if.......

[Vladimir]

The M2 is a direct descendant of this design, the criteria has swung away from the more complex 3 and 4 way systems and back to the classic 2 way, with all of it's dynamic 'purity'.

I read couple of months ago they sacked Greg Timbers! Threw the man on the parking lot like an old carpet. Insane...

 

[davedotco]

The M2 is a direct descendant of this design, the criteria has swung away from the more complex 3 and 4 way systems and back to the classic 2 way, with all of it's dynamic 'purity'.

I read couple of months ago they sacked Greg Timbers! Threw the man on the parking lot like an old carpet. Insane...

GT was really after my time, my boss was John Curl and one of our big projects was moving our studio monitors away from the simple 2 way designs descrbed above to more 'modern' multi-driver solutions that culminated in the mighty 2350 series.

I lost track of the goings on inside JBL from about 1980 onwards, but I do know that their market share in this market sector has declined significantly.

 

[davedotco]

The classic 15 inch bass and compression driver system derives from systems built in the 1930s for the cinema. Home hi-fi, as we know it, did not exist until after WW2.

This is a huge subject, but the advent of electric instruments in the late 50s required a more powerful speaker for recording studios, so many studios used the Altec A7 theatre system as a studio monitor.

Few of the theatre systems, even the compact 604 based setup, were ideal, which lead to the production of the JBL 4320, the first purpose built studio monitor. This design used (possibly) the finest 15 inch driver ever built, the 2215, running to 800Hz, the rest of the range was covered by the 2420 compression driver with a short conical horn.

The M2 is a direct descendant of this design, the criteria has swung away from the more complex 3 and 4 way systems and back to the classic 2 way, with all of it's dynamic 'purity'. I have not heard the M2s but I have a pretty good idea of how they will sound.

Trust me on this, most of you will not like them.

Can you explain in a little more detail why people would not like them?

I used to to have PA with horn and 12 inch mids with 15 inch bass bins and i loved the sound. I never even gave any thought of pa and hifi etc if you know what i mean

You may or may not be unusual, but speaker systems of this type do not sit comfortably with most hi-fi enthusiasts.

The reason is simple enough, the whole emphasis of the design is different, dynamic range, transient response and shear 'presence' are what these speakers are all about.

The 'artifice' of warmth, low colouration (very 1980s terminology) and a 'smooth' sound is simply not present, instruments and bands are rendered in a stark, almost raw manner, not at all smoothed over by the usual constraints of modern hi-fi, let alone the big, fat wooly sounds of decades past.

Like or dislike are of course personal, but real instruments, live or in the studio tell me what is most realistic, and it isn't the hi-fi.

 

[lindsayt]

Andrew, my listening rooms are 24 feet by 18 feet with 12 foot high ceilings.

I personally would go with ATC 100's over 40's into a pretty small room. I'd make sure that the room was well furnished with lots of bookcases / vinyl / CD storage on the walls to absorb and break-up bass echoes.

I would fully understand why someone into modern stark / uncluttered interiors would prefer 40's in smaller rooms.

 

[lindsayt]

PA = Public Announcement and Sound Reinforcement where details are compromised for the sake of robustness and very high SPL.

Domestic hifi aims at realistic detail, but SPL is compromised, or should I say scaled down.

The JBL M2's are expensive main studio monitors and have to come close to both realistic details at realistic SPL levels.

Vladimir, yesterday at Scalford I listened to a pair of Urei 813's.

They have 15" drivers crossing over to the co-axial midrange unit at 1500 hz.

They would indeed be capable of high SPL's.

According to Steve, the 3 octaves from 200 hz to 1600 hz should have sounded like a pigs dinner. Rough, lacking in detail, lacking in clarity. That was most definitely not the case.

According to you they should be lacking in detail. Not true. They were good at detail. The main thing they were lacking in to my ears was the ultimate in bass extension / physical impact. No speaker's perfect. For the £200 the owner paid for them they were fantastic value. Swings and roundabouts about as good as the £five-figure Acapella horns - which were also really good sounding speakers.

