JBL 4349 Review (Studio Monitor Speaker)

[amirm]

is that a Primare amp on the top shelf? it hasn't been tested yet, has it?

It is and hasn't been tested. I have ripped up my main system enough for you all. Please don't ask for more.

 

[beagleman]

Yes, a speaker should have low distortion. But the #1 important factor is Frequency Response, which is not good here. And the reason for low distortion seems to be that the speaker cannot produce low bass in spite of its large woofer (which probably also contritbutes to its high efficiency). Spending $7500 on something which has such an anomalous response and then having to supplant it with subs does not seem like a good return to me. Cheaper Klipsch horn speakers should be able to have similar dynamics due to its high efficiency.

I was a bit astonished to find that these are listed at being "only" 91db sensitivity.

I was assuming, more in the range of maybe 93-96 db or so.

 

[Andrej]

What are the measurements to speaker dynamics?

Two come to mind: Frequency dependent compression at different volumes, and increase in distortion at higher volumes. Also, how they change after prolonged lod passages, when the speaker "drivetrain" heats up. I suspect one could come with many more.

 

[Kachda]

I was a bit astonished to find that these are listed at being only 91db sensitivity.

I was assuming, more in the range of maybe 93-96 db or so.

It’s probably an honest number. Klipsch is often found to exaggerate their efficiency claims. And in general sensitivity seems to be around 85-86db, so this can definitively get louder.

 

[Rick Sykora]

The problem is that different speakers have different applications, and a universal approach may not be entirely possible. I believe Amir has excellent listening skills and when the measurements don't entirely add up it doesn't hurt to look further. In this case I believe this particular speaker is somewhat better than represented in the measurements in this particular form.

Agree wholeheartedly on the target application as well. Just like distance, it is another difference in the conditions.

The Klippel does not take into account whether the speaker being tested is a nearfield monitor or a large PA one. That is part of why explaining the measurement differences is critical as well.

 

[JDS]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the JBL 4349 2-way Studio Monitor (passive). All of you were too cheap to buy one so I had to do it myself. Out of my own money no less! Luckily I got a discount from the retail cost of US $7,500 for a pair.

Note: our company, Madrona Digital, is a dealer for Haman, parent company of JBL. So feel free to read as much bias as you like into the following review.

The 4349 has the familiar look of "giant studio bookshelf" of the past:

View attachment 125315

The walnut finish though makes it more suitable for domestic use especially if you leave the woofer grill on (I took mine off for all of my testing as you see above). Typical of many Pro products there are a couple of trim controls but they only act on the tweeter. Response will be shown in the measurement section. The main measurements are with the dip switches at 0 dB setting.

As you can see above, this thing is not small. It is also not light. It took us to lug it around and with just the ports as handles, it was not easy!

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.

I performed over 1400 measurement which resulted in error rate of less than 1% until 10 kHz where the error started to linearly climb. So don't go by micro detail of the response in that region.

Testing temperature was around 69 degrees F.

Reference axis for measurements was the center of the tweeter (by eye). Grill was not used in either measurements or listening tests.

Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.

JBL 4349 Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:

View attachment 125316

I must say, I did not at all expect this kind of response from any product coming out of Harman. The dip at the crossover? I finished the measurements late at night and was miserable till I listened to the speaker today. Clearly a shelving boost is implemented for the tweeter. Fortunately if you turn the dip switches to -1, you should be able to knock that down:

View attachment 125317

The big trough occurs in my measurement "lab" when the mic is aligned with tweeter axis. I moved the mic down to the logo between the tweeter and woofer and the dip shrank to what you see in the spin data. So ignore that.

Back to crossover issue, here is our near-field measurement:

View attachment 125318

Looks to me like the woofer response is drooping too much before the tweeter gives it a hand and hence the dip there. Not sure if the tweeter could handle the load there. There are also a couple of port resonances that interfere with the response.

Our early window response is similar to on-axis which bodes well for ability to EQ:

View attachment 125319

The dip gets worse with floor and ceiling reflections. I am lucky in having a super thick carpet (4 inches or so) and tall ceilings.

Edit: forgot the PIR graph:

View attachment 125346

The star of the show is the tweeter and its directivity:

View attachment 125320


View attachment 125321

Have we seen anything this pretty? It looks textbook correct. Shame about the crossover dip before it.

