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Heard a Revel and JBL Synthesis for the first time: F208, F228Be, 4367. A surprise for sure!

Bugal1998

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As @Duke mentions - diy can be a slippery slope. Though it is a lot easier today, with measurements and dsp.

One part that can be more difficult with an exciting speaker is its ability to present a believeable, smooth rendering where the speaker itself disappears completely. Because it requires some sort of directivity control beyond just mounting a driver on a baffle. Even a simple solution like wider baffle causes issues, because the sound diffract around the edges and creates secondary sound sources. This is easier to achive with small direct radiating domes and cones mounted on small, sculpted/rounded baffles, but then you loose the clarity and solidity of the controlled directivity approach.
I had that experience to an extent with some amateur horn speakers (not DIY). They also had a certain 'character' they imparted to every track... I didn't realize just how bad they were until I put them against the M2s in the same room. :facepalm:

Haven't spent enough time with the 4367s to say how they behave, but the M2s sound as transparent as anything I've heard, and just... dissappear.
 

Chromatischism

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One part that can be more difficult with an exciting speaker is its ability to present a believeable, smooth rendering where the speaker itself disappears completely
This may be the same thing worded differently, but the experience of having a sound field presented in such a way as to leisurely and enjoyable "listen in" and find all the details layered within a track can be hampered by immediacy. Soundstage can also seem smaller. Immediacy has a place for a quick fix but probably isn't the best for longer sessions.

IMO / $0.02
 

GXAlan

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Is the AlMg alloy still used today?

My understanding is that the low TCR alloy is only in the M2 and 4367. The 4312E is long discontinued.
 

Kvalsvoll

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I must confess I am a long, long time lurker for JBL 4367. Only problem, I live in Europe and it is impossible to hear them live here anywhere since years. I am available to travel but apparently no pair is available for demo in the continent. I have been tempted for long time to order them blind and this post makes my fingers nervously running around the "Buy it now" button. Please tell me I should, please warn me I shouldn't.
Local delaer up here in nowhere has sold several, he occasionally has them for demo. But north-west of Norway is not in Italy..
 

Kvalsvoll

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I had that experience to an extent with some amateur horn speakers (not DIY). They also had a certain 'character' they imparted to every track... I didn't realize just how bad they were until I put them against the M2s in the same room. :facepalm:

Haven't spent enough time with the 4367s to say how they behave, but the M2s sound as transparent as anything I've heard, and just... dissappear.
Because they are very different. Typical hifi-speakers are much more equal, than horns and large panels.
 

Kvalsvoll

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This may be the same thing worded differently, but the experience of having a sound field presented in such a way as to leisurely and enjoyable "listen in" and find all the details layered within a track can be hampered by immediacy. Soundstage can also seem smaller. Immediacy has a place for a quick fix but probably isn't the best for longer sessions.

IMO / $0.02
It is not so difficult to get it right in the center listening position, it is what happens when you move around that destroys the illusion. You sit dead center, listen to instruments and vocal rendered like they are in the room, right there, with the acoustics of the recording around you. Then you move to the side, and the whole thing collapses into sound from 2 speakers. Not funny.

But it can be done. As I said (above), such speakers are different. It is not possible to achieve perfect sound off-center, but it can be quite acceptable, and this makes a difference.

A good speaker will tend to render images that seems to be located away from the speaker, even when playing single/mono. And getting the best balance between precise and diffuse is where it gets difficult.
 

Absolute

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A few DIYers I know of who have experimented quite a bit with many JBL parts, including M2 waveguide and 4367 waveguide, have expressed the impression that the M2 waveguide sounds more like regular hifi while 4367 waveguide sounds more like a horn speaker. Looking at the dispersion patterns, this makes sense to me.
I believe that a universal best solution doesn't exist, it depends highly on room/acoustics, listening distance, taste and program material.

Once in a while I find the energy to visit places to experience vastly different things and I've got to say that I'm often amazed by how nice it is to experience something different.
Whether or not that "different" is something I'd want over time is sometimes hard to say, I know that it has a tendency to loosen up my beliefs and biases and really opens my eyes to the fact that some people want a completely different experience than I do.

Some people seem to take offense when others prefer something they "shouldn't" when looking at graphs. Well, tough titty for them, put those people calmly on ignore and enjoy whatever it is that you enjoy.

For easier hifi-journey it's probably a good idea to experiment with different types of dispersion characteristics. A constant directivity design will sound very different to a gradually increasing DI design that will sound very different to a omni-design.
 

GXAlan

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It is not so difficult to get it right in the center listening position, it is what happens when you move around that destroys the illusion. You sit dead center, listen to instruments and vocal rendered like they are in the room, right there, with the acoustics of the recording around you. Then you move to the side, and the whole thing collapses into sound from 2 speakers. Not funny.

But it can be done. As I said (above), such speakers are different. It is not possible to achieve perfect sound off-center, but it can be quite acceptable, and this makes a difference.

A good speaker will tend to render images that seems to be located away from the speaker, even when playing single/mono. And getting the best balance between precise and diffuse is where it gets difficult.

