JBL HDI-3600 Speaker Review

[bigjacko]

I found some interesting stuff about this speaker. At around 40 Hz to 400 Hz, the harmonic distortion seems to be very similar, or even the same as the sub bass ringing from CSD. The peak for both of them are 60 to 70Hz. I don't know what makes it like this. Based on my limited knowledge, I think normally harmonic distortion would appear two to three octave on CSD graph depend on second or third harmonic.

The spinorama rolls off at around 100 Hz, the CSD graph also rolls of at 100 Hz, but there is ringing at sub bass. I suspect that this speaker has more sub bass than the spinorama shows. It might look like this.

I do not know how klippel measure speaker and do the maths. If klippel use very small window result in ringing never shows up in spinorama, can @amirm do a spinorama using longer period of sound so the ringing can be captured? Thank you.

 

[Robbo99999]

I suspect the crossover in terms of basic designs is similar to the Revel Concerta2 series - in which case the white paper from those series sheds some more light on the matter

https://www.excelia-hifi.cz/revel/data/revel-concerta-2-tech.pdf

As noted it is a compromise in favor of more efficiency and overal power handling compared to a classic three way with similar drive units and cabinet. The tradeoff being a more narrow vertical listening window.

Ah right, I found the frequency response graph showing the crossovers in your link there, thanks, so I'm thinking the 0.5 refers to the fact that one of the crossovers does not fully handover frequency response in both directions....so the lowest bass woofer hands over to the tweeter completely in the full and normal way accept it dips down earlier in the frequency response and the corresponding "gap" that is left is filled with the midrange woofers, whilst the mid range woofers are tuned in some way to still play significantly at low bass levels but to a lesser extent than the low bass woofer....so 0.5 means it doesn't fully handover in one direction I'm concluding.

And yes, some other people in this thread have highlighted on why this speaker was designed as it was, and that is referred to in the link you provided (even though it's for a different speaker like you mention), here's what they say at that link cut & pasted:
"One primary design goal was to increase sensitivity for the towers, useful for the expected match to lower powered multi-channel receivers and amplifiers. To achieve enhancements in this price point, a 3rd woofer was used instead of a separate midrange. A novel crossover (patent pending) divides the two lower woofers with the upper woofer/midrange. Taking advantage of each high impedance woofer driver, the upper woofer midrange crossover was designed to deliver the required current at mid frequencies."

Ah, good good.

 

[edechamps]

When I first ran this test, the low frequency level had a distinct dip and the shelving on the far left was far deeper. Examining the sound field, I realized with two ports in the back and two drivers in the front plus resonances from the cabinet, there is a lot of complexity. Normally it is assumed that the wavelength of low frequency is high enough that this type of mixing doesn't matter. But it does. I compensated in the numerical analysis and dialed out most of it. The shelving on the far left could not be fixed with software fix, requiring measurements at longer distance. I don't have much more room on that front but I will experiment with future speakers. For now, I doubt that much useful output exists at 30 Hz.

And yes, this applies to previous speakers I have measured with good bit of bass, especially if they show the shelving. As I get time, I will go back and regenerate the spin data for them.

There is a general assumption in the defaults for the system/software that bass frequencies are simple fields. That is, they are non-directional and so just a first or second order expansion is enough to describe them (essentially a sphere that just expands). This is true of say, a subwoofer as I tested before. What we are running into with these tall home speakers is multiple ports and multiple drivers that are not co-located. So even though the wavelengths are large and the sound generally omnidirectional, the soundfield still becomes somewhat complex due to mixing of these sources, requiring more orders of expansion.

Normally order of expansion is just parameter you type in but it is actually challenging to dial that into the software as it just doesn't like high order expansion for low frequencies. After playing with it I managed to get as much as 6 or 7th order expansion there. This did two things:

1. Brought up the broad bass response. We have seen this deficiency in a number of my reviews. Usually it is quite minor in bookshelf speakers because their low frequency sound field is not complex (one driver and one port). And there is not much deep base.

2. Lesson that shelving/suckout down at 20 to 30 Hz. This one is a partial fix. To get better the measurements need to be made farther away from the speaker so the samples better represent the far field.

That's really interesting, thanks for looking into this. Perhaps these issues could explain the mysterious low bass dip on the Neumann KH 80, which was the only significant remaining discrepency with regard to third-party and manufacturer measurements?

 

[thewas]

Another reason that often 2.5 instead of 3-way configurations are used it that for a passive 3-way speaker with a relatively low bass-mid crossover frequency quite high inductivities and capacities for the corresponding low and high pass filters are needed, which when made with high quality air coils and foil capacitors are quite costly in comparison to the rest of the crossover parts or even the drivers.

 

[QMuse]

Ah right, I found the frequency response graph showing the crossovers in your link there, thanks, so I'm thinking the 0.5 refers to the fact that one of the crossovers does not fully handover frequency response in both directions....so the lowest bass woofer hands over to the tweeter completely in the full and normal way accept it dips down earlier in the frequency response and the corresponding "gap" that is left is filled with the midrange woofers, whilst the mid range woofers are tuned in some way to still play significantly at low bass levels but to a lesser extent than the low bass woofer....so 0.5 means it doesn't fully handover in one direction I'm concluding.