Vertically, you are better off being at or below tweeter axis. I sat below it for listening tests:

View attachment 125322

An excellent supporting cast is the ultra low distortion in bass:

View attachment 125323

This thing is as good as many excellent headphones at 86 dBSPL as far as distortion!

View attachment 125324

Strange though to see the tweeter complain at higher amplitudes.

Waterfall shows some resonances due to the port:

View attachment 125325

I felt the cabinet during music and it was solid as a rock so these are acoustic ones.

Finally, impedance is substantially higher than typical 2-way speaker at 8+ ohm:

View attachment 125326

JBL 4349 Listening Tests
I must say I was in bad, bad mood before listening tests started. Had the bad measurements on top of killing myself dragging this speaker up to second floor where my listening test is. Turned on the music and wow, there was hardly much to complain about! Speaker was highly efficient and was able to pump out dynamics that were startling at times. There was a bit of brightness despite me sitting lower than the treble so I dialed in the dip switches to -1 and -1. Standing up I could hear more highs but it would be tricky to balance the clarity I was hearing versus increase high frequency energy.

I wanted to see the effect of that crossover dip so dialed in an EQ for it:

View attachment 125327

As with headphones, I could here a slight opening up of the sound and more forward/pleasant representation of female vocals I was listening to. Overall effect though was small due to the bandwidth being low (1 kHz or so). The eye was bleeding due to the graphs far more than the ear seemed to care!

I had to put in the dip at my usual 105 Hz to tame a room mode. It was not necessary for the JBL 4349 but was in what to come: comparison to my Revel Salon 2 next to it. Figured one of you rascals would ask me about it so I figured I do the work now! Immediate reaction was wow, the Salon 2s have far deeper bass. Visual impression of 4349's massive woofer (compared to Revel's) makes one think there is a ton of deep bass but there is not. To match the Salon 2 would you need a sub. That on the other hand meant that the 4349 didn't activate the room modes much so had a light, tight and dynamic bass.

Beyond the bass the impression of the two speakers was so different. The salon 2 was producing a smooth, highly integrated sound column. The 4349 seemed to have a dual character where it would be come extremely lively with high frequency dynamics. This was super pleasurable but less refined than Salon 2's reserved but excellent reproduction. My thought during the whole affair was that you really wanted both of these speakers and use them based on mood and music.

This is one of few good sounding speakers that don't have the "Revel sound" to me. It is a different way of solving the same problem.

Conclusions
As indicated above, objective test results left a sour taste in my mouth post measurements. It was not until I listened to the speakers that I got what this speaker is all about:

1. Marketing says you have to have a huge woofer and tweeter. Don't care what else you do but it has too have this retro look.

2. Engineering says so they want to compete with a party speaker. Let's build the least broken, best version we can.

So no, the 4349 is not objectively perfect. That crossover dip pushes it out of the running compared to any modern studio monitor. What it is, is re-implementing an old speaker configuration with the best know-how they could put in there. An active version would have dealt with the deficiency there but the formula did not allow it. Fortunately we can put EQ in front of the speaker and remedy that.

A side note. I hardly ever come home from a show thinking of replacing my speakers with anything I see there. The only exception was a set of large horn speakers that had dynamics that I could not replicate with my Salon 2s. The 4349 allowed me to get there and so points to high efficiency mattering. People routinely underestimate how much power it takes to reproduce dynamics well. Even my high power amplifier struggles to push the Salon 2 there. But with 4349, that struggle disappeared with a bunch of headroom left.

I am going to put the JBL 4349 on my recommended list. Go ahead and hate on me due to objective measurements above. I am ready to take it!

------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

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Long time listener, first time caller...

I know those speaker stands -- I have a a pair of them under my Performa M20s. (Let me know if you ever want to test them, Amir.)

I haven't heard these, but their 1970s (L100) ancestors sounded pretty bad to me -- spitty, sibilant and harsh.

 

[voodooless]

I haven't heard these, but their 1970s (L100) ancestors sounded pretty bad to me -- spitty, sibilant and harsh.

You can still buy the L100 . They are quite a different animal though. They look very nice though, with the colored foam.

 

[hardisj]

Keying off my question above, I usually try to envision what the -1dB/octave slope which Sean Olive discusses as generally accepted as being "more ideal" target curve here. And summarized here:
""A flat in-room target response is clearly not the optimal target curve for room equalization. The preferred room corrections have a target response that has a smooth downward slope with increasing frequency. This tells us that listeners prefer a certain amount of natural room gain. Removing the room gain, makes the reproduced music sound unnatural, and too thin, according to these listeners. This also makes perfect sense since the recording was likely mixed in room where the room gain was also not removed; therefore, to remove it from the consumers' listening room would destroy spectral balance of the music as intended by the artist."

