JBL HDI-1600 Speaker Review

[Haint]

When I listened to the more expensive model: Jbl HDI 3600 - I personally found them sort of lacking clarity in the high end and a mushy low end. Maybe it's because I compared to B&W Diamonds and Martin Logans in the same room/ended up buying Magnepan LRS's oddly enough the same day? I wanted to like the HDI 3600's as I like my 306 mkii's for the the price (in a 7.1 surround setup) but The HDI's were to me - the worst sounding I listened to that day :/

Could have been the same issue Amirm's listening tests ran into with a peaking room mode muddying bass and obscuring higher details. Demos in an unknown room, usually with the comparisons speakers in different positions, are as useless as subjective "reviews" IMO.

I really hope someone sends in a Revel M106 soon. I would be very grateful. I know some measurements are available, but I would love to really see what a non-entry-level Revel speaker can do, and in this way perhaps better see the Harman approach at work (acknowledging, of course, just how good the M16 is). I assume its review would help solidify our view of and our expectations in engineering terms for the upper level for smaller, non-studio monitor speakers.

MZKM would be better to comment on this, but I would guess the M16's preference score is likely dragged down pretty significantly by the bass hump (easily correctable) and >10Khz roll off (increasingly less audible to most), so it will be difficult to draw any conclusions beyond Amirm's listening impressions. I expect the M106 and BE will score quite a bit better by virtue of (likely) avoiding those anomalies, but a single filter on that bass hump and a preference score weighted by frequency would likely see the M16 coming dangerously close.

 

[pierre]

Nice set of JBL’s. Im kinda starting liking them.

Am I the only one having some trouble to read/perceive the Horizontal Dispersion Plot ??
View attachment 57832I think we were used to pretty much all previous reviews to be shaded in the 60db area or hotter. More red instead of just orange/yellow. Its dificult to spot the +- 70 deg. Is it because the spinorama is at only 85dB ??

No mention about On-Axis being weak at midbass from 200Hz to 700Hz

With another set of colors:

Graphs done with Vega are editable and you can change the colormap if you want to experiment:

Here is an example: click me. It may not work wit IE (Internet Explorer). You will land in an crude editor:

replace "scheme": "bluegreen"

by another colormap and it will adapt. It understand the colormap in https://vega.github.io/vega/docs/schemes/

Examples are: veridis, magma, inferno, plasma, blueorange ...

 

[RigorDude]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the JBL HDI-1600 two-way bookshelf speaker...
II put the JBL HDI-1600 on my typical test stand in my listening room....

It seems as though the listening impressions are based on playing music through one speaker. Is that in fact what you're doing?

 

[amirm]

It seems as though the listening impressions are based on playing music through one speaker. Is that in fact what you're doing?

Of course. It is the recommended practice based on research. See AES paper,
Comparison of Loudspeaker-Room
Equalization Preference for Multichannel,
Stereo, and Mono Reproductions: Are
Listeners More Discriminating in Mono?

And this graph in the specific:

Take the NO EQ example. When testing in mono (blue), listeners were far more critical than when stereo (red) and multi-channel (black) setups were used. In other words, stereo and multichannel hide deficiencies in playback equipment. Likely the listener becomes more amused with spatial effects and pays less attention to core performance of the speaker.

 

[edechamps]

Must say I'm a bit puzzled as to why the dip in the lower mids doesn't bother our host. Can somebody in front of a computer post a graph comparing the listening windows of M16, Kef R3, this and the Genelec?

That's exactly what Loudspeaker Explorer is for:

And with trace separation:

 

[Juhazi]

Here is animation of R3 vs. HDI-1600. Easy to see that they will have different tonality, but DI is almost similar.

 

[Absolute]

As suspected, the HDI and M16 is almost exactly the same. They both have a recessed upper bass/lower mids. Would be interesting to compare them both blind and seeing.

From the looks of it I don't think those two would fare so well in blind tests when placed normally in a normal room where we usually see a recessed are between 120-300ish due to SBIR. Going by these graphs I'm willing to bet that no blind testing is done with a wall within 1m/3 feet behind the speakers at Harman.
Since I'm so damn clever I think I have found the reason why some people don't seem to like the speakers as well as we expect in some scenarios.

The reason I'm thinking this way is because;

1. 200-400 hz seemed to be the most important area according to research.

2. That same area is what benefits the most with EQ or acoustical treatment.

Never mind, I solved the mystery and cracked the easter egg. I'm tired and need coffee. You're all welcome, please gift me by donating as much as you can to Amir so that we get to see bigger and better speakers soon.

 

[Pietro]

In general, such an excellent speaker.. but distortion peak 2%@2kHz? looks like KO for this class

 

[DSJR]

Not yet. A local member has one so maybe once this pandemic dies down, I can ask him to bring it over to measure.

