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JBL 4309 Review (Speaker)

MarkWinston

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Its speakers like these that make me appreciate lower end speakers that measures far better this. Audible or not is subjective. For 2k I could never bring myself to getting this, not now, not ever. I mean for 2k I could get a Meta and a 500 dollar sub like the Monolith 10 THX........
 

ctrl

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I don't believe dynamic compression is a factor in home speakers. PA speakers, sure. Home speakers? No. My measure of dynamics is how loud I can play before the speaker produces clearly audible distortion.
For the end user, the information about "audible distortion" is certainly useful. But it is also very vague, since you do not mention the corresponding amplifier voltage or the corresponding sound pressure level, and the perception of how "loud" a loudspeaker is playing depends very much on its tuning.

It is about the introduction of a measure for the objective assessment of dynamic compression and to eliminate the bias in the evaluation of speakers in this regard. About this testify endless discussions about the dynamic capabilities of speaker A over B,C,... or that any loudspeaker that calls itself "professional" automatically has certain dynamic capabilities.

How exactly to define a measure of dynamic compression certainly requires discussion. In purely formal terms, any deviation in frequency response at different sound pressure levels means the presence of dynamic compression (or limiter or resonances).

One can certainly argue about the audibility. It is comparable to the SINAD, the exact limit at which this value becomes relevant is difficult to determine and varies greatly from individual to individual.
Nevertheless, it is a measure for objective qualitative assessment of an aspect of a component.


In bass frequencies the impact of room is so large that it dwarfs any such changes anyway (and for all we know, it may tilt toward sounding better, not worse).
But you can't make that sweeping statement.
Of course, with a loudspeaker that is already droning, a dB more sound pressure is no longer important.
If a free-standing speaker, whose woofer has a crossover frequency of 150Hz and this woofer is raised by 1dB, everyone will be able to hear this in a blind test.

Whether the change of the frequency response at different sound pressure levels is perceived tonally as positive or negative is not relevant, the change of the signal at different sound pressure levels is a fault and a quality defect.
It is like the eternal discussion about low SINAD values and the "good" HD2 - the signal change is the problem, it does not matter that some classify this as a "positive" tonal change.


Even if you believed this matters, you need to first have a controlled situation were you can assure that our two point measurements are actually producing objectively correct results. Just because there are differences in frequency response, it doesn't mean that compression has happened and to that degree, especially if you are zooming in so much as to worry about 0.5 dB differences.
I fully agree with you, and I also pointed this out in the comparison. An average value from several measurements offset in time for one sound pressure level and a stronger smoothing (which I did in the comparison) would certainly make the result more reliable.
 
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abdo123

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One thing the baffle step theory I tried to prove earlier still is unexplained: the massive directivity issue at the exact same spot. So question still is: what’s that? @napilopez version does not show it, possibly due to lower measurement resolution? Could it just be a hiccup in the Kippel system?

His version does not show it because his measuring technique provide the lowest resolution at the mid-range.

that is also why problems at the mid-range are common because the majority of boutique speaker manufacturers don't measure or have similar measuring techniques instead of a full fledged anechoic chamber / near-field scanner .
 

Robbo99999

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I think some of us have quite different ways of interpreting measurements. I'm honestly a little surprised at all the people claiming these measurements are that bad. I know they wouldn't score very highly on the preference score, for various reasons, but I think it's a stretch to suggest these don't generally follow the olive/toole school.

What counts as "a lot of resonances?" the only thing I'd really call a resonance is around 1khz. Something like the JBL 305P is a speaker I'd consider to have a lot of resonances.

The overall tonality is neutral, save for the slightly boosted bass and the bump at 1khz. The boosted bass around 100khz is often shown to be inoffensive in bookshelf speakers, and harman does that on all of its bookshelf speakers, presumably for a reason.

The dip at 1.8khz is likely to be inoffensive as it's fairly narrow and dips are less audible than bumps.

I generally ignore anything above 10kHz unless it is very elevated.