Granted, he's talking about room equalization but I would expect that an ideal speaker is one that matches this same target curve, sans DSP.

If I take the 4349's PIR, start at 156Hz and add a line decreasing in 1dB/octave until 20kHz, represented by the blue line below, what I see is a speaker that would tend to sound "bright" and possibly fatiguing. IME, when I've tested speakers that are - mildly - above this trendline in the HF (Selah Audio Purezza, Philharmonic BMR), the "bright" aspect tends to be true. And when I tested other speakers with a "v-curve" PIR, the "fatiguing" aspect was definitely true.

Now, below are a pair of graphics from my Selah Purezza measurement, both with the PIR and target of -1dB/octave overlaid. In the first, the HF is way off. I started the target at 200Hz. And below that you can obviously see if I had start the target at 300Hz, the HF is not as far as far off from the target. So there is some "subjectivity" to the placement of the starting point. I tend to start the line above about 300Hz because the room is so dominant below this.

The latter is closer to what my listening notes (done before measuring) showed. But, again, this just goes to show you how interpretation can differ depending on where you draw the target line.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Really appreciating the acknowledgement of speaker dynamics and efficiency in this thread. But the price is a killer and greatly limits the market. If we acknowledge the importance of dynamics and efficiency in our listening experience then it would be nice to see more speakers like this reviewed here but at a more affordable price point, say <$1,000 per speaker.

I would be interested if speakers like this exist (at all) I have never seen loud low distortion but also inexpensive speakers, so even their existence would be an interesting discovery.

 

[Matias]

@hardisj at the same time one can add more mid and high frequency absorption in the room and make the slope decrease faster. So personally I put the target first (what slope I want), and then buy speakers, adjust the room absorption and EQ them accordingly (in this order ideally, today I cannot add absorption, but in my future dedicated room I will).

 

[TimVG]

Keying off my question above, I usually try to envision what the -1dB/octave slope which Sean Olive discusses as generally accepted as being "more ideal" target curve here. And summarized here:
""A flat in-room target response is clearly not the optimal target curve for room equalization. The preferred room corrections have a target response that has a smooth downward slope with increasing frequency. This tells us that listeners prefer a certain amount of natural room gain. Removing the room gain, makes the reproduced music sound unnatural, and too thin, according to these listeners. This also makes perfect sense since the recording was likely mixed in room where the room gain was also not removed; therefore, to remove it from the consumers' listening room would destroy spectral balance of the music as intended by the artist."

Granted, he's talking about room equalization but I would expect that an ideal speaker is one that matches this same target curve, sans DSP.

If I take the 4349's PIR, start at 156Hz and add a line decreasing in 1dB/octave until 20kHz, represented by the blue line below, what I see is a speaker that would tend to sound "bright" and possibly fatiguing. IME, when I've tested speakers that are - mildly -

above this trendline in the HF (Selah Audio Purezza, Philharmonic BMR), the "bright" aspect tends to be true. And when I tested other speakers with a "v-curve" PIR, the "fatiguing" aspect was definitely true.


View attachment 125457








Now, below are a pair of graphics from my Selah Purezza measurement, both with the PIR and target of -1dB/octave overlaid. In the first, the HF is way off. I started the target at 200Hz. And below that you can obviously see if I had start the target at 300Hz, the HF is not as far as far off from the target. So there is some "subjectivity" to the placement of the starting point. I tend to start the line above about 300Hz because the room is so dominant below this.

The latter is closer to what my listening notes (done before measuring) showed. But, again, this just goes to show you how interpretation can differ depending on where you draw the target line.

It's a function of directivity behaviour. Constant directivity designs have a disadvantage when it comes down the score aspect in which the estimated response plays a substiantial role. Does that mean they sound less good? I'm not sure that's the case. Let's also not forget the test in question was about testing different room EQ software packages and they used only one type of (flawed) speaker for this test - hardly enough to draw conclusions.

 

[Dave Tremblay]

I suspect I would quite like this speaker based on the measurements. It's FR leaves something to be desired, but the dynamic capability is clearly there and that is a well designed horn with good pattern control. It's just plain enjoyable for me to sit in front of a speaker that has no limits (within reason).

