I’ve spent just over and hour with the 530s and I’m honestly pretty impressed with them. They are definitely not “perfect” or even the “2nd best speaker ever”, but for the money they are hard to beat. As I write this they are still on sale for $300 shipped from Harman.
I’ll start by addressing the glaring issue I first had with port noise, they make lots of port noise with bass heavy music. In fact JBL supplies “port plugs” with these speakers, but quickly found them to be mostly useless. I put them in far enough I could get them out with a sharp object but the bass content from Barrie “Clovers” was enough to push the out onto the floor at higher levels. That said the port noise isn’t always apparent unless it’s a sustained tone. If you plan to use these with a subwoofer just filter them at 80hz and worry of port chuffing no more.
Setting them up: They can face straight forward or toed in and the frequency response stays very even. It’s easy to generate a sweet spot with them. I took the grill off and placed the waveguide cap that JBL supplies with them. I left them face forward for the duration of testing after initially listening to Barrie and Norah Jones.
Barrie’s “Clover” is from their self titled album. I just found this artist on my suggestions with Apple Music. It’s a very easy going song with a very spacious enveloping chorus. The sustained bass of the chorus revealed the port noise I mentioned earlier. Which brings me to the bass; a 5-1/4” has no business generating this amount of bass. Despite the chuffing the bass is going to satisfy all but those that love super hot bass. It does have a mild mid bass hump, but it’s not very distracting.
Norah Jones in “Don’t Know Why” sounds as smooth as I’ve heard her with the 530s toed out and there’s a very easy to listen to quality to them. Her voice has a good strong centered presence while I had the speakers toed in. Facing them forward she sounds smoother but the center image isn’t as strong but still very present.
I pressed them hard with Porcupine Tree “Gravity Eyelids” and they began to smear with certain elements of the material losing resolution, but it played loud and with plenty of energy.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer “From the Beginning” has a very open sound space with stereophonic acoustic guitars. The details on the strings are nicely portrayed here. The dynamics of this track were also very well showcased by the 530s.
Overall I’d recommend the JBL Studio 530. They do a lot of things right and could easily serve as main left/right with a subwoofer or subwoofers. They don’t make me want to immediately switch back to the Vandersteen 2Ce Signatures. The plan was to set them up in the bedroom this evening, but I kinda don’t want to stop listening to music out here in the living room.
Associated equipment:
Amplifier- Parasound Zonemaster 2350 (ICEPower 700ASC2)
Preamplifier- Yamaha RX-V659
Source- Apple TV4K / Apple Music
Cables- who let these rats in here?
I’ll start by addressing the glaring issue I first had with port noise, they make lots of port noise with bass heavy music. In fact JBL supplies “port plugs” with these speakers, but quickly found them to be mostly useless. I put them in far enough I could get them out with a sharp object but the bass content from Barrie “Clovers” was enough to push the out onto the floor at higher levels. That said the port noise isn’t always apparent unless it’s a sustained tone. If you plan to use these with a subwoofer just filter them at 80hz and worry of port chuffing no more.
Setting them up: They can face straight forward or toed in and the frequency response stays very even. It’s easy to generate a sweet spot with them. I took the grill off and placed the waveguide cap that JBL supplies with them. I left them face forward for the duration of testing after initially listening to Barrie and Norah Jones.
Barrie’s “Clover” is from their self titled album. I just found this artist on my suggestions with Apple Music. It’s a very easy going song with a very spacious enveloping chorus. The sustained bass of the chorus revealed the port noise I mentioned earlier. Which brings me to the bass; a 5-1/4” has no business generating this amount of bass. Despite the chuffing the bass is going to satisfy all but those that love super hot bass. It does have a mild mid bass hump, but it’s not very distracting.
Norah Jones in “Don’t Know Why” sounds as smooth as I’ve heard her with the 530s toed out and there’s a very easy to listen to quality to them. Her voice has a good strong centered presence while I had the speakers toed in. Facing them forward she sounds smoother but the center image isn’t as strong but still very present.
I pressed them hard with Porcupine Tree “Gravity Eyelids” and they began to smear with certain elements of the material losing resolution, but it played loud and with plenty of energy.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer “From the Beginning” has a very open sound space with stereophonic acoustic guitars. The details on the strings are nicely portrayed here. The dynamics of this track were also very well showcased by the 530s.
Overall I’d recommend the JBL Studio 530. They do a lot of things right and could easily serve as main left/right with a subwoofer or subwoofers. They don’t make me want to immediately switch back to the Vandersteen 2Ce Signatures. The plan was to set them up in the bedroom this evening, but I kinda don’t want to stop listening to music out here in the living room.
Associated equipment:
Amplifier- Parasound Zonemaster 2350 (ICEPower 700ASC2)
Preamplifier- Yamaha RX-V659
Source- Apple TV4K / Apple Music
Cables- who let these rats in here?