JBL 4312M II 3-way Studio Monitor Review

[DSJR]

Even if it's not SOTA the 4312 G is much better, I can't figure out when this terrible M-2 version is from ? .
https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews/speaker/bookshelf/jbl-4312g-loudspeaker-review/

Isn't it a 'baby' version of the original 4311mk2 which got a pretty fair review by Martin Colloms back in the 90's? It apparently needed a Krell integrated to really come alive though (don't you love these gurus?)....

Tannoy have a similar desktop miniature - They've dressed them up a bit over previous versions -

Tannoy Autograph Mini Standmount Speakers

AUTOGRAPH MINI-OW elevates your audio content to the levels envisioned by the original mastering engineer – all of which needs to be experienced in all its unabridged beauty, detail, and nuance. A truly great loudspeaker design enables the speaker system

www.hificorner.co.uk

Judging by other small Tannoys I remember with the tulip waveguide, I'd expect them to be screamers....

 

[Tryphon]

Completely unacceptable. Especially when you put both words "Monitor" and "JBL" side by side...

I love to have my dream speaker the 4343b reviewed by Amir. Due to the age, rarity and size of the 4343, it will never happend. Not sure it measure great btw.

 

[martin900]

They are nothing more than novelty toys.
Alas, if you're going to measure the original 4311/4312, I'd bet they wouldn't look that much different.

 

[DanielT]

Judging by other small Tannoys I remember with the tulip waveguide, I'd expect them to be screamers....

Tannoy Gold 8 seems to measure fine and it has a tulip waveguide, but as far as I can see no
screaming tweeter:
(if that's what you mean by screaming?)

Tannoy Gold 8 REW Measurements

Greetings, everyone. this is my first post here at ASR. These Tannoy Gold 8 studio monitors have been sitting on my study room desk for 2 weeks now. I bought them for one reason: the look. I mean just look at them… These golden outlines are splendid. Perhaps too splendid for critical...

audiosciencereview.com

 

[Drengur]

Yes, I know. A lot of reviews in the new year with bad outcomes.... I am as depressed about them as you are....

The product are not doing well, but the outcome is good nevertheless; people can avoid buying something that under performs.

 

[DanielT]

Good job Amir.
Nice consumer information, so those who read this test don't have to throw away $1,000 unnecessarily.

The member who submitted them can probably, if he or she (unlikely) wants to, sell them for a decent price. There is a demand on the used market for JBL
in combination with such a quirky vintage design.

 

[pierre]

reserved

 

[renaudrenaud]

Completely unacceptable. Especially when you put both words "Monitor" and "JBL" side by side...

No a big surprise for me. I consider this brand with a lot of distance, first experience many years ago was so horrible I thought all JBL products were bs. When you see the measurements you can understand why European people with less exposition to this brand than American people are not so convinced.

And please @amirm, I think it is time to found in your backlog a nice product now.

 

[DSJR]

Tannoy Gold 8 seems to measure fine and it has a tulip waveguide, but as far as I can see no
screaming tweeter:
(if that's what you mean by screaming?)

Tannoy Gold 8 REW Measurements

Greetings, everyone. this is my first post here at ASR. These Tannoy Gold 8 studio monitors have been sitting on my study room desk for 2 weeks now. I bought them for one reason: the look. I mean just look at them… These golden outlines are splendid. Perhaps too splendid for critical...

audiosciencereview.com

I'm thinking smaller Daniel... Maybe the current regime has finally flattened the tweeter's response in the smaller coned models (larger ones weren't like this), but my experience was of the tulip tweeter making itself very much 'heard' in the 5 - 6" DC drivers. They *were* as a company well able to design decently performing speakers but made a couple of iffy turns in their model ranges.

 

[polmuaddib]

Thanks, Amir!
This is important review as it again shows that not all old is better then new. In your face, vintage lovers

 

[fpitas]

If they were somewhat cheaper, these might be good to practice crossover design. You can't do much worse.

 

[beagleman]

So Keep my Wharfedale 12.1 or get these.......

Seriously these in my mind may be worse than that "Human" Speaker or the Realistic MC1000!!,. especially factoring in value.