However, this type of design is pretty hard to pull off well, and it seems like it could have been better. It is very rare to see a 12" driver that can play clean above 1.5kHz. I'm not sure I've ever seen one... With the distortion numbers of that midrange compression, I don't understand why they wouldn't have tried to push down to a 1.0-1.2kHz crossover. Sure, the horn isn't likely to hold pattern control that low, but better than listening to a broken-up 12".

I designed a similar style speaker a while back, based around a Beyma TPL-150H and a Ciare 12-NDH3. That Beyma tweeter needs EQ, but has the lowest distortion I've ever measured. The Ciare was also exceptional throughout the midrange, but I couldn't use it above 1.2kHz, and even that required high order crossover to not hear the breakup. 1.0kHz really was the sweet spot with the type of drivers and driver spacing inherent in this type of design. And it still needed subs to be without limit. In hindsight, I wouldn't have gone with a 12" midrange driver; an 8" or 10" high efficiency driver probably would have worked better... It ended up being a very fun speaker to listen to, with solid measurements, but definitely wanted to be in the mid to far range, > 2m. This review made me kind of miss them...

 

[napilopez]

Keying off my question above, I usually try to envision what the -1dB/octave slope which Sean Olive discusses as generally accepted as being "more ideal" target curve here. And summarized here:
""A flat in-room target response is clearly not the optimal target curve for room equalization. The preferred room corrections have a target response that has a smooth downward slope with increasing frequency. This tells us that listeners prefer a certain amount of natural room gain. Removing the room gain, makes the reproduced music sound unnatural, and too thin, according to these listeners. This also makes perfect sense since the recording was likely mixed in room where the room gain was also not removed; therefore, to remove it from the consumers' listening room would destroy spectral balance of the music as intended by the artist."

Granted, he's talking about room equalization but I would expect that an ideal speaker is one that matches this same target curve, sans DSP.

If I take the 4349's PIR, start at 156Hz and add a line decreasing in 1dB/octave until 20kHz, represented by the blue line below, what I see is a speaker that would tend to sound "bright" and possibly fatiguing. IME, when I've tested speakers that are - mildly -

above this trendline in the HF (Selah Audio Purezza, Philharmonic BMR), the "bright" aspect tends to be true. And when I tested other speakers with a "v-curve" PIR, the "fatiguing" aspect was definitely true.


View attachment 125457








Now, below are a pair of graphics from my Selah Purezza measurement, both with the PIR and target of -1dB/octave overlaid. In the first, the HF is way off. I started the target at 200Hz. And below that you can obviously see if I had start the target at 300Hz, the HF is not as far as far off from the target. So there is some "subjectivity" to the placement of the starting point. I tend to start the line above about 300Hz because the room is so dominant below this.

The latter is closer to what my listening notes (done before measuring) showed. But, again, this just goes to show you how interpretation can differ depending on where you draw the target line.

Im with @TimVG and personally largely ignore the target slopes, and kind of prefer Amir's eyeballed trend lines, as that's basically how I interpret them. The problem is that the ideal slope is really contingent upon directivity. Perhaps to some degree it might help a CD or wide directivity design to have a slightly tilted on axis to compensate, but not much.

In the paper where the target slope comes from, Olive actually says:

"A speaker with constant, flat directivity could theoretically satisfy the flat sound power criterion and still achieve high preference ratings, so long as it had a smooth on-axis response well-maintained off-axis. However, such speakers are not widely available."

The D&D 8C is an example of a speaker with a somewhat 'bright' PIR that doesn't in fact sound bright because of its directivity.

In the case of the 4349, it's not quite constant directivity, but the DI is a flatter than usual, as one would expect from such a large speaker with a big ol horn. I think it might be a little bright simply because the on-axis is a little bright.

 

[PuX]

It is and hasn't been tested. I have ripped up my main system enough for you all. Please don't ask for more.

it's an I30, right? is it any good subjectively?

 

[daftcombo]

Keying off my question above, I usually try to envision what the -1dB/octave slope which Sean Olive discusses as generally accepted as being "more ideal" target curve here. And summarized here:
""A flat in-room target response is clearly not the optimal target curve for room equalization. The preferred room corrections have a target response that has a smooth downward slope with increasing frequency. This tells us that listeners prefer a certain amount of natural room gain. Removing the room gain, makes the reproduced music sound unnatural, and too thin, according to these listeners. This also makes perfect sense since the recording was likely mixed in room where the room gain was also not removed; therefore, to remove it from the consumers' listening room would destroy spectral balance of the music as intended by the artist."

