Shootout between JBL M2 and Revel Salon 2

[Old Listener]

I disagree with FrantzM. Mivera is a very effective troll. Most of the forum traffic here now consists of Mivera's aggressive posts full of nonsense and replies to those posts.

I see no evidence that Mivera will feel embarrassed and depart. Instead, he seems to posting more and starting new lines of attack.

All that Mivera related traffic just pollutes the forum and distracts regular posters from the sort of posts that enrich the forum. Consider whether a newcomer to the forum would see the forum's content.

This forum needs to get back to productive posts. Ban Mivera!

 

[Thomas savage]

Ok, I'm not massively keen on this.

If members want to seek a ban for anothef member or air a grievance please take it up with myself and amir in private. I understand the need to ' have your say' but let's not turn the thread into yet another ' all about mike' thread.

He's not that important, unless that is you all insist on making him so.

Please let's move on.

 

[Deleted member 65]

You'd be surprised on metal panels how little damping it takes sometimes.

An inexpensive material I have used is rolled vinyl flooring (sometimes called linoleum). Usually attach it with contact cement. In fact, you probably could have covered that panel in the video in strips with only about 1/3 surface area and the thing would be very dead. Obviously you want it inside where it doesn't show.

Used Bitumen in the speakers I've built, works great & used by the automotive industry to damp sound.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Used Bitumen in the speakers I've built, works great & used by the automotive industry to damp sound.

That is round about how I came to try the vinyl flooring. I knew of heavy roofing felt which is coated with bitumen being successfully used for damping panels. Messy stuff however. While looking at some of it I recognized the way it bends without springing back and the sort of feel of it being moved was very much like some linoleum I had recently installed. So I thought, "hey this flooring is clean, easy to work with, not too expensive, and should work just like roofing felt for dampening." So after some experimentation I found it pretty useful. I never did directly compare the two materials, but bitumen is messy stuff.

 

[Deleted member 65]

That is round about how I came to try the vinyl flooring. I knew of heavy roofing felt which is coated with bitumen being successfully used for damping panels. Messy stuff however. While looking at some of it I recognized the way it bends without springing back and the sort of feel of it being moved was very much like some linoleum I had recently installed. So I thought, "hey this flooring is clean, easy to work with, not too expensive, and should work just like roofing felt for dampening." So after some experimentation I found it pretty useful. I never did directly compare the two materials, but bitumen is messy stuff.

Used these & a Heatgun, not messy at all

(picture refuses to be uploaded, square mats with glue on aluminium foil)

 

[amirm]

picture refuses to be uploaded

Make sure the resolution is not too high. Pictures direct out of camera are too high resolution.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Used these & a Heatgun, not messy at all

(picture refuses to be uploaded, square mats with glue on aluminium foil)

Is it something like the Dynamat material?

 

[Deleted member 65]

Is it something like the Dynamat material?

Used similar to this https://eshop.wuerth-industrie.com/...ayer/15436502090202.cyid/1543.cgid/en/US/EUR/

 

[ChrisH]

If anyone is near SouthWest Michigan I would gladly let some one use some left over Mascoat. It's pretty sweet stuff, and I have 5 gallons of it.

 

[A.wayne]

What the heck are you talking about? The amp in question puts out 2,400 watts of power. That is 3.5 times the ncore module you put forward. It has high voltage rails that swing this high:View attachment 8459

And chinese? What chinese? Drive-core was co-designed with Texas Instruments. The original motivation was to reduce the weight of amplifiers that go in high-end cars like BMW and Lexus.

Here is a picture of one they sell independently:

View attachment 8460

That looks like cheap chinese to you???

And this is the ncore:
View attachment 8461


Here are the other versions of drivecore in Crown amps:

View attachment 8462

These things are made to be beat up, abused and still put out power reliably day after day.

As noted, the DSP in them and the GUI software to program it make it a complete solution.

No it is not sold as boutique audiophile gear. Crown sells more of these amps in a day than the entire high-end sells amplifiers in a year.

You want to pair the M2 with other amps, you can. You need outboard DSP however.

Whats 2400 watts of power ..? heard of RMS never WOP ..


Those heat sinks , 2400 watts ..? Doubt it .... !!!

 

[A.wayne]

@Mivera you're really getting old now. I have a pair of NC500's in my closet that are unused. I'm very familiar withe Hypex and the NC400's as well. The bottom line is that Hypex doesn't have anything to compete with the Crown DCi that I use to power my JBL M2's since the DSP is all built in and the files are available.

Here are the amp tours I've done previously with the listening impressions from them:

Stage 1

Stage 2

Listening Impressions

I have tried the crowns , really nice if timbre is not important...


Regards

 

[A.wayne]

The Ncore amps do measure extremely well, I have used them here in Grimm ,Kii, and Mola-Mola iterations, are Crown amps still fan cooled?
Keith

The ones i have tried are fan cooled , fan runs continuously on low Z loads, but are not intrusive in a typical listening room , but they were audible in the recording studio ...


Regards

 

[amirm]

Whats 2400 watts of power ..? heard of RMS never WOP ..


Those heat sinks , 2400 watts ..? Doubt it .... !!!

It is fan cooled and is high efficiency switching amp and supply. So don't go by heatsink size.

 

[watchnerd]

When I was referring to the low price I was talking about the mass produced Chinese parts inside the unit. Not what Harman chose to price it at. And the measured results certainly reflect this as well.

Hypex makes a 2500w module that runs rings around the crown for a couple bucks more than the NC-500.

https://www.hypex.nl/img/upload/doc/ucd/ucd2k_oem/Documentation/UcD2kOEM_R8.pdf

Now Crown isn't class D? Wow and you sell these things?

