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JBL 4309 Review (Speaker)

voodooless

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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?
 

rammster

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Well this is deff turning out as an interesting review.
I have now heard quite a few speakers with Harman scores and generally they align resonably well for me. Not an exact correlation however.
Along with experiencing 2 speakers with similar scores sounding very similar, I have deff used two speakers with similar scores that sound substantially different. And speakers with the same score that I prefer much differently.
I have also had at least 1 highish score that I absolutely did not like, ELAC DBR62.
I have also found that for high playback levels most of the data here goes out the window and some speakers just scale up and up while others simply do not sound good loud.
I have also found something that will make some very staunch objectivists cringe, that some speakers truly have that "je ne sais quoi". They just do.


As far as I know JBL still blind tests all these speakers before release, so that fact that it exists means it hopefully passed blind preference testing. They certainly have the resources to produce whatever sound they want.
Amirs testing is fairly controlled for a brief sighted test compared with some others in that is under consistent conditions.
He liked the 4349 as well. It is possible that something about this design strategy is really working. Certainly the ability to stay clean and go loud is working.
Anyway I am curious to find out more.
Amir did not like 4319
Conclusions
Both objectively and subjectively I was disappointed in the results of JBL 4319. We have advanced in understanding what makes good sound at home since this speaker was designed. I can see its appeal in its look and pedigree but it sure is not for me. The woofer though is low distortion and produces copious amount of bass which combined with higher efficiency, would pair well with low power amplifier. Perhaps such use with a tube amp to change its response and/or playing with controls would make it sound better. For this reason, I did not give it the lowest score possible, but one step above.

Overall I can't recommend the JBL 4319 unless you like looking at it more than listening to it.
 
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amirm

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Other speakers like the Genelec 8341 got a 6.8 and only got 4/5,
Careful there. I knock active speakers that run out of power and start to crackle and spit out all kinds of noises, not because of frequency response errors. Here it is from my review of 8341:

All was not well. You may be wondering with measurements as good as posted, why the 8341 did not get the top honor panther and had to settle for the next grade down. I was quite surprised that as I turned up the volume, listening at just 1 meter or so from the speaker, it just would not get that loud. At first I heard a glitching/ticking sound which then moved into red LED coming up with much more distortion. The amplification is simply too low for the amount of bass this speaker produces.

Nothing in my measurements would inform you of above. Ears are superior in this regard.

Indeed, through these listening tests I have identified this key weakness in many active speakers versus passive ones where you can choose the level of amplification.

Sign of great technology is when you, as the user, don't have to be aware of their limitations and work around them. Such is the case with playing at elevated volumes.
 

ROOSKIE

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Amir did not like 4319
Who said anything about the 4319?
The 4349 is the speaker that I mentioned.
It is the 4309's big brother.
I realize these #'s are confusing.
 
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amirm

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I think he still has a point. You saw the measurements only after your subjective opinion had already been formed. The concern has never been that you're dishonest about what you hear, but rather that what you hear is different based on what you've seen(given we hear with our brains).

Here, you heard a great sound, then saw the poor measurements, then decided to still report honestly on what you heard.
No. I developed equalization for what the frequency response measurements showed to be in error. The correction was barely audible and not at all how it looks on the graph. Our auditory bandwidth is enlarging as frequencies go up which reduce the impact of such aberrations. In addition, you have to have music content that hits on those specific notes, and know in advance that such notes should sound different to detect it as something being wrong. This is asking a lot from a tester. Harman's research showed their trained listeners could detect response variations in 6 bands. That is heck of a lot wider than this very narrow response error.

Take that error out and the rest of the response is quite smooth, combined with directivity that is perfect meaning reflections are in very good sync with on-axis.

None of this combines to say the measurements are "poor." They aren't. We have one anomaly of note and I determined through careful, blind, controlled testing that it only had a subtle effect.

Now it is possible I am wrong. But it is just as well that your read of these measurements is wrong. This review should make people think. It made me think as to why the response error was not audible so I ran experiments to prove that to myself. You need to do the same. Don't just pontificate about what I did or did not do.
 