Granted, he's talking about room equalization but I would expect that an ideal speaker is one that matches this same target curve, sans DSP.

If I take the 4349's PIR, start at 156Hz and add a line decreasing in 1dB/octave until 20kHz, represented by the blue line below, what I see is a speaker that would tend to sound "bright" and possibly fatiguing. IME, when I've tested speakers that are - mildly -

above this trendline in the HF (Selah Audio Purezza, Philharmonic BMR), the "bright" aspect tends to be true. And when I tested other speakers with a "v-curve" PIR, the "fatiguing" aspect was definitely true.


View attachment 125457








Now, below are a pair of graphics from my Selah Purezza measurement, both with the PIR and target of -1dB/octave overlaid. In the first, the HF is way off. I started the target at 200Hz. And below that you can obviously see if I had start the target at 300Hz, the HF is not as far as far off from the target. So there is some "subjectivity" to the placement of the starting point. I tend to start the line above about 300Hz because the room is so dominant below this.

The latter is closer to what my listening notes (done before measuring) showed. But, again, this just goes to show you how interpretation can differ depending on where you draw the target line.

Shouldn't the slope depend on the listening distance? And be less steep for monitors/mid-field speakers?

 

[sunandmoon]

Hmmm... not sure about this. It does not measure well - regardless of purpose, it is not good execution. The 4367 does not seem to suffer from the same issue: https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews...g/jbl-4367-studio-monitor-loudspeaker-review/

 

[Kachda]

I suspect I would quite like this speaker based on the measurements. It's FR leaves something to be desired, but the dynamic capability is clearly there and that is a well designed horn with good pattern control. It's just plain enjoyable for me to sit in front of a speaker that has no limits (within reason).

However, this type of design is pretty hard to pull off well, and it seems like it could have been better. It is very rare to see a 12" driver that can play clean above 1.5kHz. I'm not sure I've ever seen one... With the distortion numbers of that midrange compression, I don't understand why they wouldn't have tried to push down to a 1.0-1.2kHz crossover. Sure, the horn isn't likely to hold pattern control that low, but better than listening to a broken-up 12".

I designed a similar style speaker a while back, based around a Beyma TPL-150H and a Ciare 12-NDH3. That Beyma tweeter needs EQ, but has the lowest distortion I've ever measured. The Ciare was also exceptional throughout the midrange, but I couldn't use it above 1.2kHz, and even that required high order crossover to not hear the breakup. 1.0kHz really was the sweet spot with the type of drivers and driver spacing inherent in this type of design. And it still needed subs to be without limit. In hindsight, I wouldn't have gone with a 12" midrange driver; an 8" or 10" high efficiency driver probably would have worked better... It ended up being a very fun speaker to listen to, with solid measurements, but definitely wanted to be in the mid to far range, > 2m. This review made me kind of miss them...

May I ask why not just go 3 way to releive the breakup of the woofer and not strain the tweeter ?

 

[Savi]

I don't understand why they wouldn't have tried to push down to a 1.0-1.2kHz crossover.

I had the same though.

Off-topic: Not cheap (>1000euros) but kartesian 10 inch wom250_vhe woofer measurements seem great for this 2 way design (https://www.kartesian-acoustic.com/copie-de-wom165-vms). It is in french but kartesian speaks about it here

.

 

[More Dynamics Please]

I would be interested if speakers like this exist (at all) I have never seen loud low distortion but also inexpensive speakers, so even their existence would be an interesting discovery.

They are not common but at least a few are available. One example would be the Power Sound Audio MT-110 ($775) using 10" pro woofer and 1" titanium compression driver in a cast aluminum exponential horn, all sourced from B&C, along with in-house crossover in a sealed bookshelf enclosure. Sensitivity rated at 95 dB with -3 dB @ 70 Hz so subwoofer support required. Unfortunately no independent measurements available but pretty universal praise from owners.

https://www.powersoundaudio.com/collections/speakers/products/mt-110

 

[Valentin R]

Or to Kali Audio.



If you have the 305p MKII, I know exactly why. There is significant compression (limiting?) in the 305 at high volumes (somewhere between 96-102dB @ 1m). I'll have data on this soon.

Erin will you measure JBL 305pmkii