JBL HDI-1600 Speaker Review

[napilopez]

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.

I wouldn't say so necessarily. Placement yielding exaggerated bass for one speaker could be "just right" for another.

 

[tuga]

I wouldn't say so necessarily. Placement yielding exaggerated bass for one speaker could be "just right" for another.

Yet that, if I'm not mistaken, is how speakers are evaluated in Harman's speaker-shuffler room...

 

[tuga]

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?

It's horses for courses.

Listening in mono may prove more adequate to evaluate some aspects of loudspeaker performance but to assess imaging you need two speakers playing simultaneously (one channel each). One on the parameters that afects imaging is pair matching which cannot be evaluated in mono.

 

[Frank Dernie]

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.

This has not been my experience.
A clean non-boomy bass and accurate instrumental timbre are the 2 key things I look for in a speaker.
Back when i was last looking for a new speaker, in the mid-1990s, room compensation software was little used, maybe unavailable, but the bass quality of the speakers I auditioned - all full range, that was a requirement - varied markedly.
The ones I chose had very clean bass (and still have).
The one that disappointed me most, as in it was enjoyable in other ways, had intolerable, to me, bass but lots of people love it.
One thing I noticed when Devialet started publishing the natural and SAM corrected bass response of the speakers they had measured this particular speaker had very overblown bass and the SAM correction reduced it whereas on most speakers it needed to increase the bass to correct it, and on some hardly any correction to the bass was required at all.
Whilst the room and particularly the position of the speaker in it does have a profound effect on the bass response it is not, by any means, the only one in my 50+ year experience.
Getting it fairly OK is easer nowadays but I am firmly of the opinion that an accurate speaker positioned to minimise the worst room excitation will still sound best when compensated, if only because the compensation won't need to be huge.

 

[Koeitje]

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.

You can get M106's for half that price, Nintronics has a couple of them for £999 a pair. I got them shipped to the Netherlands and the total came in under €1200 for a pair of M106's. Best price I could get from dealers in NL was €1950,- for a pair...R3's are €1600 here for a pair (didn't ask for their best price).

If I didn't spot this deal I would have gone for the R3's, even though I'm not a 100% convinced a vibrating wave guide is the best thing you can have .

 

[Frank Dernie]

I wouldn't say so necessarily. Placement yielding exaggerated bass for one speaker could be "just right" for another.

Why would that be?
Unless one speaker had a lack of bass at one of the room mode frequencies and exciting that more helped it is physically unlikely.
Two full range speakers will excite the room modes and their harmonics in the same way if in the same position. Since the (pre-computerised compensation) objective of speaker positioning in a room was to excite all the modes and harmonics as evenly as possible to achieve even in-room bass the optimum position for a speaker is just that - the optimum position for a speaker in that room.

 

[maverickronin]

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. This is what I tend to do when looking for flaws.

That certainly makes sense for evaluating many aspects of a speaker.

 

[Ron Texas]

At this price range I would prefer the R3 although these JBL's measure in the top group, are well finished and robustly built.

 

[napilopez]

Yet that, if I'm not mistaken, is how speakers are evaluated in Harman's speaker-shuffler room...

I think for some tests, but not others?

"Rigorous tests used only a single listener at a time. After each sequence of music, during which listeners made notes and decided on “fidelity” ratings, the loudspeakers were randomly repositioned and the listeners took different seats. This process was repeated until all loudspeakers had been heard in all locations. It was time-consuming, but it reduced the biasing influence of room position, which in some cases could be the deciding factor.

...

The setup needs to be calibrated by measurements from each loudspeaker location to each listener location, and positional adjustments made so as to avoid accidental contamination by one or more obtrusive room resonances."

Toole, Floyd E.. Sound Reproduction (Audio Engineering Society Presents) (pp. 44-45). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. "

This has not been my experience.
A clean non-boomy bass and accurate instrumental timbre are the 2 key things I look for in a speaker.
Back when i was last looking for a new speaker, in the mid-1990s, room compensation software was little used, maybe unavailable, but the bass quality of the speakers I auditioned - all full range, that was a requirement - varied markedly.
The ones I chose had very clean bass (and still have).
The one that disappointed me most, as in it was enjoyable in other ways, had intolerable, to me, bass but lots of people love it.
One thing I noticed when Devialet started publishing the natural and SAM corrected bass response of the speakers they had measured this particular speaker had very overblown bass and the SAM correction reduced it whereas on most speakers it needed to increase the bass to correct it, and on some hardly any correction to the bass was required at all.
Whilst the room and particularly the position of the speaker in it does have a profound effect on the bass response it is not, by any means, the only one in my 50+ year experience.
Getting it fairly OK is easer nowadays but I am firmly of the opinion that an accurate speaker positioned to minimise the worst room excitation will still sound best when compensated, if only because the compensation won't need to be huge.

You are correct, my original statement was perhaps exaggerated. Certainly didn't mean to imply a room is the only reason for a speaker's bass to be mushy. But more often than not I find I can significantly improve a speaker's bass through EQ and positioning.

Why would that be?
Unless one speaker had a lack of bass at one of the room mode frequencies and exciting that more helped it is physically unlikely.
Two full range speakers will excite the room modes and their harmonics in the same way if in the same position. Since the (pre-computerised compensation) objective of speaker positioning in a room was to excite all the modes and harmonics as evenly as possible to achieve even in-room bass the optimum position for a speaker is just that - the optimum position for a speaker in that room.