I still think the DD55000 and S/2600 and S/3600 are great options for this exact problem. There are plenty of criticisms with this technique including comb filtering or inconsistent off-center throw, but being an owner of the S/2600, I genuinely *enjoy* the music. I really wonder how this approach fare with today's more sophisticated HDI horns and the D2 or Beryllium compression drivers.

ocean3.jpg
 

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Bugal1998

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I must confess I am a long, long time lurker for JBL 4367. Only problem, I live in Europe and it is impossible to hear them live here anywhere since years. I am available to travel but apparently no pair is available for demo in the continent. I have been tempted for long time to order them blind and this post makes my fingers nervously running around the "Buy it now" button. Please tell me I should, please warn me I shouldn't.
That's a big purchase to make unheard; only you know if that's a reasonable risk.

If you don't use subs and you want your bass to have deep extension to near 20hz, the 4367 may roll-off a little too soon without augmentation.

Other than that, if you're looking for a lively speaker with refinement they just might check a lot of the right boxes.

Good luck with whatever you decide.
 

Farenheit

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I still think the DD55000 and S/2600 and S/3600 are great options for this exact problem. There are plenty of criticisms with this technique including comb filtering or inconsistent off-center throw, but being an owner of the S/2600, I genuinely *enjoy* the music. I really wonder how this approach fare with today's more sophisticated HDI horns and the D2 or Beryllium compression drivers.

ocean3.jpg
I have the big ones and I don't want anything else!
1652866148075.jpg
 

fredoamigo

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Kvalsvoll

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because it took me 30 years to understand that the character trait I appreciated the most was the dynamics...
Makes sense. Took me 5 minutes 40 years ago, to learn there is a fundamental difference, and I liked it. Then I used 30 years to try to find out if I really liked the other type of sound instead..

Funny to look back, 40 years ago I was not that old, barely knew enough to be able to put numbers into a calculator to get very exact numbers for dimensions of ports and crossover components (No, we did certainly not learn that in school..). Then I asked the obvious question - why. If I know why, then I can make this even better. So I figured size matters, because the "right" speakers were considerably larger, much larger, than the typical ones people had around. So I built larger. It did not work. Perhaps they were not expensive enough. So I built even larger, and the best, expensive woofer drivers available. It was better, but still, something was missing. So I lost it there, going for smaller and more complex designs, because now, I knew how to program my calculator.

Interesting, that I also managed to accidentally realize that acoustics matter, from those early days. But there was no knowledge for how to fix it properly, so my first attempts at acoustic treatment using blankets on walls did not work.

I know why, now. It was not size alone, it was not efficiency (because the magnestat panels built in the 80ies were very inefficient, but still had much of the same desired characteristics to the sound).
 

Absolute

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So if it's not efficiency, it's dispersion that gives the sense of dynamics?
 
OP
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paulgyro

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I must confess I am a long, long time lurker for JBL 4367. Only problem, I live in Europe and it is impossible to hear them live here anywhere since years. I am available to travel but apparently no pair is available for demo in the continent. I have been tempted for long time to order them blind and this post makes my fingers nervously running around the "Buy it now" button. Please tell me I should, please warn me I shouldn't.
I tell you what, if I had the cash I would buy them now based on what I heard and what I know about them objectively.
 

Astrozombie

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How well do they do with the WAF though? I found these
That might be the way to go aesthetics wise. I wonder how a Tekton with larger woofers would stack up, but those are also nothing nice to look at.
 

dasdoing

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compression drivers are traps. once they get you you wont be able to get rid of them anymore. next time listen to some blues guitar. it's like you are sitting right in front of the player's amp
 

Farenheit

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30 years ago I changed my PROAC STUDIO 100 for JBL 4330, nothing more radical!

I never went back to "conventional" speakers and just traded these in for my current JBL S3100. I don't know why, but the horns+big woofers+high sensitivity sound like "music" to me and the conventional ones sound like "music equipment".
 

Kvalsvoll

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So if it's not efficiency, it's dispersion that gives the sense of dynamics?
Obviously not efficiency directly, because efficiency is not a parameter that exist in the description of a sound field, and it is the sound we hear.
 

Newman

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So if it's not efficiency, it's dispersion that gives the sense of dynamics?
It could be imagination, born of the very sight of them. In fact, that is the most likely explanation, given that sighted listening tests keep resulting in people being so certain it is physically real, yet this contradicts the only blind test we have access to that has even the slightest credence, which sees the organiser reporting that subjects were very often amazed when it was revealed which one they were listening to.

What we don’t want to do, if we are going to be evidence-based about cause and effect, is fall into the trap of misattribution, where we assume something must be in the sound waves, with no more evidence than sighted listening reports (which are proven to be no way to determine anything about the sound waves), then cast about looking for the physical attributes that caused it to be in the sound waves. That would be a case of cart-before-the-horse.
 
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Absolute

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Obviously not efficiency directly, because efficiency is not a parameter that exist in the description of a sound field, and it is the sound we hear.
Personally I've found that the sense of dynamics is a combination of frequency response, peak capacity and room acoustics. I've been wondering if a part of it is also direction of the sound field, meaning very limited dispersion directs more energy towards you, but that's highly speculative of me and could just as well just be less "noise" coming from reflections early in time.

@Newman Good points, it's easy to apply reasoning to subjective impression instead of finding the actual facts.
 
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