This is a review, listening tests, EQ and detailed measurements of JBL 4312M II 3-way compact studio monitor (passive speaker). It is on kind loan from a member and I think costs US $1,000 for a pair.
Without its ordinary looking grill, the 4312M II definitely has that vintage vibe but with added "beauty" of that white woofer. Those were the days where drivers were positioned to look good. Speaker is a bit heavy for its compact size, which imparts a feeling of quality which its standard box does not impart. Here is the back side:
What did the originals have? Screw terminals?
Let's measure it to see if these old ideas of speaker design were any good and whether if any faults have been remedied.
Note: I am the founder of Madrona Digital, a company that specializes in custom installs of electronics in homes and business. We are a dealer for Harman and hence JBL line although I am pretty sure we have never sourced any of these speakers. Objective measurements are as they are but feel free to read bias into my subjective remarks.
If you are new to speaker reviews on ASR, please watch this video understanding speaker measurements.
JBL 4312 MII Speaker Measurements
Let's start with the frequency response measurements of the 4312M II:
Story starts pretty good with that smooth response up to 1 kHz and then it looks like a high-school kid with no speaker design experience was told to slap a tweeter and midrange drivers together! What on earth is going on? A clue may be the super messy driver responses:
We have so many resonances that I lost count. I don't even know what the midrange is doing (some of it could be bleeding from adjacent driver). Predictably, things don't get better off-axis:
Resulting in very odd predicted in-room response:
Horizontally placed midrange and tweeter create interference pattern between them as you go off axis in either direction:
It looks better vertically so perhaps that is the way you want to use them:
With uneven frequency response, setting a level for distortion tests was non-trivial. I tried but I think I played them a bit louder than 86 dBSPL:
At that 86 dBSPL, I could hear the speaker squealing indicating distortion products that we can clearly see, especially those resonances.
Resonances naturally show up in waterfall plot:
Impedance shows the same:
Even the usually information-free step response shows anomalies:
JBL 4312M II Listening Tests and Equalization
I didn't want to listen to the speaker given the seriously poor measurements but decided to do anyway. You would think that the response would make your phone speaker proud but it is not so. It doesn't sound nearly as broken as you would imagine. Why? Because the response is actually pretty good up to 1 kHz. A lot of music spectrum that is important is carried in that region. Alas, those resonances can make the speaker sound bright even though overall treble response is shelved down.
You have to be a masochist to attempt to create an EQ by eye here but I tried anyway
:
Without the EQ, the sound would quickly become tubby and lacking air (depending on content). And again, bright at times. With EQ, the ambiance around female vocals came back and some of the brightness taken care of with those two notch filters.
Alas, with or without EQ, more than half of my reference tracks were either not pleasurable or sounded annoying. This is just not my idea of a high fidelity speaker. I mean these are extremely well recorded tracks that are used to showcase systems and here, they just don't sound right/good.
Note that due to high sensitivity, I could not get the woofer to distort so playback dynamics was actually quite good for such a small speaker.
Conclusions
My impression of these JBL speakers was that they borrowed the look of the classic speakers but updated the parts/design to make them sound good. Clearly I was mistaken. By any standard, the 4312 M II is broken. I don't know how the marketing person with a straight face chose to call them "studio monitors." Heaven forbid anyone using them to create content!
I can't recommend the JBL 4312M II unless you want to put it on the shelf to just look at to bring back old memories....
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Without its ordinary looking grill, the 4312M II definitely has that vintage vibe but with added "beauty" of that white woofer. Those were the days where drivers were positioned to look good. Speaker is a bit heavy for its compact size, which imparts a feeling of quality which its standard box does not impart. Here is the back side:
What did the originals have? Screw terminals?
Let's measure it to see if these old ideas of speaker design were any good and whether if any faults have been remedied.
Note: I am the founder of Madrona Digital, a company that specializes in custom installs of electronics in homes and business. We are a dealer for Harman and hence JBL line although I am pretty sure we have never sourced any of these speakers. Objective measurements are as they are but feel free to read bias into my subjective remarks.
If you are new to speaker reviews on ASR, please watch this video understanding speaker measurements.
JBL 4312 MII Speaker Measurements
Let's start with the frequency response measurements of the 4312M II:
Story starts pretty good with that smooth response up to 1 kHz and then it looks like a high-school kid with no speaker design experience was told to slap a tweeter and midrange drivers together! What on earth is going on? A clue may be the super messy driver responses:
We have so many resonances that I lost count. I don't even know what the midrange is doing (some of it could be bleeding from adjacent driver). Predictably, things don't get better off-axis:
Resulting in very odd predicted in-room response:
Horizontally placed midrange and tweeter create interference pattern between them as you go off axis in either direction:
It looks better vertically so perhaps that is the way you want to use them:
With uneven frequency response, setting a level for distortion tests was non-trivial. I tried but I think I played them a bit louder than 86 dBSPL:
At that 86 dBSPL, I could hear the speaker squealing indicating distortion products that we can clearly see, especially those resonances.
Resonances naturally show up in waterfall plot:
Impedance shows the same:
Even the usually information-free step response shows anomalies:
JBL 4312M II Listening Tests and Equalization
I didn't want to listen to the speaker given the seriously poor measurements but decided to do anyway. You would think that the response would make your phone speaker proud but it is not so. It doesn't sound nearly as broken as you would imagine. Why? Because the response is actually pretty good up to 1 kHz. A lot of music spectrum that is important is carried in that region. Alas, those resonances can make the speaker sound bright even though overall treble response is shelved down.
You have to be a masochist to attempt to create an EQ by eye here but I tried anyway
:Without the EQ, the sound would quickly become tubby and lacking air (depending on content). And again, bright at times. With EQ, the ambiance around female vocals came back and some of the brightness taken care of with those two notch filters.
Alas, with or without EQ, more than half of my reference tracks were either not pleasurable or sounded annoying. This is just not my idea of a high fidelity speaker. I mean these are extremely well recorded tracks that are used to showcase systems and here, they just don't sound right/good.
Note that due to high sensitivity, I could not get the woofer to distort so playback dynamics was actually quite good for such a small speaker.
Conclusions
My impression of these JBL speakers was that they borrowed the look of the classic speakers but updated the parts/design to make them sound good. Clearly I was mistaken. By any standard, the 4312 M II is broken. I don't know how the marketing person with a straight face chose to call them "studio monitors." Heaven forbid anyone using them to create content!
I can't recommend the JBL 4312M II unless you want to put it on the shelf to just look at to bring back old memories....
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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