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JBL AC25 Speaker Review

Rate this speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 108 69.2%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 42 26.9%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 5 3.2%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 1 0.6%

  • Total voters
    156
OP
amirm

amirm

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Yes, you have explained in the text but the charts are there to be used unrelated to the text and they show a terrible speaker, which is not necessarily the case.
How? Here is the frequency response graph:

index.php


Right there in the second bullet it says that company provides DSP correction. In what way would someone ignore that but see the graph???
 

dasdoing

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I think one problem with this type of speaker is that they are not really made for HIFI distances. The crossover for the tweeter is at 4k, right? in the 1m in-room response of the distorsion graphs it seams that the drivers are still not combined? How does the Klippel actualy compensate for big speakers that wont combine in the nearfield? I might be wrong here, but this just looks way too strange, even without DSP


EDIT: on the other hand their own graph states 1m!?
 
Last edited:

AwesomeSauce2015

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I ended up marking "poor", not exactly for the stock frequency response, since it is designed to be used with DSP, and the directivity is good, so with EQ it should perform fairly well.
My main reason was the insane tweeter distortion. Given that this is a "pro" speaker, the listening distances will be fairly large compared to domestic setups, and the speaker should be able to get reasonably loud without falling apart.
That tweeter is already falling apart at 86db. Given the intended use case for these speakers, a listening distance of 10-20ft is realistic.

The only other area where this could gain some points would be either sensitivity (not all that high), or bass capability (nope)...

And given the $1000 price... I could get the PRX 908 for that price, and it would blow this out of the water.
So this speaker is pretty poor.
 

PeteL

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Not just these speakers themselves, this price already looks weird :p
In the sense they are expensive, Yes. But this is not a consumer product. In the B2B world no one try to say Let’s makeit 999$ it will sell more than a thousand. That would look weird. They take the cost, mark it up x% and excel spits a number. Buyers look at cost of the whole project and yes cost matter enormously but it’s a tiny part of a PA system, they will obviously not mix and match speaker manufacturers and this small guy on spotfill duty not covered by the mains is certainly not what will determine going for a brand over the others.
 
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amirm

amirm

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in the 1m in-room response of the distorsion graphs it seams that the drivers are still not combined? How does the Klippel actualy compensate for big speakers that wont combine in the nearfield? I might be wrong here, but this just looks way too strange, even without DSP
That's correct. Those measurements are NOT made with special anechoic mode of Klippel NFS. The measurement distance is actually 1/3 of meter, reported at 1 meter. I do try to find the flattest response before making the measurements. Here, I tried but could not find a better response than what you see. I could use longer distances but then environmental noise starts to corrupt the results.
 

Maiky76

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DSP don't do miracles.
Any EQ will not change the poor DI.

Note : I'm not again DSP. A basic passive filter + DSP could be a good solution, but in any case, you have to care about directivity.
Hey, It's been a while...

Exactly right, EQ can't improve directivity and is not the end of it all.
As a matter fact directivity is basically the only parameter that can't be improved with "pre-processing".
DSP are however commonly used to design devices with controlled directivity (e.g. beam forming).
Although they should not be totally ignored, i.e. they must be within a reasonable range to start with, smoothness (via fixed EQ) and dynamic range/loudness (via dynamic EQ) can be improved and are the other parameters to consider while designing an active device.

It is important to understand that having access to the spin (directivity) data make the EQ process much, much easier and effective as opposed to designing an EQ a single gated measurement in a domestic environment...
 

respice finem

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In the sense they are expensive, Yes. But this is not a consumer product. In the B2B world no one try to say Let’s makeit 999$ it will sell more than a thousand. That would look weird. They take the cost, mark it up x% and excel spits a number. Buyers look at cost of the whole project and yes cost matter enormously but it’s a tiny part of a PA system, they will obviously not mix and match speaker manufacturers and this small guy on spotfill duty not covered by the mains is certainly not what will determine going for a brand over the others.
I didn't even mean expensive, but the cents behind the $ instead of rounding up.
 

Robbo99999

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Gees, this is a bit of a car crash speaker, even considering that it's designed to be used with DSP filters that weren't tested, that tweeter distortion seems like a no go to me! Plus the frequency response doesn't look totally EQ'able both in terms of the fact that it has some jaggedness that is not totally fixable and also that the area of the tweeter that needs to be EQ'd up is also the area where the tweeter distortion was taking place! Poor speaker in my eyes! (& no bass & not inexpensive!)
 

TonyJZX

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these come with U brackets and have massive power handling and excellent sensitivity... i assume these are supposed to be professional installed by the dozens ($$$$) up above head level and then EQ'd with a control preamp?

and so how is one supposed to reasonably evaluate these singly or as pair outside of their intended use?
 
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amirm

amirm

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Well, the Pro speakers I test are bought by members for hi-fi or movie applications. So we get to test them by those standards. The same happens with pro amplifiers I test. Occasionally these pro products are useful and have great value for our domestic applications. Other times, not so much.
 

poxymoron

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A half review perhaps but interesting nonetheless. You'll not see a review of a product like this anywhere else. Thanks Amir.
 

GWolfman

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For the price and distortion alone (at the particular frequencies) I give it a poor rating.
 

sarumbear

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When somebody begins with " With no disrespect". They are about to be disrespectful. With no disrespect, please proofread your posts.
Show me where I was disrespectful!!!
 

sarumbear

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How? Here is the frequency response graph:

index.php


Right there in the second bullet it says that company provides DSP correction. In what way would someone ignore that but see the graph???
OK. I give up :)
 

markanini

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Are there actual better measuring speaker of the same form factor and configuration? I can't tell if this product was designed to fulill some special objective, or actually is badly designed.
 

dasdoing

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some special objective

side fills for pentacostal churches for example.
or front fills that play for the first few rows in huge PA systems (the huge line arrays are too high).
but they are normaly bigger (dubble 8 for example) and use a constant directivity compression driver / horn. not sure why the tried to verticly spread the tweeter on this one.
 

markanini

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side fills for pentacostal churches for example.
or front fills that play for the first few rows in huge PA systems (the huge line arrays are too high).
but they are normaly bigger (dubble 8 for example) and use a constant directivity compression driver / horn. not sure why the tried to verticly spread the tweeter on this one.
That makes sense.
 

beagleman

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side fills for pentacostal churches for example.
or front fills that play for the first few rows in huge PA systems (the huge line arrays are too high).
but they are normaly bigger (dubble 8 for example) and use a constant directivity compression driver / horn. not sure why the tried to verticly spread the tweeter on this one.
my church does angled down about 45 Degrees side fill speakers (Near the ceiling) near the front and some almost midway back. But again far bigger than these.

The main arrays are just multiples of the side arrays, with like 6 instead of 1.
 
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