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amirm

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I think a useful experiment here, would be to do a double blind comparison of the KH 80 with the JBL 4309 and see how subjective preferences would align compared to the computed predictions.
They are different animals though. The KH80 is for near field and will not remotely play as loud as 4309 and hence be useful in far field. But yes, I get the point of making such a comparison.
 

napilopez

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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?

A little confused -- what doesn't my measurement show? Obviously lower resolution but The DI curves in my spin track amir's quite closely.

Pretty sure it's mostly just port noise.
 

pozz

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Same is reflected in our contoured plot:

JBL 4309 Measurements Horizontal directivity  2-way horn speaker Synthesis.png


Vertically naturally is not as perfect but still a lot better than many 2-way non-coaxial speakers:

JBL 4309 Measurements Vertical directivity  2-way horn speaker Synthesis.png
I think there's some luck with the range in which the ~1kHz resonance is happening. It covers a narrow band goes almost entirely around the speaker in both horizontal/vertical responses. But that is also the area where the response transitions from directional to omnidirectional. That gradation probably masks part of it.

That the resonance is more prominent vertically than horizontally helps too.

Edit: What I was alluding to above is that the directivity of resonances is an important factor, but only if it stands out: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/speaker-distortion-polar-plots.14817/
 
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oivavoi

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I have a very hard time reconciling these measurements with the panther rating. No way of getting around that. This just seems strange to me - a passive speaker with lots of resonances and a jagged frequency response (which supposedly are the two most important things in speakers according to the Toole/Olive school) - getting such a recommendation?

The really interesting thing in this review is that Amir decided to listen to the speakers before seeing the measurements, and put it out there honestly (hats off to our host for his integrity and honesty once again!). I still think this attests to the value of listening before seeing measurements, and it may also indicate that the panther rating for loudspeakers may not be perfectly objective as it stands now.

I would really have liked to listen to a recording of these speakers like @thewas did in that other thread, and compared it to other speakers...
 
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Sancus

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and it may also indicate that the panther rating for loudspeakers may not be perfectly objective as it stands now.

I mean it was never intended to be objective, it's supposed to be Amir's opinion.
 

oivavoi

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I mean it was never intended to be objective, it's supposed to be Amir's opinion.

Yeah but much of the halo that comes with is still that it's supposedly "sciency" at least... or I might have read the panthers wrong all along
 

GXAlan

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Who said anything about the 4319?
The 4349 is the speaker that I mentioned.
It is the 4309's big brother.
I realize these #'s are confusing.

What’s interesting is that the Preference Score is similar between the 4319 (Greg Timbers “less focused on measurements) and the 4309 (new generation, focused on measurements). Amir really did not like the 4319 but he did like the 4309 which parallels the Revel experience.

If anything, Amir likes the Revel sound since he owns a Revel Salon2.
In the blind test of four speakers, 80% liked the Revel.

Bottom line is that while 20% of the population may in fact like something other than the standard science of the Harman Preference Score and there can be two speakers with similar objective scores but different subjective experience, the Harman score wasn’t intended to identify the best speaker design in the world. The Harman science was intended to identify the best way to sell as many speakers as they can to as wide of an audience.

The 4319 does sound better with the tweeter more flat, although it is intended as a monitor with in room flat response as opposed to downsloping. The 4319 has exceptionally low distortion for its drivers, which is impressive considering that you need to move to current generation Revel’s to get close to the performance.

JBL 4319
1% distortion at 40 Hz
3% distortion at 60 Hz
0.1% at 1 kHz

F228 Be
4.5% at 40 Hz
2% at 60 Hz
0.5% at 1 kHz
 

Robbo99999

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I wouldn't buy this speaker, I think it's sub-optimal with it's jagged frequency response and early roll off of bass - we talk all the time about DACS being transparent or overengineered and they get praised for their perfection, so I think this should carry over into speakers where possible especially if there are better options out there for the money. I'd endeavour to find a speaker with a smooth frequency response & better bass extension whilst still retaining the good directivity....I'm fairly certain there must be better options out there than this speaker, why compromise!
 