And yes, some other people in this thread have highlighted on why this speaker was designed as it was, and that is referred to in the link you provided (even though it's for a different speaker like you mention), here's what they say at that link cut & pasted:
"One primary design goal was to increase sensitivity for the towers, useful for the expected match to lower powered multi-channel receivers and amplifiers. To achieve enhancements in this price point, a 3rd woofer was used instead of a separate midrange. A novel crossover (patent pending) divides the two lower woofers with the upper woofer/midrange. Taking advantage of each high impedance woofer driver, the upper woofer midrange crossover was designed to deliver the required current at mid frequencies."

Ah, good good.

Well, they stated very clearly what they did and why they did it:

 

[q3cpma]

I do wonder why JBL home products are always disappointing compared to the pro line, even when using their incredible drivers. Can't they find a way to make a small M2 for a reasonable price? This should be the 4367, but the price is anything but reasonable.

 

[Jon AA]

I was excited to see these measured, but feel a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong, overall they look like very decent speakers. The horizontal dispersion isn't bad at all and as Edechamps displays above, the listening window is pretty good. They should be able to play quite loudly with low distortion. I doubt many buyers will be disappointed, provided they have a decent sized room/listening distance so the vertical dispersion doesn't cause issues.

But the results of some of the compromises made do look like lost opportunities to make them better. As I see it, there are two issues:

It looks to me like having a lower crossover point to the tweeter could have eliminated that slight narrowing of the dispersion at 2K, but likely would have required a wider horn (or narrower dispersion horn of the same width). Of course it's easy for me to say as I don't need to try and sell them but sizing the horn to meet a form factor instead of making it the size you need is a compromise. They had a certain cabinet width to work with...and this was the result. Using a more narrow dispersion horn may have made for a better blend at the crossover, but may have given them a less preferred sound overall.

Lowering the crossover of the bass drivers could have helped the vertical issue at 7-800 Hz, but cut into power handling. I'm not so convinced this is as big an issue as it looks on the charts though. I'm not sure how big a deal ceiling bounce is ever going to be in the real world when averaged with all the rest. If you look at the total early reflections, it's significantly flatter up to 1500 Hz than the HDI 1600. So maybe that's not as big a compromise as it may look at first glance. Choosing better power handling/total output potential may have been the right choice for this speaker.

 

[anmpr1]

Samsung acquired Harman for the automotive business primarily.

Is that really the case? Not saying it's not. Don't know. But it seems kind of strange for Samsung to buy Harman just for that reason. Harman is Studer, AKG, Mark Levinson, Crown, dbx, JBL consumer and pro... and the list goes on. Seems odd that Samsung would buy in to all that just for car to phone integration. But it's not like I know what's going on with them.

 

[Robbo99999]

Well, they stated very clearly what they did and why they did it:

View attachment 61639

View attachment 61640

Exactly, thanks for including the graphs in addition to my quote of their text.

 

[QMuse]

Exactly, thanks for including the graphs in addition to my quote of their text.

Btw, I wonder if speakers would measure better if they didn't aim for such high sensitivity..

 

[Jukebox]

I'm not convinced JBL actually designed and conceived of these to be Synthesis line speakers though, they're about double the price they should be IMO. My gut instinct tells me Samsung might be pressuring them toward higher margin product, their M.O. is reshuffling product stacks and relying on marketing/branding to push up prices without the specs/performance/materials to actually back it up.

I'm guessing that also. Should be the Studio series follower with a smaller price tag than it has now. Don't think they are up to Synthesis line...

 

[Robbo99999]

Btw, I wonder if speakers would measure better if they didn't aim for such high sensitivity..

Well, from what I've learned from this thread on everything surrounding tower speakers and the design choice of JBL to prioritise high sensitivity in the mid range for likely home theatre use with subs and lower powered AVR's, then it looks like they've prioritised this over extending lower into the bass range and therefore measuring worse in terms of overall extension of frequency response into the lower regions. I suppose they could have dedicated the bottom two woofers to bass and extended it further into the low bass and then had the one woofer left to cover the midrange hole at the tweeter crossover, and that would measure better on the frequency graph, but then they wouldn't have as much midrange sensitivity I guess. Given that we think these speakers were designed for HT (combined with subs) and low powered AVR's then I suppose their design choice makes sense. Although if you're gonna commit to using subs then I hazard a guess that there are better & cheaper front left & right speakers that can satisfy the remaining frequency range. To coin a phrase, it feels like they've used a hammer to crack a walnut!

 

[MZKM]

Factory specs tell 2 xo points but title says it's 2½-way - hmm. Vertical directivity says it is 3-way.

Usually, a 2.5-way speaker means the top woofer acts normally (as it would for a bookshelf, just a LPF) and the bottom woofer(s) have a LPF to the top woofer, so it’s acting as a bass driver only, but the top woofer also is still going as deep as it can go.

For this speaker, since bass is identical as the bookshelf, it looks like the top woofer is the same as the bookshelf and the bottom woofers have both a LPF & HPF, so they are only playing in the midrange to boost SPL there.