The horizontal directivity is as good as any of the best neumann and genelecs -- I'd personally argue even better than most of those as it maintains something closer to constant directivity from roughly 2-8 khz where it matters most for soundstage. Subjectively, I find this type of behavior leads to more for neutral tonality.

Vertical directivity is better than most non-coaxials.



As noted earlier, the HDI-1600 is basically the 'clean' version of this speaker. I shared my comparison earlier but here it is again with Amir's measurements.

View attachment 158692

However, I preferred the 4309. I do prefer how it looks too, so maybe that has something to do with it, or some other variable, but I was pretty confident in this preference.

I tested it immediately after the HDI-1600 ( I think it arrived the day after I shipped the HDI-1600 back) and the first thing I noticed was "this has a better soundstage," not "this sounds more jagged/different in tonality" I'm not sure I could definitively tell a difference in tonality without a side by side comparison. Imo the only meaningful difference is the elevation at 1kHz, which wasn't immediately obvious to me. Perhaps because it's surrounded by two dips? idk. I tried to listen for it even after I saw the data., but even doing a sine sweep it was hard to convincingly hear.
Maybe the bit at 4k would be audible, although it's maybe worth noting my own measurements didn't show a difference here.View attachment 158694

Just some food for thought.
That's a good comparison because they mirror each other so well in tonality, those two speakers. Those graphs don't fully describe the directivity though, if I'm right? In which case if the 4309 has better directivity then this variable might override any negative influences of a more jagged frequency response? The variable of measured distortion is not the same either, or is it....so that could go some ways to override or influence the frequency response comparison, depending on how loud the listening tests are? I just don't think there's a good argument for having a jagged frequency response in an expensive speaker (or any speaker if you can help it), so I see that as suboptimal - just another variable that is not optimised. I'm also not a fan of the early roll off in bass, I know that wouldn't sound good in my room for instance, I've tried doing High Passes on my JBL 308p which has greater bass extension than this tested speaker, and my 308p sounds worse with High Pass filters that even aren't as severe as the bass roll off shown in this 4309 - so I know this speaker would not be preferred for me in my room for instance. (I've got a flat Anechoic EQ on my 308's).
 

Juhazi

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I've been quiet lately, but I must comment this thread, because this is in the heart of my criticism against loudspeaker reviews at ASR.

index.php

"Science" in audio evaluations is a sword with two blades. Klippel NFS gives HQ measurement data which can be presented in many ways and even scored to give preference. Distortion behaviour with high spl is as well very important basic info.

The problems come when data gets analyzed and compared to listening impression - human perception and individual preferences can overrule some measured imperfections and reveal some features measurements cannot. One basic thing is to realize the size and type of the loudspeaker in question - is it a desktop monitor, sound bar, stand-mount hifi, PA, a full-range ultimate hifi or what. We must correlate the expectations of eg. bass reach and spl capacity to "type", we can't use same scale for all speakers. As well the Olive/Harman score misses bass reach and spl capacity.

What I'd want to see in tests, is more thorough investigation of obvious problems in measurements or listening test. Eg. in this case, what is the cause of zero directivity at 1.1kHz? Fronside ports resonance at 800Hz is another obvious problem, but not audible.

I have learned to understand Amir's personal assessment priorities, and sort of read through it. He listens to a single speaker in his garage and makes it play very loud. When a small speaker sounds thin or distorts, the panther's head drops off, no matter how good Klippel measurements are. For stereo hifi listening in domestic rooms, different types of speaker interact with the room differently which highly affect bass quality and imaging, and we can't directly see this from measurements and Amir's review.

Anyway thank you very much Amir for providing these tests and reports!
 

abdo123

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I don't believe dynamic compression is a factor in home speakers. PA speakers, sure. Home speakers? No. My measure of dynamics is how loud I can play before the speaker produces clearly audible distortion. This will dwarf any 0.5 dB change in frequency response. In bass frequencies the impact of room is so large that it dwarfs any such changes anyway (and for all we know, it may tilt toward sounding better, not worse).

