JBL SCL-5 In-ceiling Speaker Review

[Geert]

But nothing in the measurements suggests it would be good for any of those uses

Yes they do; 40° off-axis (the front plate even has arrows on it) with some basic EQ. It's in that area that they're intended to be used. The distortion in the mid frequencies is disappointing, but in certain setups maybe an acceptable trade-off. (I'm more worried about how expensive it is).

 

[GXAlan]

The SCL line is priced at a premium yet they don’t seem to perform as well as the consumer lines. On AVSForum, some of the official spinoramas show pretty poor un-EQ’d results.

Is there any rationale you can see, @amirm, for this? I get that some of these will be sold with the SDP-75 which has factory EQ, but I am not seeing an obvious benefit for this entire generation of designs to doing things this way.

Edit: answered my own question. Look at the sound power DI — it’s crazy flat. This should give you the best framework for the EQ possible!

What is interesting is they in this review, An Nguyen talks about them tweaking the sound for fuller mid bass sound.

JBL Synthesis SCL-6 In-Wall Speaker Review

JBL SCL-6 Review

www.erinsaudiocorner.com

The SCL-6 does seem to measure as expected though.

The lesson I am taking from this is to budget for a SDP-75 if I was building a dedicated home theater centered around JBL Synthesis speakers.

 

[PeteL]

The issue is that this speaker can be rotated and any axis can be made to be "on axis." So you don't want to go by direct on-axis angle I used. Instead, you can use the other angles as I showed with -40 degrees.

That said, yes, as I noted in the review, this is a hard speaker to judge as far as tonality. I did my best to make sense out of what it does giving us some insight. But much left for the reader to analyze and figure out. Better than having no information.

And the bit about distortion is pretty clear.

ok thanks, It is indeed difficult to judge what to think of it or to compare options if we are looking for something like that.

 

[milosz]

This looks pretty awful. I wonder if you would have soundly condemned it had it not come from JBL.

 

[voodooless]

We already knew the tweeter has issues:

JBL 708P Review (Professional Monitor)

This is a review and detailed measurements of the JBL 708P studio monitor (active speaker). It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $1,799 each. Unlike the lower-end in the series, the 708P exudes seriousness both in look, feel and controls: I appreciated the handles on each side as...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Here it's crossed even lower than in the 708P. There's another JBL in-wall with this tweeter showing the same thing. Now we can at least confirm that it's definitely the tweeter itself , and not some enclosure or fitting issue.

Better use a 1" BMS driver JBL!

 

[amirm]

ok thanks, It is indeed difficult to judge what to think of it or to compare options if we are looking for something like that.

It wasn't obvious to me that this would be hard to judge/measure until I was done measuring it. It was only then that I realized it takes a lot of work to analyze data. As I noted, I have a Revel in-ceiling speaker so will be interesting to compare the two. The cut-out is the same so I will be using the same baffle as well!

 

[mcdn]

Yes they do; 40° off-axis (the front plate even has arrows on it) with some basic EQ. It's in that area that they're intended to be used. The distortion in the mid frequencies is disappointing, but in certain setups maybe an acceptable trade-off. (I'm more worried about how expensive it is).

Even at 40 degrees it’s a horrible response, with terrible directivity and poor distortion. Sure you can EQ it to work at one exact angle, but that doesn’t make it good in any way. I’m just so curious what JBL were aiming for with this design.

 

[voodooless]

Due to use of baffle, the response is omnidirectional up to about 2 kHz but then narrows with frequency

Obviously, this speaker can't be omnidirectional. 180 deg at best

 

[AndreaT]

Interesting and probably flawed product. However I wonder if it is designed to be heard at a 40 deg angle rather than on axis, ceiling mounted either a few feet in front or in the rear of a the straight line falling on the cinema seats (until your ears are in a 40 deg angle to the surface of the ceiling mount) to possibly better recreate a “3D sound” for movies. Thank Amir for an interesting review!

 

[Geert]

Interesting and probably flawed product. However I wonder if it is designed to be heard at a 30 deg angle rather than on axis

As explained already, it is. It would have been better if the graphs would have been published using the intended angle of use as on axis, and the title changed to in ceiling speaker.

 

[voodooless]

However I wonder if it is designed to be heard at a 40 deg angle rather than on axis, ceiling mounted either a few feet in front or in the rear of a the straight line falling on the cinema seats (until your ears are in a 40 deg angle to the surface of the ceiling mount) to possibly better recreate a “3D sound” for movies. Thank Amir for an interesting review!

That's what the manual says:

 

[3125b]

I won‘t pretend to know the first thing about it myself, but Erin did a video about how he measures in-wall speakers with his Klippel. Seems to give reasonable results.

That's what the manual says:

So it‘s meant to fire one direction and not straight down (on axis). Makes sense given the directivity measurements. The actual listening angles vary quite a bit there, judging by the picture that might be anywhere from maybe 20 to 120 degree off axis.

I wonder about the crossover, even if these results aren‘t too representative of the actual performance that doesn‘t look good, there must be a better way to implement that.

 

[amirm]

I won‘t pretend to know the first thing about it myself, but Erin did a video about how he measures in-wall speakers with his Klippel. Seems to give reasonable results

This speaker is measured using the same method. The issue here is angled drivers. He has not measured one like this.

 

[Mario Sanchez]

This speaker looks like an angry midget-cyclops shouting at you...

 

[uwotm8]

This speaker looks like an angry midget-cyclops shouting at you...

Highly likely it sounds that way too

 

[hyfynut]

In-wall/in ceilling should be kind of ideal as flush mounting/infinite baffle has so many diffraction/FR advantages. That to me indicates this speaker measures quite poorly and deserves a headless pink panther.

This is technically correct but in my experience, having installed thousands of each type in many environments, bookshelf and tower speakers generally sound considerably better than their inwall and in ceiling equivilents.

 

[FrantzM]

Hi


These could well be well suited for some applications, that I (and many) can't even fathom.. Not sure what these would bring to a system.... It thus, bears to reason to avoid, especially at their brutal price of $2200.oo each

A hard pass.

for me.

Peace

 

[Multicore]

It's a useful reminder that ASR's standard loudspeaker measurements is predictive of psycho-acoustic preference in a specific application (loudspeakers in a room, listener facing them at roughly ear level). The consistency of results in Amir's tests of certain high-performance studio monitors shows (it seems) that several manufacturers have more-or-less converged in their design goals to which Amir's tests correspond.

Given the brand and price of the JBL Synthesis SCL-5 I assume its design involved CAD and verification that represents its applications, which could be indoor or outdoor, small or large space, stationary listeners or moving listeners with any orientation to the speaker.

 

[fineMen]

Does this have any redeeming features?

High sensitivity? No. Deep bass? No. Low distortion? No. Controlled directivity? No. Even response on any axis at all? No. Low price? No.

The cost is undeniable too high for private use. For private use we are talking of disposable income (pocket money, toy), for studio use it would be an investment with expected returns. Very different use cases.

How to use them? Mount it into the ceiling and let it radiate towards you, *not* sitting right below the speaker. The optmial listening angle is 40°, right? Some further optmization will be needed. The means to do so are readily available for a studio, but could become in their complexity mind-bogling for private use. Nothing to complain here as it is made for the pro and even presents in that realm a specialist design.

 

[dasdoing]

would that distorsion peak even be there if meassured at -40 degrees?