-
WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
New JBL 1 Series Monitors
- Thread starter Kyle / MrHeeHo
- Start date
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2018
- Messages
- 1,137
- Likes
- 1,499
Bobbi Flekman: You put a greased, naked woman on all fours, with a dog collar around her neck and a leash and a man's arm extended out up to here, holding onto the leash, and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it! You don't find that offensive? You don't find that sexist?
Ian Faith: This is 1982, Bobbi, c'mon!
Bobbi: That's right, it's 1982! Get out of the '60s. We don't have this mentality anymore.
Ian: Well, you should have seen the cover they wanted to do! It wasn't a glove, believe me.
Sounds like a bit of good fun to me??
Active or passive, looks like coaxial speakers are on a comeback. Maybe due to the success of the KEF 50's and others?
Always seemed like a good idea technically that was hard to implement well.
OP
Kyle / MrHeeHo
Active Member
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2018
- Messages
- 163
- Likes
- 183
- Thread Starter
- #45
Yeah I can admit I was more than a bit too harsh there and jumped the gunAs Dr. Toole among others is a frequent poster here, I am sure that was exactly his intent
My guess is that Sean Olive may find the proposition that "the people who designed the good JBLs no longer work there" a tiny bit iniquitous.
These are out now & I am looking at desktop active monitors, but there are no reviews except for Amazon. Effusive but always suspect.
Has anyone heard these yet? There is currently a very good eBay deal on the Swans HiVi X4 (Genelec 8020 knock offs) for about the same price but no professional reviews on them either.
Has anyone heard these yet? There is currently a very good eBay deal on the Swans HiVi X4 (Genelec 8020 knock offs) for about the same price but no professional reviews on them either.
Last edited:
That amazon.com link has a referral code.
J BL's market positioning is probably one of the widest there is, going from cheap-BT speakers right through to seriously good stuff with their 3 series active monitors sitting in a really nice sweet spot in terms of offering excellent sound quality for a very reasonable price. On the Samsung link that has the possibility to bring a real symbiosis. Some of Samsung's current BT speakers and sound bars are superb, maybe leveraging Harman know how? Conversely Samsung have an R&D budget and access to technology that most audio companies wouldn't be able to dream of.
I pasted it with no code (stopping at the product number). When I go back to the saved post it has this after the number: ref=cm_cr_arp_d_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8 Perhaps that is an ASR ref?
Samsung doesn’t care about JBL, and judging from stuff I’ve heard from some of the people I know, their [JBL] marketing budget has been slashed by 70% or so. I dunno how well their 3XX series have been doing, but that alone won’t keep a JBL-sized company afloat. Samsung’s purchase of Harman was mainly automotive-motivated, with specialty stuff getting a slow death by dehydration.
Samsung purchased Harman in 2016, and stuff I heard from people tell me 2018 was JBL Pro's biggest year in sales ever. A cursory google search also show very major expansions overseas in non-automotive products. They unveiled a lot of CE products at CES this year. (the new Harman Kardon Wireless Citation stuff looks interesting). So, there is that.
Old Listener
Senior Member
I get what you’re saying @GGroch. Sadly, their last publication on financial statements is before Samsung finished the acquisition, so not much we can tell from that. With that said, I will guess that automotive B2B stuff is where the bigger bucks are, at least compared to CE and prosumer audio. Harman and their daughter businesses appear to be carrying on with most of their pre-acquisition operations, however it’s hard to directly infer wether that’s thanks to or in spite of Samsung strategic decisions.
xevman
Member
I just purchased a set of these. For the money they are phenomenal I don't think there is anything at the price point that gets gets close to these in terms of a sonic and engineering stand point. I'm no stranger to coaxial speakers and this is coming from someone who used KEF LS50s for nearfield use and also used to own a pair of Genelec 1031a's. The thing that's unique with these you can literally plop them straight onto a desk without stands or foam padding and hardly any vibrations transfer to the table even at high volumes. Very little resonance from the desk even without stands. Build and fit and finish is good too. Only thing I can complain about is the low end extension but come on these are only a 4" driver. If you want good transparent sound but don't want to take up too much desk space this is your baby.
Edit sorry for sounding like a massive shill but these are seriously underrated at their price point.
Edit sorry for sounding like a massive shill but these are seriously underrated at their price point.
xevman
Member
I wouldnt say they have no bass but they don't extend like an 8" monitor would for obvious reasons.....
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2018
- Messages
- 3,740
- Likes
- 6,454
People used to say the 4310/11 (L100) was too boomy in the bass, and highs were too bright. Well, if you put them on the floor, and turned up the 'presence' and 'brilliance' controls, yes. On a console, or raised about 18" off the floor, it's a different sound. Tweeter level to ear on the console puts the bass driver on top, so the boom is mitigated. Sometimes they were hung from the ceiling on a wall corner, woofer on top; this spread out the bass. As a nearfield monitor, during its era, it was pretty flat. How it wound up and was used in the home was a different story: the Maxell thing.
Coaxial drivers are not a panacea. I think they're a great fit for small low output designs like this, but the price you pay for marginally better physical acoustic alignment is significant. They won't have any better response in the horizontal plane than a conventional speaker, although big advantages in vertical. Power response will be similar. They do seem to be getting better year by year however.
Have these in for review. I largely agree with xevman and think they are really good value. Rather linear throughout most of the important frequency range, good volume, and hiss is less than expected for the price/doesn't bother me at typical listening levels. Bass is good, but I do just wish there were a subwoofer out.
Some preliminary measurements. These are done on the tweeter axis, though I'll run another set of measurements from above the speaker, as JBL says they are designed to be listened placed directly on a desk and the manual doesn't say anything about elevating them to ear level for improved sound. Don't expect the results to be much different though; the coaxial undoubtedly helps with vertical dispersion. Listening window is 0, +/- 15, +/-30 degrees horizontal and +/-10 degrees vertical.
Some of the expected coaxial interference, but it mostly balances out off axis. Not the smoothest highs, but we're talking about $150 speakers, and the "messiness" above 4-5K isn't as audible as it might seem. Good stuff.
Some preliminary measurements. These are done on the tweeter axis, though I'll run another set of measurements from above the speaker, as JBL says they are designed to be listened placed directly on a desk and the manual doesn't say anything about elevating them to ear level for improved sound. Don't expect the results to be much different though; the coaxial undoubtedly helps with vertical dispersion. Listening window is 0, +/- 15, +/-30 degrees horizontal and +/-10 degrees vertical.
Some of the expected coaxial interference, but it mostly balances out off axis. Not the smoothest highs, but we're talking about $150 speakers, and the "messiness" above 4-5K isn't as audible as it might seem. Good stuff.
Last edited:
Are these measurements gated or do they include environmental reflections?
Similar threads