Even for PA use, using flat response makes little sense for music because spectrum is not remotely flat. This is why folks have come up with m-noise and such.

Even if you believed this matters, you need to first have a controlled situation were you can assure that our two point measurements are actually producing objectively correct results. Just because there are differences in frequency response, it doesn't mean that compression has happened and to that degree, especially if you are zooming in so much as to worry about 0.5 dB differences.

I think you're missing @ctrl 's point a little bit. Since the two comparisons he showed were of 'golfing panthers' speakers then it's difficult to see the impact of dynamic compression since you obviously didn't hear it with these two well designed speakers.

but since you don't consider this as a valuable parameter (and thus you don't test for it in the measurements section of the review) we would never really know how much of an impact dynamic compression has on YOUR subjective impressions.

you might be correct on the opinion that 0.5 dB might be too little to make a difference for the human ear, but perhaps speakers with 'good' spinoramas that you hated in the past had 1 dB compression or more or very high Q and high amplitude compression. We just don't know now because we don't look at that data in your reviews.
 

xaviescacs

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index.php

"Science" in audio evaluations is a sword with two blades. Klippel NFS gives HQ measurement data which can be presented in many ways and even scored to give preference. Distortion behaviour with high spl is as well very important basic info.

The problems come when data gets analyzed and compared to listening impression - human perception and individual preferences can overrule some measured imperfections and reveal some features measurements cannot. One basic thing is to realize the size and type of the loudspeaker in question - is it a desktop monitor, sound bar, stand-mount hifi, PA, a full-range ultimate hifi or what. We must correlate the expectations of eg. bass reach and spl capacity to "type", we can't use same scale for all speakers. As well the Olive/Harman score misses bass reach and spl capacity.

What I'd want to see in tests, is more thorough investigation of obvious problems in measurements or listening test. Eg. in this case, what is the cause of zero directivity at 1.1kHz? Fronside ports resonance at 800Hz is another obvious problem, but not audible.

I have learned to understand Amir's personal assessment priorities, and sort of read through it. He listens to a single speaker in his garage and makes it play very loud. When a small speaker sounds thin or distorts, the panther's head drops off, no matter how good Klippel measurements are. For stereo hifi listening in domestic rooms, different types of speaker interact with the room differently which highly affect bass quality and imaging, and we can't directly see this from measurements and Amir's review.

Anyway thank you very much Amir for providing these tests and reports!

What I do miss in these reviews are a bit more numbers. For instance, the analytical form of the drawn straight lines in the spinorama plots. And if the lines are found by some kind of regression, the usual output statistics of the model, e.g. R².

I understand that using numbers is a serious commitment, but using words to evaluate the fit of a straight line though a set of points looks artificial and arbitrary. Well, it's just a personal thought without any base on the audio subject. I just see lines, which is nice, but I miss the parameters of those lines.
 
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GXAlan

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I don't believe dynamic compression is a factor in home speakers. PA speakers, sure. Home speakers? No. My measure of dynamics is how loud I can play before the speaker produces clearly audible distortion.


This is a really nice paper looking at voice coil thermal effects.

It would be interesting to see if you can put a small bookshelf speaker in the refrigerator and do a few measurements and then put a speaker in a car on a hot day and then quickly run a few measurements. That would generate extreme worst case scenarios, right?

The paper notes that the resonant frequentcy of the speaker will affect results as well as the enclosure as the heating of the air in the enclosure also plays a role.
 

voodooless

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A little confused -- what doesn't my measurement show? Obviously lower resolution but The DI curves in my spin track amir's quite closely.
Well, that is the point, it tracks it perfectly except for the disturbance.
His version does not show it because his measuring technique provide the lowest resolution at the mid-range.
Well, that was why was asking! Can we indeed confirm that this is the case? Is there really not enough resolution to capture this. I somehow doubt that. The disturbance is roughly 100-ish Hz wide. Seems to me that there should have been enough resolution to capture that.

