chart but not here. That large paper woofer is doing a good job of playing loud but without a lot of distortion. Here it is in absolute level:
Impedance dips are controlled so this should not be a hard speaker to drive:
There are fair number of kinks in there which you can see better when I zoom in:
Here is our waterfall which again has room compensation:
We see the issue near 1 kHz. Frequency response is a bit poor so it doesn't show a narrow peak where our problem is.
Here is our horizontal directivity plot:
The directivity width varies with frequency and we have sudden dips and peaks.
Vertical directivity in non-coaxial designs is usually not good but this is worse than normal:
Speaker Listening Tests
I did not have a low stand to put the 4319 on so used the same I have been using with bookshelf speakers. This placed the tweeter a few inches above my ear level. The positive is that that woofer can generate a lot of bass. The cabinet resonates a lot but when I put my ear to it while playing female vocals, I could not hear much at all. So most of the cabinet resonances are at lower frequencies which we can see from waterfall plot.
The bad news is that not much that I played on the 4319 sounded that good. It was kind of boxy and closed in with some brightness at times. I thought being old school speaker, it perhaps is a better fit for older music. So I queued up The Girl from Ipanema on my Reel to Reel tape deck and boy, did it sound disappointing.
Conclusions
Both objectively and subjectively I was disappointed in the results of JBL 4319. We have advanced in understanding what makes good sound at home since this speaker was designed. I can see its appeal in its look and pedigree but it sure is not for me. The woofer though is low distortion and produces copious amount of bass which combined with higher efficiency, would pair well with low power amplifier. Perhaps such use with a tube amp to change its response and/or playing with controls would make it sound better. For this reason, I did not give it the lowest score possible, but one step above.
Overall I can't recommend the JBL 4319 unless you like looking at it more than listening to it.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Out of imagination for another lame joke so simple request: please donate what you can using : https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/