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richard12511

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Careful there. I knock active speakers that run out of power and start to crackle and spit out all kinds of noises, not because of frequency response errors. Here it is from my review of 8341:
I think you misunderstand my point. The 8341 was mentioned for that exact reason, actually. The point I'm making is that great measurements combined with not great listening test equals a low(er) score than bad measurements and great listening test. Subjective listening test is far more important than the measurements in so far as it affects the panther score. Why the 8341 did worse(can't play full range and loud) in the listening test is besides the point, as are the reasons for the SVS(unknown?) and Elac(bad noise at high volume). The point is, they scored worse than speakers that they vastly out-measure simply because they didn't sound as good to your ears, for whatever reason(dynamics, harshness, etc.).
 

dfuller

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The port resonance and baffle step hump are frustrating, to say the least. Are they audible? Eh, kinda. Are they reflective of less-than-amazing engineering? Yes, in my opinion.
 
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Newman

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Here is the on-axis FR with PSY smoothing:-
Screen Shot 2021-10-13 at 9.56.11 am.png


I'm not seeing much there to support an argument that it should sound bad. Combined with its exemplary beam width control, I would say there is reason to subjectively like it a lot.
 

napilopez

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I have a very hard time reconciling these measurements with the panther rating. No way of getting around that. This just seems strange to me - a passive speaker with lots of resonances and a jagged frequency response (which supposedly are the two most important things in speakers according to the Toole/Olive school) - getting such a recommendation?

The really interesting thing in this review is that Amir decided to listen to the speakers before seeing the measurements, and put it out there honestly (hats off to our host for his integrity and honesty once again!). I still think this attests to the value of listening before seeing measurements, and it may also indicate that the panther rating for loudspeakers may not be perfectly objective as it stands now.

I would really have liked to listen to a recording of these speakers like @thewas did in that other thread, and compared it to other speakers...

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.

I wouldn't buy this speaker, I think it's sub-optimal with it's jagged frequency response and early roll off of bass - we talk all the time about DACS being transparent or overengineered and they get praised for their perfection, so I think this should carry over into speakers especially if there are better options out there for the money. I'd endeavour to find a speaker with a smooth frequency response & better bass extension whilst still retaining the good directivity....I'm fairly certain there must be better options out there than this speaker, why compromise!

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.

4309 vs hdi-1600 asr.png


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.
4309 v hdi.png


Just some food for thought.
 
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richard12511

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No. I developed equalization for what the frequency response measurements showed to be in error. The correction was barely audible and not at all how it looks on the graph. Our auditory bandwidth is enlarging as frequencies go up which reduce the impact of such aberrations. In addition, you have to have music content that hits on those specific notes, and know in advance that such notes should sound different to detect it as something being wrong. This is asking a lot from a tester. Harman's research showed their trained listeners could detect response variations in 6 bands. That is heck of a lot wider than this very narrow response error.
If you're trying to convince me that you seeing the measurements before hand doesn't bias you in any way, then we'll have to agree to disagree on that ;). Also, it seems you're getting a bit defensive towards something that wasn't meant as an attack against you. Probably poorly stated on my part, but I'm actually praising you here for listening first. I really hope it continues, even if it's just time to time. I don't think it's possible for our brain to not be biased to at least some degree. I recognize the advantages of measuring first, but I think the advantages of listening first outweigh those. Ultimately, what you did here (listen > measure > EQ > listen) is the best of both worlds. Thank you for taking the time to do it.

Take that error out and the rest of the response is quite smooth,
I'm not sure I agree with this. This a 4dB peak resonance from 800-1,100Hz. Assuming that's the error you're talking about? The cancellation on its own(seen best in the DI) is not what I'm talking about here.

For one, I don't think it's fair to say ~"so remove a 4dB positive magnitude 300-400Hz wide resonance" right at one of the most critical sections (800-1100Hz). I think a lot of speakers could look quite a bit smoother if you remove their biggest flaw.