Well, as a simple example, some speakers are designed with placement close to a wall in mind, while others recommend you pull them away from a wall. And If one speaker has linear bass around 100 Hz and your room has big dips there, the speaker might sound worse than one with an excess energy roughly around in this region. Subjectively I've found this to be the case in my room, at least.

I'm also not just thinking about full-range speakers. The HDI-3600 being discussed earlier, for example,has claimed extension down to 38Hz -6dB. IMO the way a speaker rolls off has an impact too.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I'm also not just thinking about full-range speakers. The HDI-3600 being discussed earlier, for example,has claimed extension down to 38Hz -6dB. IMO the way a speaker rolls off has an impact too.

Indeed, that is why I made the point about a speaker lacking low frequencies.
I do appreciate that speakers with limited bass are easier to place but I have been at least attempting to have full range speakers since the first 3-ways I built in 1970.
For me (the sort of music I like) good reproduction from 25-50Hz is more important than good reproduction from 10k-20kHz.

 

[napilopez]

For me (the sort of music I like) good reproduction from 25-50Hz is more important than good reproduction from 10k-20kHz.

Completely agreed.

 

[tuga]

"Rigorous tests used only a single listener at a time. After each sequence of music, during which listeners made notes and decided on “fidelity” ratings, the loudspeakers were randomly repositioned and the listeners took different seats. This process was repeated until all loudspeakers had been heard in all locations. It was time-consuming, but it reduced the biasing influence of room position, which in some cases could be the deciding factor.

...

The setup needs to be calibrated by measurements from each loudspeaker location to each listener location, and positional adjustments made so as to avoid accidental contamination by one or more obtrusive room resonances."

Were these listening tests performed in mono or stereo?

 

[Koeitje]

Were these listening tests performed in mono or stereo?

I believe Harman tests in mono, as they should.

 

[tuga]

I believe Harman tests in mono, as they should.

I disagree. We listen to speakers in stereo, it makes no sense to assess preference in mono.

Testing and tasting are different tasks with distinct objectives.

 

[Koeitje]

I disagree. We listen to speakers in stereo, it makes no sense to assess preference in mono.

Testing and tasting are different tasks with distinct objectives.

State the performance aspects you are talking about.

 

[dinglehoser]

Something I noticed when I was playing around with Loudspeaker Explorer ... the M16 and HDI-1600 are more alike than different when it comes to dispersion and response. Additionally, the HDI's broad dip >10k actually works somewhat in its favor, in-room. More evidence of shared, and clever, Harman engineering.

The distortion spike around crossover freqs is the only thing giving me pause about pulling the trigger on the 3600s. It's way higher than its competitive set, and at a pretty important point in the response. I do wonder, however, whether it's at all audible ... even at 2%.

 

[Thomas savage]

State the performance aspects you are talking about.

This is a different subject to op and further discussion requires a new thread or look for a existing one if it matches .

 

[Frank Dernie]

You can get M106's for half that price, Nintronics has a couple of them for £999 a pair. I got them shipped to the Netherlands and the total came in under €1200 for a pair of M106's. Best price I could get from dealers in NL was €1950,- for a pair...R3's are €1600 here for a pair (didn't ask for their best price).

If I didn't spot this deal I would have gone for the R3's, even though I'm not a 100% convinced a vibrating wave guide is the best thing you can have .

At this price level I prefer to listen before I buy - but half price is pretty tempting.
I do prefer KEF in general.
I am not sure how the waveguide is made or fixed in an inexpensive speaker but there is a good chance it vibrates a bit whilst playing music maybe even a lot, even if there isn't a voice coil doing it directly.
I think if it were a substantial problem we would have seen measurements about it by now.
All speakers are compromised, I tend to prefer the coaxial on principle though my (old) main speakers are fairly conventional and my horns are veritable weird

 

[Koeitje]

At this price level I prefer to listen before I buy - but half price is pretty tempting.
I do prefer KEF in general.
I am not sure how the waveguide is made or fixed in an inexpensive speaker but there is a good chance it vibrates a bit whilst playing music maybe even a lot, even if there isn't a voice coil doing it directly.
I think if it were a substantial problem we would have seen measurements about it by now.
All speakers are compromised, I tend to prefer the coaxial on principle though my (old) main speakers are fairly conventional and my horns are veritable weird

I mean that the Uni-Q driver has the tweeter surrounded by the mid range (which vibrates). Anyway, I bought them blind, because for the price I could gamble. They sound a little bit better than my old speakers, but not that much. At least that is my first impression after just switching them out. Had the others for about 10 years, so I know how they sound. But they look a lot nicer, which also accounts for something

 

[napilopez]

I disagree. We listen to speakers in stereo, it makes no sense to assess preference in mono.

Testing and tasting are different tasks with distinct objectives.

Well, people have been through this a few times on this forum, but they don't only test in mono. It seems that for research purposes with wide samples they tend to focus on mono listening, but they certainly don't only listen in mono when designing speakers.

If decades of research tell you you get the same results when ranking speakers in stereo and mono, but mono gets you there more quickly/with more confidence, why wouldn't you do critical listening in mono?

Listening tests show that the best speakers are the least flawed, and its easier to determine flaws in mono, therefore listening in mono makes sense.

Imo it's not that different that picking specific tracks to test a speaker. Even within stereo, some tracks are much more revealing than others of a speaker's flaws.