I'm not talking about using them as PA speakers. I'm interested in how they perform in a home environment at say 3.5m listening distance. PA is just a label. Measurements don't lie, and measurements don't care if a loudspeaker has the "PA" label, unless you believe that there is something offensive thing that PA speakers do that can't be captured by measurements. Is that what you're saying? If so, you should provide evidence for that, as it would be a great contribution to the current audio science that we have. It really would greatly benefit the audio community if you could demonstrate that.
What aspects of (PA)loudspeaker performance do you believe aren't captured by measurements? We know that output capability isn't, but that's a strength of this speaker. I mentioned that horizontal dispersion is not accurately characterized by the DI, but given that we have horizontal axis measurements, that's not the case here. What else? Distortion? (Audible) Distortion should show in the on and off axis frequency response. What else could PA speakers be doing that makes otherwise well behaved speakers not sound well behaved?
So strike one for home speakers? Home speakers have the constraint of having to look good, which often means making them smaller than optimal. Also, my main speakers actually rate to 134dB, so not my home speakers
It's not the max output that impresses me; It's the max output in conjunction with outstanding fidelity measurements. Those measurements are better than my 308ps and 708ps, and they're inline with my Revel M105s, and that's what intrigues me. As someone who's very interested in the science of loudspeaker design, those measurements intrigue me very much. Floyd Toole says that a spinorama and max output are sufficient to judge the quality of most any loudspeaker, and by Toole's metric, these things pass with flying colors.
If you believe at all in the work that Floyd Toole and Sean Olive did, these speakers should be very intriguing. PA is just a label. They're definitely ugly, but if they outperform my Revel M105s, then I've got no problem replacing the Revels.
You say you listened to them, and didn't like them, but there could be a few reasons for that other than them being low fi speakers.
1. The setting you listened to them in. Unless you listened to them in the same room that you listened to the speakers you're comparing against, we can't really draw any real conclusions. Where did you listen to them?
2. Expectation bias. You clearly have a strong bias against PA speakers, which definitely alters the quality of sound you hear. After all, we hear with our brains, not our ears. Did you listen to them under true blind conditions(ie you didn't know you were hearing a PA speaker)? If not, that could be the reason for your dislike.
3. You prefer non-neutral loudspeakers. These JBLs are incredibly neutral, and NRC and Harman science says that most people prefer that, but that science doesn't say that "everyone" prefers that. There are definitely a minority of folks who prefer non-neutral loudspeakers. You could be among that group.
4. The science could be wrong. Spinorama or spinorama like measurements are insufficient for predicting user preference. Floyd Toole and Harman could be wrong in the weight they ascribe to those measurements. Perhaps there's some offensive loudspeaker quality other than FR, Dispersion, Distortion - and output capability - that measurements miss. It's possible that PA loudspeakers have that quality.
I believe you when say you didn't like them, but I'm just curious why, and that's why I'm thinking of buying them(even though I've bought 8 new loudspeakers in the past 2 months
). The science that we have - and the science that this forum was built on - says that these should sound excellent.
