The 4319’s have been in my main system since early 2018 so I feel qualified to speak about them. With some experimentation and patience, these can serve most music really well and, overall, sound really good. If all I had was a set of measurements and a couple of weeks with the 4319’s (or even just a couple of months), I probably would have come to the same conclusions as the original reviewer (such conclusion being: they sound bad), unless somehow I got lucky with my initial setup (improbable—more on that later). It took me almost two years of experimentation to find out how to make these sing, but the journey was worth it because I’m satisfied and have no intention to change speakers anytime soon. So, why did it take almost two years? Because there are so many variables to play with. These are the ones I focused on: speaker position, listener position, high and mid-frequency adjustments, cabling, and room treatments. Also bear in mind that I didn’t have the “benefit” of a set of measurements and was therefore doing all my experimentation based on what my ears alone told me. Also worth mentioning is that with every system change, proper evaluation requires listening to a variety of music over a period of time.
So, let’s begin with those high and mid frequency adjustments. Yeah, the speakers sounded way too forward and aggressive with both those controls (the white marker) set to the “0 db” position. At the “0 db” position, the tweeter and midrange are simply going to pump out too much sound for a lot of folks’ listening rooms. The only scenario where I can see these speakers sounding “right” or “good” with the controls set to the “0 db” position is in a very large listening room where the speakers sit in plenty of free space away from walls. My final landing spot and where the controls currently sit today is: high-frequency adjustment – white marker slightly past the 12 o’clock position; mid-frequency adjustment – white marker slightly before the 12 o’clock position. It’s worth noting that I drive the 4319’s with an all-tube system (Audio Research tube pre-amp and Audio Research tube amp) which makes everything naturally mid-range-centric to begin with. That might explain why I am able to have the midrange adjustment slightly before the 12 o’clock position with good results.
Next, let me discuss speaker (and listener) position. I played with toe-in, height and distance from walls. Regarding toe-in, I never liked any toe-in with these, regardless of what else I did with them. The instruction manual for the speakers ratified my findings: “For best results, place the speakers 5 – 8 feet apart. If you place the speakers farther apart than this, angle them towards the listening position.” Reading between the lines, this means no toe-in is recommended unless the speakers are greater than 8 feet apart. With regard to height, I started out with those low-slung metal stands that you commonly see in photos of these and other similar JBL models (like the L100). I didn’t like them because I felt like the soundstage was too low, even despite the stands being angled back a few degrees. Perhaps the vertical dispersion of the 4319’s is not too great (can someone connect one of the measurements to this finding?). So, I had some Sound Anchors custom-built for them. I didn’t know exactly how high to go with the Sound Anchors, but I figured if I’m going to error, I should error on the low side and not have them too high. So, in went the Sound Anchors which brought the tweeters closer, but not quite to, ear-level. Raising the speakers higher made an overall subjective improvement, not necessarily because the tweeters were closer to ear level, but because the midrange and woofer were further up into the air in more free space, I feel. I wound up raising the speakers a bit further by placing some wood blocks on top of the Sound Anchors (not ideal, I know, but I believe the benefits outweigh any detriment). So, all said and done, the tops of the speakers are a shade under 41.5 inches off the floor after spikes, stands and the wood blocks on top of the stands. The speakers are decoupled from the wood blocks with the blue sorbothane pads that came with the Sound Anchors. Moving on to distance from walls and listener position: I found that the more I moved the 4319’s away from side walls (and thus closer together) the better things sounded. This reduced the contribution from reflections and gave the mid-range and bass an overall weightier feel. In the end, what I have is a classic equilateral triangle setup with these rules of thumb: (i) distance from side walls = 1.6x the distance from the wall behind the speaker; (ii) distance between the speakers = 75% to 100% of the distance from the front of the speakers to the listening position; (iii) listening position = 2/3 the length of the room, beginning from the wall behind the speakers. I had never paid much attention to these rules of thumb, but the more I adhered to them, the better the 4319’s sounded. I guess one could say this is a “near field” setup.
Lastly, moving on to the most controversial topic: cabling. I’m fortunate to have more than one type of everything. Whatever cable is not in my system is on standby in my closet. I think most would agree that such a strategy increases the chances of getting the cake iced just right. The 4319’s are no exception when it comes to speakers that can reveal different shades of color with the swapping out of one (or more than one) cable. I swapped back and forth between two sets of speaker cables. One set of speaker cable was a bi-wire, and the other set was single-wire and thus required the use of jumpers. I played with power cords and interconnects. I played with it all until I arrived at a combination that sounded best to my ears. I could go on with further observations about cabling that I perceived with these speakers, but I won’t because I don’t want to step into the cable controversy thing here.
So, after all that, the 4319’s sound really great in my room. The biggest keys to getting great sound from them is to adjust down the high and mid-frequency controls to suit your environment and keep the speakers as far away from sidewalls as possible. These may not be the best choice for a highly reflective room, or a room smaller than mine (my room is 14ft long, 12ft wide, with a tray ceiling). I have no idea how these sound with solid state amplification. The tweeter doesn’t have all the shimmer and detail of the best soft domes and electrostatics, but it accounts for itself really well. The bass is not bloated, and the midrange is realistic and tonally correct. The 4319’s represent the music really well at low to mid-levels. At high levels, they can get a bit peaky at times, depending on the source material. As far as the measurements go, they do not appear to be more idiosyncratic than other speakers I’ve owned and read about, and less in some cases. All speakers measure and behave differently, so the chances of dropping any set of speakers in your system (and room) and having them sound the way you want right off the bat are nil. What is needed to get the best from any speaker is a lot of time, patience and willingness to experiment. And thankfully, the variables to play with are almost endless, or to put it another way, plentiful enough to arrive at the results you want. It is possible that you can run across a speaker that, no matter what you do, you can’t get to sound right in your environment. In my case, the 4319’s were not one of those speakers. I hope this provides some useful perspective to this thread and these speakers.
Are they be bringing these to the general US market, or did MD just have a few pairs for whatever reason? I imagine the L100classic and the L80 or whatever the little brother is would be their target for US buyers. When I saw these for like a grand I figured it was a good deal. That makes sense these would be made in China they were about half price of the others(I do not mind the made in China moniker anymore, everything is made there). Thanks for the info-the umik is only like 60-70 bucks I may try to get one from Amazon next week when I get paid.