Anyone here can contact the owner of those Ureis and ask to pop round to his house for a listen so that they can make their own mind up as to whether this 15" design works or not.

In speakers you can get high SPL's and detail and clarity in your speakers. The 2 biggest downsides to 15" horn hybrid speakers is their relatively high manufacturing costs and their size. There is no compromise in detail or clarity when compared to conventional coned and domed speakers. Not with high end speakers like the Ureis. With pub disco type PA speakers there may be some compromises.

There may be a psycho acoustic effect where the better dynamics of high efficiency 15" speakers focuses the mind on the transients more than the low level details. Use a speaker that's more compressed and the low level details will be relatively louder if you set the volume according to peak transient levels.

 

[lindsayt]

Can you explain in a little more detail why people would not like them?

I used to to have PA with horn and 12 inch mids with 15 inch bass bins and i loved the sound. I never even gave any thought of pa and hifi etc if you know what i mean

Also at Scalford there was a pair of open baffle DIY speakers with a tweeter, a midrange unit, a 12" Vitravox unit, a 15" driver and an 18" driver. With passive first order crossovers. Fed by a 5 watt DIY amplifier. In an upstairs hotel bedroom.

This system sounded really good. World class really good.

 

[Vladimir]

Urei 813 is not a PA speaker. I wrote that manufacturers don fuss over minor things with PA because every cent needs to go into clean high SPL and driver/cabinet longevity in rough conditions and frequent transportation.

Check the post again. I've compared PA, Hi-Fi and Studio Monitors separately. My english might not have been the best though.

PA = Public Announcement and Sound Reinforcement where details are compromised for the sake of robustness and very high SPL.

Domestic hifi aims at realistic detail, but SPL is compromised, or should I say scaled down.

The JBL M2's are expensive main studio monitors and have to come close to both realistic details at realistic SPL levels.

 

[davedotco]

Historically there is little or no difference between PA, Studio and hi-fi speakers. All derive from the speaker systems designed and built for the motion picture industry in the 1930s.

Home hi-fi really started in the USA in the late 1940s, the pivotal speaker designs being the full scale Klipschorn and a little later, the JBL Hartsfield along with the visually challenging Altec VOT system.

Most were corner designs and they were of course single speakers for monophonic recordings. Drive units were identical or lightly modded versions of those used in the theatre and the enclosures, still huge by modern standards, were a little more 'domesticated'. The advent of stereo in the early 60s required two speakers of course, hence further reductions in size becoming neccessary.

Horn loading and small enclosures do not go together, not at the bass end anyway, so the 15 inch driver, reflex loaded and the horn loaded compression driver became the home equivelent of the 'bin and horn' theatre system.

It is perhaps, important to realise that both the professional 4320 monitors and the domestic S7/S8 setups actually predate portable bin and horn PA systems, if only by a few years.

The JBL L200 was the first modern design hi-fi speaker of this type and was mechanically and electrically identicle to the 4320, but in a more elegant, domestically acceptable package.

 

[Vladimir]

I never liked the console look of the Paragon. The Hartsfield is the one I crave for.

 

[davedotco]

I never liked the console look of the Paragon. The Hartsfield is the one I crave for.

The Hartsfield was a 'short throw' theatre system reinvented for home use. The 15 inch driver was horn loaded and the horn 'repackaged' for corner mounting, just like the early Klipschorn, it was not a free standing design.

The 15 inch bass driver was modified to suit the unusual loading and the 375 compression driver remains the most potent of it's type ever built. A simple two way 'bin and horn', classic but compromised by the relatively restricted bass and the lack of HF extension beyond about 7-8khz. Diaphragm and other later improvements extended the response to 10khz.

As the world moved on from corner horns, JBL produced new systems based around a new bass driver, the LE15, designed for reflex rather than horn loading. This became the S7 and S8 systems, often housed in the Olympus or Soveriegn enclosures.

The Paragon was odd, essentially an attempt to get two Hartsfields into a room without corner mounting and was originally concieved as a two way, like the Hartsfield. The unusual reflective dispersion techniques reduced HF extension noticeably so the 075 super tweeter was added.

