JBL 4309 Review (Speaker)

[napilopez]

Damn, that's lower than I was expecting. I was expecting low 5s, mainly due to the excellent directivity(which is SOTA). Also, while there are a lot of resonances, the overall shape of the FR looks decent. I think good directivity is maybe more important than the Olive score gives it credit for. Very similar situation to the DIYSG horn that Erin measured awhile back.

Is this the lowest Olive score we've seen for a 5/5(Golf panther) rating?

I've mentioned it before, but I'd really like to see a test where you take a very flat speaker like a Neumann or Genelec and you just progressively make the response more jagged with DSP, while keeping the overall tonality and flatness the same. Kind of like an anti-smoothing filter, lol. At what point does it become audible and at what point does it make the music sound worse? how wide do the peaks and dips of the jaggies need to be?

 

[ROOSKIE]

I’m not saying it’s terrible. I’m saying it’s not necessarily better than I’ve seen in similarly sized speakers. I feel like some folks here are automatically assuming this speaker gets loud because it’s got the JBL Pro theme going. But with a sensitivity of 85dB and a limited bass extension it’s not going to break new ground. And the distortion data hints at that. In fact, this speaker is similar to the Kef R3 both in the extended shelf port design and the output capabilities (via lower frequency extension and HD metrics).

This JBL is a speaker that I think would be extremely interesting to see put in a DBT based on what the data is showing vs what the replies here are.

Well I already said last post but I don't agree with your assessment of the harmonic distortion data.
I didn't think for a second that this speaker would have sensitivity higher than 85ish db.
I suspect the JBL 708p & 705p likely have lower sensitivity than some might guess.
What these speakers likely have in common is robust drivers that handle high power. I've noticed a lot of lower sensitivity woofers handling enormous power in Voice Coil Magazin tests over the last few years. Enough to more than compensate for the lowish initial sensitivity. I wish Voice Coil could test this woofer. (Of course that won't happen)
Anyway, you sure HD and extension tell you enough so you can confidently predict output? I have not found that in my experience, though as a hobbyist my experience is limited to a degree of course.

 

[Newman]

Nice speaker. That Amir enjoyed it pre-EQ is possibly the billionth data point gathered over a century that might lead to a working hypothesis: within reason, frequency response doesn't matter very much. Perhaps the brain can post-EQ.

Sorry, but that is not a working hypothesis: it's a personal hobby horse being let out for a gallop around the paddock on the least excuse.

If you did a good quality controlled listening experiment with a good-sized population drawn from a wide cross-section of listeners, and saw little correlation with frequency response, then you could proclaim a working hypothesis without looking foolish. Oh wait: that experiment has been done and found strong correlation with FR.

Instead, you do the exact opposite: actively resist over time all the controlled experimental evidence that FR is very highly correlated with preference, then immediately jump on a single contrary sighted listening impression and hold it up in one hand and a new working hypothesis in the other hand. Plus the gall to bring up the 'billion' other sighted listening impressions as adding weight to this 'hypothesis', when in reality they are well-proven to be completely uncorrelated to anything in the sound waves, and very strongly correlated to the listeners' non-sonic biases, some being widely shared like size, weight, price, country of origin; and 'a billion or so' others being less widely shared or even completely unique like 'I hate (or love) black things but only if they are less than 500mm high and in a bright room' or, frankly, anything.

Nobody's fooled. I hope.

 

[Inner Space]

Sorry, but that is not a working hypothesis: it's a personal hobby horse being let out for a gallop around the paddock on the least excuse.

If you did a good quality controlled listening experiment with a good-sized population drawn from a wide cross-section of listeners, and saw little correlation with frequency response, then you could proclaim a working hypothesis without looking foolish. Oh wait: that experiment has been done and found strong correlation with FR.

Instead, you do the exact opposite: actively resist over time all the controlled experimental evidence that FR is very highly correlated with preference, then immediately jump on a single contrary sighted listening impression and hold it up in one hand and a new working hypothesis in the other hand. Plus the gall to bring up the 'billion' other sighted listening impressions as adding weight to this 'hypothesis', when in reality they are well-proven to be completely uncorrelated to anything in the sound waves, and very strongly correlated to the listeners' non-sonic biases, some being widely shared like size, weight, price, country of origin; and 'a billion or so' others being less widely shared or even completely unique like 'I hate (or love) black things but only if they are less than 500mm high and in a bright room' or, frankly, anything.

Nobody's fooled. I hope.

Yeah, whatever. @napilopez effectively agreed:

I've mentioned it before, but I'd really like to see a test where you take a very flat speaker like a Neumann or Genelec and you just progressively make the response more jagged with DSP, while keeping the overall tonality and flatness the same. Kind of like an anti-smoothing filter, lol. At what point does it become audible and at what point does it make the music sound worse? how wide do the peaks and dips of the jaggies need to be?

Meanwhile you do the fanboy thing, invest the tests with divine authority, and completely ignore the reality that no one cares. Amir just showed that intense enjoyment can be gotten from an ugly FR. More enjoyment than he reported prettier FRs. What if Toole enjoyed the 4309? Would your head explode?

