This is a review, listening test and detailed measurements of the JBL Studio 590. I bought a pair last year on sale for US $800 but costs $999.95 each currently.
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This is a hefty speaker that even comes with (vibration absorbing) outriggers. I should definitely file for hazard pay for lifting it 5 feet on the platform to measure it with Klippel NFS and then dragging it to our living room to listen to!
I have taken off the grill which unfortunately has plastic tabs rather than being magnetic. I don't have a picture of the backside but there are two oversized ports there.
Here are the company specs:
General Specifications
Type2-1/2-way dual-woofer, floorstanding
Finish Black
Audio Specifications
Nominal Impedance 6 ohms
Crossover Frequencies1.5kHz
Sensitivity(2.83V@1m) 92dB
Frequency Response 35Hz-40kHz
Dimensions
Width (in)12-11/16
Weight (lb) 69.5
Width (mm) 322
Depth (in) 16-1/4
Weight (kg)31.5
Depth (mm) 413
Height (mm) 1263
Height (in) 49-3/4
NOTE: our company, Madrona Digital, carries Harman products (parent of JBL) in custom system integration for residential and commercial applications. We don't have access to this consumer line but even if we did, it is not something we sell. But go ahead and read any level of bias you like in my subjective assessments.
JBL Studio 590 Tower Speaker Measurements
I measured the speaker as you see above without its grill. Acoustic center is the tweeter (although near-field id drops to just above the top woofer). Let's look at its anechoic frequency responses:
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Depending how good your glasses are, you will walk away with a different view. Pull back, the response is more or less flat on axis is what we want. Zoom in though and the are a lot of fine variations which we tend to see in 2.5 way speakers as so many elements play together. Sensitivity depends on how you average the graph. I say it is closer to 90 dB than advertised 92 dB.
EDIT: it was pointed out that the there is a dummy panel you are supposed to put in place of the grill on the bottom of the tweeter waveguide. I had not done that so I remeasured the speaker again, this time with the full grill on:
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As we see there is no difference. This is due to the tweeter not being covered in either case. And the dummy panel won't be doing much due to asymmetry only having a minor effect at very high frequencies.
Directivity is good resulting in rather predictable early reflections:
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Combining the two, we see a pretty reasonable predicted in-room frequency response:
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Here is our near-field driver and port measurements:
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There is a lot going on here with a lot of resonances. In some sense designers did a good job of keeping this wilder party under control.
Looking at the horizontal axis, we again see good beam width and directivity control:
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Vertically it is less optimal as many speakers are so stay at tweeter axis:
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Dual drivers translates into very low bass distortion but alas, there are some issues up higher:
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We can ignore the narrow resonance but I am worried about that distortion around 1 to 3 kHz. So I pulled up the distortion for individual drivers and it seems both tweeter and woofers are contributing to it:
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Absolute distortion level is less informative but it shows similar good and bad news:
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Impedance at 5 ohm while less than company spec, is still a full ohm higher and hence easier to drive than many speakers:
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Waterfall shows a ton of resonances:
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Finally here is the step response:
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JBL Studio 590 Listening Tests
As soon as I started to play music, I had to step and take notice as if there was a voice saying, "hey bud, I am a big boy speaker!" I have talked in the past about how tower speakers project an image that is impressively large and not replicable with smaller bookshelf speakers. They do this by being tall but also with playing deep with authority. Such was the case with the 590 which handled my tracks with sub-bass (I call them speaker killers) with no discernable distortion. The level was a bit low but that was it.
Seeing the elevated treble in on-axis response I expected the speaker to be bit bright. Whether it was due to my ears being somewhat plugged due to allergies, existence of deep bass or both, I did not detect any sign of it being bright. It seemed balanced. It is more difficult for me to assess speakers in our living room but I thought the midrange and highs were unimpressive. Not bad. Or anything I could put my finger on. I just didn't enjoy all of my tracks as I do with very performant speakers. Again, keep all the caveats in mind as you read my subjective impressions.
I thought about applying EQ but I didn't know what and how much. Speaker wasn't bright so made no sense to shelve the highs down. And the variations in frequency response were so fine as to be silly to apply filters to it. If I were less lazy, I would create some narrow filters to counteract the resonances to see if it improves clarity.
Conclusions
There are two different speakers to analyze here: one that costs only $400 each as I bought it vs normal cost of $1,000. At $400, they are incredibly good. They are powerful, with even tonality and bass response that blows away any bookshelf speaker you would buy for $400. At $1000 each, I think there is some pause due to design issues here and there from many resonances to distortion. It would have been great to have perfect execution for $400 each but there is a reason the Revel line exists. Finer execution exists and naturally will cost you.
I like to remind you again of the joy of having a tower speaker. They take up no more space than a bookshelf and are far more stable than that on a stand. Meanwhile they are more sensitive and routinely player lower which is very important for music enjoyment.
I am going to put the JBL Studio 590 on my recommended list when on sale.
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