JBL Studio 530 Speaker Review

[ryanosaur]

Yup. It's just a marketing point. There really isn't anything I can think of needing from these that a single amplifier cant do with ease.

 

[Deleted member 45274]

Yup. It's just a marketing point. There really isn't anything I can think of needing from these that a single amplifier cant do with ease.

How would plugging in two amplifiers to one speaker work?

 

[ryanosaur]

You take those jumpers off between the top and bottom binding posts, one Amp goes to the lows, the other to the highs. That is passive bi-amping. Passive, because you are still using the internal crossover network.
It really doesn't do anything for you unless you have a very difficult speaker to power, where the bass drivers can be run from a dedicated amp.
Some people swear by Bi-Amping or even Bi-Wiring. I am not one of them.

To each their own, or, YMMV.

 

[Deleted member 45274]

You take those jumpers off between the top and bottom binding posts, one Amp goes to the lows, the other to the highs. That is passive bi-amping. Passive, because you are still using the internal crossover network.
It really doesn't do anything for you unless you have a very difficult speaker to power, where the bass drivers can be run from a dedicated amp.
Some people swear by Bi-Amping or even Bi-Wiring. I am not one of them.

To each their own, or, YMMV.

Interesting, thanks

 

[Deleted member 45274]

One thing about these speakers is that the low extension is great but I can't hear it from in front of the speaker. Only from the side or behind it. Tried moving them closer or further from the wall. I have them about 10 inches from the ground. And they are against an intermediate wall, i.e. a wall behind an island in the middle of the room.

 

[Astrozombie]

You're probably sitting in a null. Have to get REW out with a Mic and measure. Generally they tell you not to put them up against a wall and don't sit right next to the back wall.....

 

[mstanley117]

One thing about these speakers is that the low extension is great but I can't hear it from in front of the speaker. Only from the side or behind it. Tried moving them closer or further from the wall. I have them about 10 inches from the ground. And they are against an intermediate wall, i.e. a wall behind an island in the middle of the room.

To reiterate the post above this one, you're likely sitting in a "null" where the room modes cancel out the bass in a specific frequency range. If you search Google images for this, you can see some basic diagrams that show what I'm talking about.

Here's an image to explain it:

In that picture above, the room modes are where the waves go down to the bottom of the chart, or 0. Don't concern yourself with the "+" and "-" in that chart, which are beyond the scope of this post. If you're curious, those refer to the "phase" or the polarity of the sound signal (it's a sine wave), and if you were to print that out and connect the waves under the charts, you would see the full sine wave, instead of the half showing.

How do you find the nulls? Go on Spotify (or whatever you use) and find some tracks that will do a sine wave from say 50hz to 200hz or so, and while it is playing walk around your room, you will hear in different spots where the bass will get very loud for part of the track, be nearly dead silent for part of the track, and then get loud again at a different frequency. These are the room modes.

From there, find where you can listen where you get the least variation (it won't be perfect) in the volume of bass, and that's a good place to start. Moving the speakers away and towards the walls also has some impact on the room modes by shifting them around, so you can try that too if you can't find a good listening spot you like.

Hope this helps.

 

[Deleted member 45274]

To reiterate the post above this one, you're likely sitting in a "null" where the room modes cancel out the bass in a specific frequency range. If you search Google images for this, you can see some basic diagrams that show what I'm talking about.

Here's an image to explain it:

In that picture above, the room modes are where the waves go down to the bottom of the chart, or 0. Don't concern yourself with the "+" and "-" in that chart, which are beyond the scope of this post. If you're curious, those refer to the "phase" or the polarity of the sound signal (it's a sine wave), and if you were to print that out and connect the waves under the charts, you would see the full sine wave, instead of the half showing.

How do you find the nulls? Go on Spotify (or whatever you use) and find some tracks that will do a sine wave from say 50hz to 200hz or so, and while it is playing walk around your room, you will hear in different spots where the bass will get very loud for part of the track, be nearly dead silent for part of the track, and then get loud again at a different frequency. These are the room modes.

From there, find where you can listen where you get the least variation (it won't be perfect) in the volume of bass, and that's a good place to start. Moving the speakers away and towards the walls also has some impact on the room modes by shifting them around, so you can try that too if you can't find a good listening spot you like.

Hope this helps.

Great info thanks!

 

[Asking Dumb Questions]

I need a little help with Placements. I had to move them to a different room.

The room is rectangular, 30 ft long and 18 ft wide. Seating distance is about 10 or 11 ft away from the TV.

How far apart should I set the speaker at?

 

[ryanosaur]

Personally, I like to be just a little further away from the Speakers than they are from each other, in an isosceles triangle rather than equilateral. I stress this is personal preference. Many will say the opposite. YMMV.

That being said, I would place them about 9 feet apart. For standoff distance, front of the Speaker would likely be 2' from the front wall, give or take.I would angle these so the fire past and cross behind me, targeting about 15º off axis. Get the tweeters right at or just a little above my ears at the seated position.

Again, I stress, this is what I would likely start with if it were my space. I would adjust from there.

 

[Erici]

I need a little help with Placements. I had to move them to a different room.

The room is rectangular, 30 ft long and 18 ft wide. Seating distance is about 10 or 11 ft away from the TV.

How far apart should I set the speaker at?