 

[amirm]

To be honest, for me, I do not see a difference with speakers that have the headless panter. All these graphs all look the similar bad. Time for me to leave ASR because I have the feeling this is just a Harman promotion forum.

I hear you but not sure of your logic. Here, you are seeing objective measurements of this speaker with a $100,000 measurement system. Where would you go to get such data???

Getting more specific, the measurements are not the same. Outside of a few near perfect speakers, the rest have different levels of aberrations. We could sit there and guess what they mean as far as audibility or listen. I do the latter and provide that data point. In this case, you have not only me, but another reviewer, @napilopez having measured and listened with the same conclusions.

I think with many speakers, our objective clues are very revealing. Ultimately though, this is not a 100% precise science given the screwed up way audio systems are designed (we never know the tonality of music that is produced). I could paper over this and damn or praise speakers strictly on measurements. But I have chosen a balanced approach, damn the criticism I get from both camps.

I think we should be happy with 80% correlation between measurements and listening tests. The other 20% is there for us to think about. Could be that I am totally wrong in my assessment. Or that some factors in the measurements we are not appreciating (e.g. textbook perfect directivity of this speaker -- try to find that in headless panther measurements).

We could make forward progress if you could get a pair to listen to with return privileges. Do that and let us know what you think. I am quite confident this speaker will perform and perform very well.

 

[Newman]

Amir just showed that intense enjoyment can be gotten from an ugly FR.

Look at all the people intensely enjoying music from anything: $2 earbuds; inbuilt laptop speakers; bog-standard car cassette tape audio units in the 80's. So????

Now return to the real topic here and compare speakers in controlled listening conditions and ask about preference.

 

[JSmith]

I have the feeling this is just a Harman promotion forum

You must have missed this part;

NOTE: our company Madrona Digital is a dealer for Harman products including the JBL Line. While the measurements are performed just like any other speaker and hence can't be "gamed," you are welcome to read any kind of bias you like in my subjective assessment.

I do not see a difference with speakers that have the headless panter

Examples please.



JSmith

 

[thewas]

For what it's worth, my impressions are nearly identical to @amirm , including being a little baffled (heh) at why the messiness from 700 Hz to 2 khz didn't bother me. Just goes to show, some stuff is more offensive to the eye than ear indeed. In general, I find that a peak with a dip right next to it seems to be less offensive than if the full region peaks or dips. In general.

That's why I lately use also in REW the psychoacoustic smoothing to check my EQs (which are usually done based on var smoothing) and often to alter them a bit as a final step. Although the wide peak on 1kHz should also stay very similar but the dip next to it should not appear as much and might "pull it down" a bit, maybe you could post a couple of your above posts exemplary also with psy?

 

[aac]

I suspect the JBL 708p & 705p likely have lower sensitivity than some might guess.

708i has 91 dB sensitivity.
It's just it can boost its bass for baffle step via dsp instead of wasting that energy on heating passive elements like coils and resistors in the passive network. You can't boost in passive speakers, only reduce and sensitivity will always be of the sensitivity of the least sensitive part of FR (assuming it's linear).

Was this speaker tested with some (heavier) metal tracks?
FR looks pretty bad, but it's rather expected for a jbl speaker, jbl seems to prioritise other things than perfectly flat FR (after many speakers measured).

 

[Andreas007]

I’m really scratching my head now. What’s going on here?
Most of the FR graphs look horrible. Psychoacoustic outlier?

I have just checked the KH310 estimated in-room response graph which was marked by amir as a bit “uneven”.
Then how should this here be labeled?

Why bother measuring all that stuff if it seems that there are single/few/unknown (?) parameters which can outweigh every other sin? This result does support all the high end nonsense (?) that there is more to a speaker as you can measure and that designing speakers is not understood at all.

And please explain what is “nice tonality”. Colored speaker which happens to sound good?

Don’t take this post too seriously, I’m shocked.
Must meditate…

 

[Chromatischism]

Ah, always fun to see an NFS of one of the speakers I've tested!

For what it's worth, my impressions are nearly identical to @amirm , including being a little baffled (heh) at why the messiness from 700 Hz to 2 khz didn't bother me. Just goes to show, some stuff is more offensive to the eye than ear indeed. In general, I find that a peak with a dip right next to it seems to be less offensive than if the full region peaks or dips. In general.

In reality it's not that big of a deal and the rest of the response is quite smooth, especially in the spatial attributes region from 2-10khz. A little narrower directivity than I like, but that's always the case with these big waveguide speakers.

I'm not at my PC for a direct comparison, but here was my spin. Looks very similar (note different scaling).

View attachment 158497

I also recall the overall contour is very similar to the HDI-1600. Ironically, that speaker is a little cleaner, but I preferred this one.

I actually think I read somewhere that the dip at 1.8khz is on purpose? Something about it making the highs sound clearer without actually making it bright? Who knows =]

My biggest problem is that giant bass bump. I would definitely be running Room EQ and flattening that puppy out along with the room.