 

[Juhazi]

More about 2.5 way systems http://www.bambergaudio.com/technical/2pt5.php

Basically the .5 unit doesn't have baffle loss compensation (big serial coil), just LR4 acoustic xo to match with the tweeter. It is not easy to get acoustical slopes to sum well all though mid-low treble range. Looks like this one works well.

A problem is that the "mid" gets full signal down low, and thus has high excursion which gives trouble with IMD

 

[Robbo99999]

More about 2.5 way systems http://www.bambergaudio.com/technical/2pt5.php

Basically the .5 unit doesn't have baffle loss compensation (big serial coil), just LR4 acoustic xo to match with the tweeter. It is not easy to get acoustical slopes to sum well all though mid-low treble range. Looks like this one works well.

A problem is that the "mid" gets full signal down low, and thus has high excursion which gives trouble with IMD

Thanks for that link and graph, that adds to my understanding, although previously I had wrongly thought the 0.5 described the other woofer, but I guess that's semantics. One interesting thing they say at your link there re. the benefits of 2.5 way systems is the following (cut & pasted):
"So what's the big deal? Well, since just one woofer reproduces the upper midrange and low treble, there is no comb filtering as with a regular MTM. The dispersion pattern is essentially that of a single woofer MT layout. Subjectively the sound stage is more spacious. Finally, a common dual-woofer speaker can be used for left-center-right, and with a common voice to all listeners."
Thing is though, the speaker reviewed here on audiosciencereview has one extra woofer, I wonder if that messes up the soundstage/imaging, as that quote seems to be saying that soundstage/imaging improves yet Amir was noticing some inconsistencies in terms of it being finicky with positioning in both measurements and listening tests which might be counter to that quote I quoted from your link, so I'm thinking the extra woofer in this review messed up that soundstage/imaging?

 

[Juhazi]

Bamberg refers to vertical MTM 2-way construction which was pretty popular in ´90s. those really do have problems with vertical directivity!

more about these variations, a modular diy speaker series by Zaph http://zaphaudio.com/ZA5/

 

[GXAlan]

Is that really the case? Not saying it's not. Don't know. But it seems kind of strange for Samsung to buy Harman just for that reason. Harman is Studer, AKG, Mark Levinson, Crown, dbx, JBL consumer and pro... and the list goes on. Seems odd that Samsung would buy in to all that just for car to phone integration. But it's not like I know what's going on with them.

https://news.samsung.com/global/sam...owth-in-automotive-and-connected-technologies

“Approximately 65% of HARMAN’s $7.0 billion of reported sales during the 12 months ended September 30, 2016 are automotive-related, and its order backlog for this market at June 30, 2016 was approximately $24 billion.”

“Upon closing, the transaction will immediately give Samsung a significant presence in the large and rapidly growing market for connected technologies, particularly automotive electronics, which has been a strategic priority for Samsung, and is expected to grow to more than $100 billion by 2025”

 

[Sal1950]

This sample came in "piano block" which I must say, really dresses up this speaker:

I'll take a pass on the piano black. Five minutes after you dust them they're dirty again and after a few months the black begins to look like it was just wetsanded and waiting for a cut&buff. I have 2 of the 1600s here right now in walnut and I believe the cabinet costs is reasonable for the quality, which looks beautiful to me. The finish is without a real name but is very attractive.

These get deep enough for most music. This way you get 90db sensitivity and very loud max volume. At this price point it is assumed home theater folks will have subs and music bass heads will as well. Why stress these drivers? Go for dynamics instead. Let the sub shake the house as it should.

That's the ticket, always has been. Go back and read some of the old "Dope From Hope" articles, etc by Paul W Klipsch.. High sensitivity = lower strain on the speakers = lower speaker distortion = lower amplifier sounds of strain and measurable distortions, etc etc.. Amazing how Paul could see and design for the latest of today speaker problems with some great thoughts on the subject.
https://www.klipsch.com/dope-from-hope
We're getting to the point where the power amp is a after-thought now. Yes, most of todays, (and yesterdays) power amps are completely transparent and will supply plenty of juice with little heat and burning smells. But there are also a few speakers out there that the input is very poorly designed and can get real ugly sounding with the wrong amp, setup, cables even. I remember a few years back (2016) when I learned a valuable lesson here on cables, (it's a strange strange world we live in Master Jack). A user was experiencing a stability problem with new Magico S3 speakers, new very high tech Hypex Class D amps, and a bunch of different cables. At first I thought he was daff but later I learned his problems were real and repeatable.

Paul, you the MAN, thanks for the informative lunch break.

 

[QMuse]

I'll take a pass on the piano black. Five minutes after you dust them they're dirty again and after a few months the black begins to look like it was just wetsanded and waiting for a cut&buff.

Are you aware that Dave's Strat is also in piano black?

 

[Sal1950]

Are you aware that Dave's Strat is also in piano black?

Yep, but he has a whole room full of sweet young ladies ready to service him in any way he desires.
Including polishing his guitars, amongst other things. LOL