Here is a link to the Cardas site that offers several locations to try:

Cardas Room Setup Guide

Also, once you find the best location for the speakers and your listening position, try pointing the speakers more toward the listening position. This should increase the direct sound from the speakers.

 

[Archaea]

Since this is a 1" compression driver used in this entire series - what is it's max rated SPL? Has anyone seen any compression sweeps on these speakers? I'm curious if this speaker line would be THX Reference level capable at the main listening position in a typical home theater room.

105dB peaks from say 10' away. Possible?

From the manual's tweeter specs:
1" (25mm) compression driver with neodymium magnet and onepiece Teonex® diaphragm on a glass-filled ABS Bi-Radial® horn,
magnetically shielded

 

[jaydillyo]

The tweeter on its own could probably do it, but it is limited to match the woofer. JBL 530 specs show recommended amp power is 125w for the 530 and it's sensitivity is 86db.

Using speaker calculator I get a max of 100db at the listening position, 97db without any boundary gain.

Peak SPL Calculator

 

[Benedium]

The tweeter on its own could probably do it, but it is limited to match the woofer. JBL 530 specs show recommended amp power is 125w for the 530 and it's sensitivity is 86db.

Using speaker calculator I get a max of 100db at the listening position, 97db without any boundary gain.

Peak SPL Calculator

According to this webpage the jbl studio 530 sensitivity is 84.5db.

A collection of loudspeakers measurements

pierreaubert.github.io

 

[jaydillyo]

I am aware of that. I was just using the more optimistic JBL Specs to show that it still doesn't reach those levels.

 

[Jmudrick]

I presume in the typical home theater set-up tthere would be a subwoofer (s) to handle bass below 50-100hz . I don't see that running the 530s full range in that context makes much sense given the additional breathing room high pass filtering provides the diminutive woofers of the 530. I haven't set them up any other way.

 

[Asking Dumb Questions]

how important are speaker amps, I'm using an Old AVR and I'm not sure if I should invest in something better? Would it be a noticeable improvement overall?

 

[mstanley117]

how important are speaker amps, I'm using an Old AVR and I'm not sure if I should invest in something better? Would it be a noticeable improvement overall?

So, like many other questions in this thread (which have all been excellent, by the way!), there is no simple answer here. The short is "it depends."

What I would consider if I were you, would be what you eventually want to do, and how you would need to scale it. Yes, a new amp could be "better" in the sense that you'd be able to get more power to drive the 86db harder. That being said, the larger question is what do you want to do down the line?

Are you planning on sticking with 2 channel audio (left / right) only? Do you want to scale into more speakers, home theater, surround, etc.? The reason I ask is because each of those presents a different approach. 2 ch. audio is a bit more simplistic (but can still be very complex depending on how you do it), compared to home theater.

Typically, the "better" 2 channel utilizes separates so that you can control the audio signal more to your liking. This means you have a preamp / DAC which provides all the inputs you need (USB, optical, RCA analog, balanced analog, maybe has a phono stage, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc. - you can even get all of those as separates if you really, really want to). The preamp takes the source signal and feeds it into a discreet 2 channel amp or 2 mono blocks. If you add subwoofers, then the preamp would ideally have separate outputs for the subwoofer channels or some other way to utilize subwoofers.

These are likely going to be tough for you at this stage since you may not have a lot of experience in this area, and that's totally okay. The biggest question you might want to answer first is do you want to stick with 2 channels, or do you want to have more than 2 channels? From there you, you should research different products (utilize Amir's excellent database of reviews) to figure out a good approach for you.

Hope this helps!

 

[Asking Dumb Questions]

So, like many other questions in this thread (which have all been excellent, by the way!), there is no simple answer here. The short is "it depends."

What I would consider if I were you, would be what you eventually want to do, and how you would need to scale it. Yes, a new amp could be "better" in the sense that you'd be able to get more power to drive the 86db harder. That being said, the larger question is what do you want to do down the line?

Are you planning on sticking with 2 channel audio (left / right) only? Do you want to scale into more speakers, home theater, surround, etc.? The reason I ask is because each of those presents a different approach. 2 ch. audio is a bit more simplistic (but can still be very complex depending on how you do it), compared to home theater.

Typically, the "better" 2 channel utilizes separates so that you can control the audio signal more to your liking. This means you have a preamp / DAC which provides all the inputs you need (USB, optical, RCA analog, balanced analog, maybe has a phono stage, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc. - you can even get all of those as separates if you really, really want to). The preamp takes the source signal and feeds it into a discreet 2 channel amp or 2 mono blocks. If you add subwoofers, then the preamp would ideally have separate outputs for the subwoofer channels or some other way to utilize subwoofers.

These are likely going to be tough for you at this stage since you may not have a lot of experience in this area, and that's totally okay. The biggest question you might want to answer first is do you want to stick with 2 channels, or do you want to have more than 2 channels? From there you, you should research different products (utilize Amir's excellent database of reviews) to figure out a good approach for you.

Hope this helps!

Thanks, I made a new separate post which also answer some of your questions.

Here.

 

[Asking Dumb Questions]

I find myself wanting to turn up the volume at 9' distance but I'm afraid I would damage them. I think I prefer these on a Desk nearfield.

Sigh...

I wonder if the 570 would be better.