 

[YSC]

I hear you but not sure of your logic. Here, you are seeing objective measurements of this speaker with a $100,000 measurement system. Where would you go to get such data???

Getting more specific, the measurements are not the same. Outside of a few near perfect speakers, the rest have different levels of aberrations. We could sit there and guess what they mean as far as audibility or listen. I do the latter and provide that data point. In this case, you have not only me, but another reviewer, @napilopez having measured and listened with the same conclusions.

I think with many speakers, our objective clues are very revealing. Ultimately though, this is not a 100% precise science given the screwed up way audio systems are designed (we never know the tonality of music that is produced). I could paper over this and damn or praise speakers strictly on measurements. But I have chosen a balanced approach, damn the criticism I get from both camps.

I think we should be happy with 80% correlation between measurements and listening tests. The other 20% is there for us to think about. Could be that I am totally wrong in my assessment. Or that some factors in the measurements we are not appreciating (e.g. textbook perfect directivity of this speaker -- try to find that in headless panther measurements).

We could make forward progress if you could get a pair to listen to with return privileges. Do that and let us know what you think. I am quite confident this speaker will perform and perform very well.

I don't agree to the logic either, yeah it can still be enjoyable as of some not so good looking FR speakers like some Dyn, Focal, B&W or so, but all those in showrooms experiences all sounded quite good. so no arguement that less than perfect FR can't sound good, maybe not as good as real flat ones but room reflections always hide the sins more than not by making essentially any speaker jagged with +/-10-15 db here and there.

And what I stuck here is that unlike all superlatives subjective reviews all over the place, here I can read all the graphs and ignore Amirm's listening section if I decide to go for best bang for buck purchase (which I did with the Genelec) and make my own educated choice of speakers and subs. the subjective part from Amirm I always only do a quick look to see if the bad looking part really impacts IRL experience, you know sometimes although the objective performance of speakers are less than perfect compared to another brand, the originally targeted brand may have something else attracting us, so if the FR is looking meh but not horrible, but "hey, I really like how it looks" I would've look a bit into the listening test part and see if I would buy it

 

[aac]

My biggest problem is that giant bass bump. I would definitely be running Room EQ and flattening that puppy out along with the room.

It's a common practice to have bass bumps on speakers that are not fullrange. Compensates for lack of deep bass a bit.

 

[abdo123]

I hear you but not sure of your logic. Here, you are seeing objective measurements of this speaker with a $100,000 measurement system. Where would you go to get such data???

Getting more specific, the measurements are not the same. Outside of a few near perfect speakers, the rest have different levels of aberrations. We could sit there and guess what they mean as far as audibility or listen. I do the latter and provide that data point. In this case, you have not only me, but another reviewer, @napilopez having measured and listened with the same conclusions.

I think with many speakers, our objective clues are very revealing. Ultimately though, this is not a 100% precise science given the screwed up way audio systems are designed (we never know the tonality of music that is produced). I could paper over this and damn or praise speakers strictly on measurements. But I have chosen a balanced approach, damn the criticism I get from both camps.

I think we should be happy with 80% correlation between measurements and listening tests. The other 20% is there for us to think about. Could be that I am totally wrong in my assessment. Or that some factors in the measurements we are not appreciating (e.g. textbook perfect directivity of this speaker -- try to find that in headless panther measurements).

We could make forward progress if you could get a pair to listen to with return privileges. Do that and let us know what you think. I am quite confident this speaker will perform and perform very well.

I'm actually very happy that you decided to listen before measuring for once, i hope this trend continues moving forward.

something inside of me tells me the speaker wouldn't have gotten a golfing panther otherwise, considering how tiny the number of speakers that received it in the past.

 

[abdo123]

My biggest problem is that giant bass bump. I would definitely be running Room EQ and flattening that puppy out along with the room.

that's the region our brain considers 'fast bass' so you might appreciate the bump.

 

[Newman]

something inside of me tells me the speaker wouldn't have gotten a golfing panther otherwise, considering how tiny the number of speakers that received it in the past.

err, that's a soccer ball

 

[amirm]

something inside of me tells me the speaker wouldn't have gotten a golfing panther otherwise, considering how tiny the number of speakers that received it in the past.

Nah, I decided to give it soccer panther after I saw the measurements and created the EQ and cranked up the volume. Indeed measurements here didn't make a big difference as I explained in the review.

 

[abdo123]

err, that's a soccer ball

Isn't JBL a US based company

 

[Chromatischism]

that's the region our brain considers 'fast bass' so you might appreciate the bump.

It can also cause a clouded lower midrange if not done carefully.

 

[thewas]

Why bother measuring all that stuff if it seems that there are single/few/unknown (?) parameters which can outweigh every other sin? This result does support all the high end nonsense (?) that there is more to a speaker as you can measure and that designing speakers is not understood at all.

The measurements are undeniably useful, what is often questioned and discussed in several threads is the loudspeaker panther ranking which is mainly based on the subjective unblinded mono and not direct comparison evaluation of a single listener. I tend to see it rather as a welcome bonus information especially for new visitors who have not much experience in interpreting the measurements but myself would base my choices mainly on the measurements.