Second, calling the remaining response "quite smooth" I still wouldn't agree with. You still have a big hump at 110Hz, a 2dB magnitude fairly wide depression from 200-500/600Hz, then a resonance at 1.5kHz, followed by a dip at 1.8-2kHz, then a resonance at 2.5kHz, then a 1-2dB rise from 2.8-4kHz, then a 3 to 4dB drop from 4kHz to 10kHz, then a resonance at 11kHz, and finally another one at 15kHz. To make things easier to see, I've put a black box over the 400Hz wide section you say to "take out".

jbl2.png


The remaining response is still not what I would call "quite smooth", for a $2,000 speaker. I would describe it more as "rough, but not bad"(overall shape is still decent). Could just be a difference of subjective opinion, though. Here is a side by side comparison with a $79 speaker that you gave a 0/5, and described as "fairly uneven" and with "multiple resonances".


Screen Shot 2021-10-12 at 6.51.53 PM.png


That's a $2,000 speaker you rated 5/5 against a $79 speaker you rated 0/5. The commentary is also very different. My point is, subjective impression rules the day when it comes to panther score. Frequency response, price, etc. are obviously a much smaller factor. Like I said, I like it this way. We essentially have both a subjective(panther) and objective(Olive) score for every speaker.

combined with directivity that is perfect meaning reflections are in very good sync with on-axis.
This I agree with 100%, and was I point I brought up in my first or second post. This is up there with the best directivity we've ever seen. To me, it looks very similar to the DIYSG HTM-12 v2 that @hardisj measured(which also has several resonances).

I think trying to come up with a new modified Olive score that matches even closer would be a fun task for this site. Maybe weighing directivity more is one possible way to improve it? This thing has quite a few resonances, but with the SOTA directivity it has, those resonances were clearly not enough of a factor to hurt it.

None of this combines to say the measurements are "poor." They aren't. We have one anomaly of note and I determined through careful, blind, controlled testing that it only had a subtle effect.
Maybe we have different ideas of what "poor" measurements constitute. I would describe the above graph on the left, for a $2,000 speaker, as "poor". I also don't agree with judging something after removing "one anomaly", when that 1 anomaly is a 300Hz wide 4dB positive amplitude resonance centered at ~900Hz.

Now it is possible I am wrong. But it is just as well that your read of these measurements is wrong.
It's definitely possible I'm wrong, and that's part of why I'm responding. I'm hoping these side by side examples will help to give context to others. They can see whether or not my assessment of this speakers frequency response as "poor" is being too harsh. Not saying terrible, but "poor" is just the best word I could think of to describe what I see. Keep in mind I'm talking strictly about the FR here. As mentioned, directivity is excellent. I also think @napilopez makes a great point about the overall shape of the curve being good. Despite the many resonances, I bet this would look "quite smooth" with good smoothing.

This review should make people think. It made me think as to why the response error was not audible so I ran experiments to prove that to myself. You need to do the same. Don't just pontificate about what I did or did not do.
Agreed. I think this speaker would be an excellent choice to involve in a blind listening comparison. It's got quite a few resonances and response errors, but the overall slope is decent, and the directivity is SOTA. I'll keep my eye out for a used set :).
 

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amirm

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If you're trying to convince me that you seeing the measurements before hand doesn't bias you in any way, then we'll have to agree to disagree on that ;).
I don't why this hogwash argument keeps getting repeated. You think I am not biased by the look, brand, configuration, etc. of this speaker but am when looking at measurements? Where on earth do you get such logic? A fortune cookie? A sighted, single speaker test is just that. It doesn't jump out and become reliable because you don't look at measurements.

The key to reliable assessment of speakers is to take measurements and then augment them with specialized listening precisely how I explained in the review. I have actually done a video on this. Here is the spot where I talk about this very thing:


But I highly recommend that you watch from the start of it if you have not seen it before.

I know everything you know and then some about measurements I post. If I am not ready to read them like you are, what precisely gets you to do so? Unlike you, I used EQ to flatten the response. Therefore I know its precise impact on fidelity. You do not. So unless you have some training that gives you this ultra accurate spectrum analyzer in your head, your continued objections don't matter to me and are tiring to keep reading.
 
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