And it sort of did, I was looking at the ERDI plot at first, which is smooth. The correct plot does show it though, only a bit higher in frequency, and a bit less deep.
Pretty sure it's mostly just port noise.
Is it? The peek port noise resonance is at 700 Hz, the disturbance is at ~1200 Hz. That's almost double the frequency! I doubt it's port noise.
 
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Chromatischism

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What I do miss in these reviews are a bit more numbers. For instance, the analytical form of the drawn straight lines in the spinorama plots. And if the lines are found by some kind of regression, the usual output statistics of the model, e.g. R².

I understand that using numbers is a serious commitment, but using words to evaluate the fit of a straight line though a set of points looks artificial and arbitrary. Well, it's just a personal thought without any base on the audio subject. I just see lines, which is nice, but I miss the parameters of those lines.
Agreed. A method to quantify "fairly smooth" and "fairly uneven" is needed. The above comparison makes that clear.
 

TimVG

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@amirm Would it be an idea to listen to this speaker back to back with a Revel M106 (which I believe you own) and give us your impressions? Since they're both $2k a pair it would make for an interesting comparison.
 

oivavoi

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I think some of us have quite different ways of interpreting measurements. I'm honestly a little surprised at all the people claiming these measurements are that bad. I know they wouldn't score very highly on the preference score, for various reasons, but I think it's a stretch to suggest these don't generally follow the olive/toole school.

What counts as "a lot of resonances?" the only thing I'd really call a resonance is around 1khz. Something like the JBL 305P is a speaker I'd consider to have a lot of resonances.

The overall tonality is neutral, save for the slightly boosted bass and the bump at 1khz. The boosted bass around 100khz is often shown to be inoffensive in bookshelf speakers, and harman does that on all of its bookshelf speakers, presumably for a reason.

The dip at 1.8khz is likely to be inoffensive as it's fairly narrow and dips are less audible than bumps.

I generally ignore anything above 10kHz unless it is very elevated.

The horizontal directivity is as good as any of the best neumann and genelecs -- I'd personally argue even better than most of those as it maintains something closer to constant directivity from roughly 2-8 khz where it matters most for soundstage. Subjectively, I find this type of behavior leads to more for neutral tonality.

Vertical directivity is better than most non-coaxials.
...

Just some food for thought.
Thanks, excellent response! (as always)
I'm at work now so I'll respond later, I'll just note that I'm in broad agreement with what @richard12511 writes.

But what is the explanation for the abysmal Olive score then, if FR is indeed ok and dispersion is good?
 

voodooless

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But what is the explanation for the abysmal Olive score then, if FR is indeed ok and dispersion is good?
There is a very clear analysis on that:
index.php

Luckily due to the near-perfect directivity, EQ works wonders with this thing.
 

changer

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People go crazy here if someone likes something that doesn't measure well.
It's not that, it is about the reliability of judgement and criteria. And how's the relation between such very visible performance cues like a pink cat thingy, plus summarizing conclusions/recommendations versus the micro detail of an evaluation that might speak a different language. After all, this place builds its esteem on precisely the claim to make transparent what subjective descriptions occlude. And a graphical juxtaposition as the presented one above does bear a problematic message. I could not neccessarily understand the discrepancy.
Btw I enjoy an open form of writing, purely technical reviews never do it for me, so that is not a rejection of authorship in evaluations.
 
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rebbiputzmaker

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How do you feel this compares to the stage A130? Is this $1700 better? Or, for that matter is it better at all?
 

txbdan

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What I do miss in these reviews are a bit more numbers. For instance, the analytical form of the drawn straight lines in the spinorama plots. And if the lines are found by some kind of regression, the usual output statistics of the model, e.g. R².

I understand that using numbers is a serious commitment, but using words to evaluate the fit of a straight line though a set of points looks artificial and arbitrary. Well, it's just a personal thought without any base on the audio subject. I just see lines, which is nice, but I miss the parameters of those lines.

Absolutely. I'd be very easy pop that in Excel and do a linear fit and extract the slope of that line. Then the "tilt", quite important in describing the general tone of the speaker, will be objective and accurate.
 
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