Chinese gear may be fine at a price point. But certainly not this price point.

Hypex being good for their purpose doesn't make Crown bad for their purpose, and vice versa.

If you want to run the M2 with your own amps and DSP crossover, you can.

(just don't expect any help from Harman or to be supported)

 

[dallasjustice]

I’ve owned the JBL 4367 for two years. I acquired a pair of M2 over the weekend. I spent yesterday setting up linear phase crossovers and EQ for them. I’ve got a little more tweaking to go.

I can say that they are similar. They should be since they basically use the same drivers. BUT the M2 uses a different waveguide. Also, the M2 is fully active. I’ve listened to them in a system where the drivers are time aligned and there’s a near ideal step response. I used 800hz 2 octave crossover, which works very well given the output of the D2 driver.

Just based off of my setups of both speakers, I can confidently say the M2 is better. However, setting up the M2 the way I did isn’t for everyone. I still have more work to do. I still think the 4367 is a phenomenal speaker tho. There is a difference in sensitivity that is noticeable when setting up the gain stages. The 4367 is 2db more efficient than the M2. I’m not sure why that’s the case.

The M2 does require substantial DSP to even out frequencies above 3khz. This has nothing to do with off axis performance. It’s just the nature of the D2 driver. I can get things as flat as I want out to 20khz but the DSP takes a bite to do it. So there’s significant attenuation in the end. It’s manageable tho if system gain is up to the task.

Overall these are very similar speakers but different too. The M2 throws a bigger and more precise soundstage. The 4367 can come close if the user employs good DSP. Also the M2 has plenty of bass to 20hz subject to the room interaction. Whereas the 4367 will get you to 40hz just fine. I always use subs and I believe all 2Ch systems requires at least one sub. So that didn’t really make a difference to me.

Of course, it would have been much easier to buy an SDEC or Crown amp to drive the M2 with factory EQ/crossover settings. But where’s the fun in that?

 

[Purité Audio]

I preferred th M2 too, still not sure by they didn’t just include EQ/amps/DSP in one package , perhaps in a later version.
Keith

 

[dallasjustice]

I preferred th M2 too, still not sure by they didn’t just include EQ/amps/DSP in one package , perhaps in a later version.
Keith

Because the M2 has such great off axis response, doing the crossover is much easier than I thought it would be. Harman's spec for the crossover is 800hz. So I simply used that as my crossover. The crossover summed beautifully in both digital domain and in real life. There's no phase issue or group delay problems around the crossover. There is a protection circuit built into the M2 which is designed to protect against DC and excessively loud low frequency noise. According to specs I read about it, I thought the D2 would start to lose energy below 1khz. However, my measurements made it look like it doesn't lose energy until below the crossover point. So all i had to do was use a custom pink noise for both the D2 and midwoofer to properly level match the midwoofer andd tweeter.

I would encourage anyone who is proficient with Acourate or Audiolense (or who wants to learn how to use them) that the M2 is totally good off the shelf. Although it would be easier to use the Harman digital setup, I really don't' think it's necessary to do so. I wish there were more speakers like the M2. It would be great if the digital DIYers had more choices to setup active systems. There's no question that a properly setup active system is superior to passive ones. I'm a believer.

 

[DonH56]

Based on previous data on this site (from @RayDunzl, I think?), the M2 includes a tweeter pad that sucks some power. I suspect it is to better match sensitivity to the woofer (easier to use identical amplifiers) and provide more bass extension. Little bookshelf speakers routinely pad the tweeter to get more bass at the cost of sensitivity (efficiency).

 

[fitero]

I just boxed up a pair of Salon 2's that I tried briefly, after selling a pair of 4367's that I had for some time. To sum it up; the Salons are a fine speaker, but in comparison did not have the snap (as when a drum stick strikes the drum edge and makes you blink and start), tonality, and infectious foot-tapping qualities that the JBL's had. How's that for an un-scientific, decidedly non-audiophile description?

The Salons do excel in portraying an airy, smooth sound stage, and they sound very nice on most of my recordings. After adjusting to the JBL's and their ruthless portrayal of the truth though, it was hard for me to accept the Revels. I prefer truth over shellac.

I will be bringing home a pair of M2's next week, but I have not decided upon which DSP and amplification to go with yet. I'll have a loaner JBL/Crown amp with DSP to start off with. I've listened to that amplifier on other speakers and wasn't much impressed. We'll see how things go on these.

I'm really interested in reading your thoughts DJ using your Benchmark amps. I've mentioned much of this on other forums that several of you also frequent, so please excuse me for repeating it here.

I'm also drawn to Acourate and Audiolense, though it's going to be a struggle for me as a decidedly dopey computer user.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

I'm also drawn to Acourate and Audiolense, though it's going to be a struggle for me as a decidedly dopey computer user.

You might also consider Dirac Live as an alternative EQ system. Its strength is comparative ease of learning/ease of use relative to others. While it lacks nth degree features and control mechanisms that the others have, it is still quite technically sophisticated. And, I and some friends have been quite, quite happy with it for years, and we consider it or something like it essential. Free trials are available for the PC/Mac versions.

Of course, all three of those tools require a PC/Mac. Acourate and Dirac are also available on miniDSP DACs. Dirac is also available on preamp/controllers, such as Emotiva and Arcam. DSP is a good thing, but it is generally not a good idea to cascade multiple DSPs for room correction purposes. That gets way too complicated and likely contentious between them.