I even give some leeway to the Realistic as it was Decades old....wow

 

[DanielT]

I'm thinking smaller Daniel... Maybe the current regime has finally flattened the tweeter's response in the smaller coned models (larger ones weren't like this), but my experience was of the tulip tweeter making itself very much 'heard' in the 5 - 6" DC drivers. They *were* as a company well able to design decently performing speakers but made a couple of iffy turns in their model ranges.

That's how it is. Some good other less good or bad models, which links back to this JBL. I am fully convinced that JBL knows how the 4312M II measures,performance (but JBL ignores it, I said conspiratorially.) , so the issue with this speaker is not really from a technical perspective.
JBL 4312M II should be analyzed from a market perspective, supply-demand, the craze and desire for vintage design and looks and so on. You who are a former, experienced seller of HiFi knows how it works.

 

[kongkong]

HI-RES (High RESonance) sticker

 

[fredoamigo]

No a big surprise for me. I consider this brand with a lot of distance, first experience many years ago was so horrible I thought all JBL products were bs. When you see the measurements you can understand why European people with less exposition to this brand than American people are not so convinced.

And please @amirm, I think it is time to found in your backlog a nice product now.

I don't think this brand is to blame because its history speaks for itself. On the other hand, its marketing department does. but who gave permission to put this trash on the market? what was the target? Or maybe, they put it on the market so it was only a prototype at the preliminary stage?

 

[Palladium]

I don't think this brand is to blame because its history speaks for itself. On the other hand, its marketing department does. but who gave permission to put this trash on the market? what was the target? Or maybe, they put it on the market so it was only a prototype at the preliminary stage?

I don't know, maybe it sounds good in certain rooms with certain tubes playing certain genres of music?

But I also don't buy the argument that expensive distortion is somehow better than cheap distortion.

 

[AudioSceptic]

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.
View attachment 340889
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:

View attachment 340890
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.

JBL 4312 MII Speaker Measurements
Let's start with the frequency response measurements of the 4312M II:
View attachment 340891
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:
View attachment 340892
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:


View attachment 340893

Resulting in very odd predicted in-room response:
View attachment 340894

Horizontally placed midrange and tweeter create interference pattern between them as you go off axis in either direction:
View attachment 340895

View attachment 340896

It looks better vertically so perhaps that is the way you want to use them:
View attachment 340897

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:
View attachment 340898
View attachment 340899

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:

View attachment 340900

Impedance shows the same:
View attachment 340901

Even the usually information-free step response shows anomalies:
View attachment 340902

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 :
View attachment 340903

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....

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

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This thing is much smaller than I thought.
"

4312MII​

The 4312MII is a 5.25-inch, 3-way high-performance Studio Monitor that truly embodies JBL’s 70-year legacy of world-class audio. Featuring a 5.25-inch pure pulp woofer for powerful lows, a 2-inch pure pulp midrange for accurate voice reproduction, and a 0.75-inch titanium dome tweeter for crystalline highs, the 4312MII delivers vivid imaging for the full audio spectrum. Its ultra-compact design means it fits easily on your bookshelf, or on your wall with the optional mounting bracket. Two finish options, black ash with black grille and walnut natural wood with blue grille, allow it to blend elegantly into any decor."
A 2" midrange? That seems weird.

 

[Haskil]

Properly doped bextrene cones and careful crossover design back in the mid 70's was very much better than the imported paper coned squawkers and/or screechers we had to try.. We may have lost ground nowadays, but I maintain the UK was well ahead of the game all those years ago, the original 4311/L100 was an absolute joke on speech reproduction...

You are going a bit quickly: you forget in particular Elipson and Cabasse in France who manufactured high fidelity speakers and studio monitors of remarkable quality and for the Elipson an aesthetic which marked its time by using cones in paper and also, at Cabasse, membranes with a honeycomb structure whose weight/rigidity ratio was remarkable in every way compared to bextrene whose only advantage was a very low cost price and regularity of performance... l'ORTF and after Radio France were equipped with these speakers developed with the manufacturers - as the BBC did in Great Britain...

 

[fredoamigo]

My research to find the progenitor stopped in 1996 A 28-year-old conception

1982	4312
1986	4312A
1990	4312XP
1992	4312B
1996	4312MK2
1999	4312B MK2
2000	4312C
2000	4312SX
2004	4312D
2011	4312E
2016	4312SE
2019	4312G

 

[JayGilb]

If they were somewhat cheaper, these might be good to practice crossover design. You can't do much worse.

Or a DIY bi-amp project.