Be warned, there's Dynaudio - and there's Dynaudio... This firm are well able to balance different product ranges to suit, so an Evoke 30 baby floorstander doesn't sound the same tonally as the top-line Confidence 60 for example.

As for JBL, does anyone have a pair of 4306's that could be tested. Good UK price and they LOOK like a proper pair of JBL's to me with grilles off...

https://www.audioaffair.co.uk/jbl-4...MI-sXbzYvb6AIVDdHeCh3rLwfHEAYYASABEgKKJvD_BwE

 

[Frank Dernie]

I think I'd get the KEF R3 or a Revel M106 for about the same money. The KEF is particularly nice looking for a living room installation.

Here the Revel is £2k per pair and KEF £1300, the usual foreign manufacturer extra cost, so not much point in buying the Revel here, I suspect.

 

[Soniclife]

Here the Revel is £2k per pair and KEF £1300, the usual foreign manufacturer extra cost, so not much point in buying the Revel here, I suspect.

Plus, I'm not sure if there is anywhere in the UK to dem them, where as there are a lot of Kef dealers, including ones that will do a home dem, under normal circumstances.

 

[tuga]

Here are them (and the ELAC) compared with their predicted in-room responses (adjusted for target slope, so flat is ideal):

Legend

DBR62 - laid-back
HDI1600 - boom-tizzzz, thin
S530 - bright

 

[maverickronin]

Take the NO EQ example. When testing in mono (blue), listeners were far more critical than when stereo (red) and multi-channel (black) setups were used. In other words, stereo and multichannel hide deficiencies in playback equipment. Likely the listener becomes more amused with spatial effects and pays less attention to core performance of the speaker.

But then you can't evaluate how the speakers reproduce those spatial effects either. Is there any research showing correlation between overall evaluation in mono and then say, evaluation of imaging in stereo?

 

[Absolute]

Yes. Read Toole's book.

 

[maverickronin]

Yes. Read Toole's book.

This one?

 

[Absolute]

Yes sir. Excellent read

 

[QMuse]

Be warned, there's Dynaudio - and there's Dynaudio... This firm are well able to balance different product ranges to suit, so an Evoke 30 baby floorstander doesn't sound the same tonally as the top-line Confidence 60 for example.

Contrary to other manufaturers whose entry-level baby floorstanedrs sound pretty much the same as top-of-the line speakers, right?

 

[napilopez]

When I listened to the more expensive model: Jbl HDI 3600 - I personally found them sort of lacking clarity in the high end and a mushy low end. Maybe it's because I compared to B&W Diamonds and Martin Logans in the same room/ended up buying Magnepan LRS's oddly enough the same day? I wanted to like the HDI 3600's as I like my 306 mkii's for the the price (in a 7.1 surround setup) but The HDI's were to me - the worst sounding I listened to that day :/

While I can't pass judgement on these speakers as I've heard none of them, I will say that in my experience, a "mushy low end" on a speaker capable of decent bass extension and output seems to always be a room bass balance issue.

Moreover I've found that a perception of mushy bass seem to inevitably obscure details in the highs to me, so I tend to think these two go hand in hand.

But then you can't evaluate how the speakers reproduce those spatial effects either. Is there any research showing correlation between overall evaluation in mono and then say, evaluation of imaging in stereo?

A fair bunch of it, and likely more that is unpublished since it is a practice Harman has used for decades. The gist of it all is that when you compare speakers in mono and stereo you end up coming to the same conclusion about which speaker is best, but mono makes it a whole lot easier/faster to tell the differences.

In studies there are basically stronger opinions about the ranking of compared speakers in mono, which end up being ranked the same in stereo and multichannel, but with less confidence in the results. So you'd need more listening to arrive at a similar level of confidence.

The issue is largely that left and right ears are receiving highly uncorrelated information in stereo, thus making a speaker's flaws "fuzzier." You're listening to different things at the same time that don't behave like reflections.

A practical compromise if you prefer to listen in stereo or are at a dealer is to simply listen to mono music in a stereo setup, which apparently gives results somewhere in between.

 

[Absolute]

It's also true enough to state that once we introduce stereo, the biggest problems in speakers seems to vanish. No wonder we survive even the worst types of shit-shows from the audio community industry

*part joke and part based on that graph Amir posted.

 

[tuga]

While I can't pass judgement on these speakers as I've heard none of them, I will say that in my experience, a "mushy low end" on a speaker capable of decent bass extension and output seems to always be a room bass balance issue.

I agree that it could have been the room, but that would have also affected the other speakers. It could also be due to cabinet resonances or an underdamped bass-reflex tuning.