There were, in the 1970s, a handful of Paragons in the UK, but I only got hands on one, and that only when it was being serviced.

 

[lindsayt]

DDC's quite right. Urei 813's are a variation on the EV Sentry III and Altec Vott theme. Both of which are PA speakers.

There was a Klangfilm PA speaker system at Scalford. Each channel used two 14" drivers in a horned enclosure crossing over to an upper frequency horn.

Maybe Steve can tell us at what frequency he thinks 14" drivers start breaking up? And him and Vladimir can tell us how lacking in smoothness, detail and clarity the Klangfilms are in their opinions - even though their opinions don't match the reality of listening to the speakers in any way.

The biggest compromise that I heard with these were a lack of top end / treble extension / bite. But that might have been down to the recording / my listening position relative to the speakers. Or it's the sort of thing that could be sorted by adding a horned tweeter to fill in the highest frequencies.

The Klangfilms were another World Class speaker system.

 

[Andrewjvt]

The classic 15 inch bass and compression driver system derives from systems built in the 1930s for the cinema. Home hi-fi, as we know it, did not exist until after WW2.

This is a huge subject, but the advent of electric instruments in the late 50s required a more powerful speaker for recording studios, so many studios used the Altec A7 theatre system as a studio monitor.

Few of the theatre systems, even the compact 604 based setup, were ideal, which lead to the production of the JBL 4320, the first purpose built studio monitor. This design used (possibly) the finest 15 inch driver ever built, the 2215, running to 800Hz, the rest of the range was covered by the 2420 compression driver with a short conical horn.

The M2 is a direct descendant of this design, the criteria has swung away from the more complex 3 and 4 way systems and back to the classic 2 way, with all of it's dynamic 'purity'. I have not heard the M2s but I have a pretty good idea of how they will sound.

Trust me on this, most of you will not like them.

Can you explain in a little more detail why people would not like them?

I used to to have PA with horn and 12 inch mids with 15 inch bass bins and i loved the sound. I never even gave any thought of pa and hifi etc if you know what i mean

You may or may not be unusual, but speaker systems of this type do not sit comfortably with most hi-fi enthusiasts.

The reason is simple enough, the whole emphasis of the design is different, dynamic range, transient response and shear 'presence' are what these speakers are all about.

The 'artifice' of warmth, low colouration (very 1980s terminology) and a 'smooth' sound is simply not present, instruments and bands are rendered in a stark, almost raw manner, not at all smoothed over by the usual constraints of modern hi-fi, let alone the big, fat wooly sounds of decades past.

Like or dislike are of course personal, but real instruments, live or in the studio tell me what is most realistic, and it isn't the hi-fi.

Thanks for explaining i think thats what i like.
If you think about it there should be no difference really

 

[Andrewjvt]

To Everyone that has contributed to this thread. Its been very interesting and educational for me. I feel ive learned a lot and also my eyes have been opened a little more.

I really love atc sound but i have the feeling that a few vintage pairs should be sought after. And im also looking at jbl in a different light now also.

 

[Blacksabbath25]

Very interesting posts I have been reading them all you do not seem to see meany speaker makers make big speakers with big drivers in them this days I used to have some big pioneer speakers back in the early 1990s but they used to be a bit of a handful with the bass I had 4 of this speakers side by side like a wall back when I was young and stupid and Jamo used to make some big speakers too what I remember . Anyway nise to see a good post better then talking about bloody speaker cables !

 

[Andrewjvt]

Very interesting posts I have been reading them all you do not seem to see meany speaker makers make big speakers with big drivers in them this days I used to have some big pioneer speakers back in the early 1990s but they used to be a bit of a handful with the bass I had 4 of this speakers side by side like a wall back when I was young and stupid and Jamo used to make some big speakers too what I remember . Anyway nise to see a good post better then talking about bloody speaker cables ! 

Cable threads still going.
Ive changed the way i look at speaker design now and also the way i look at speaker manufacturers now also but seems i cant play music now i am missing my old r700s

 

[Vladimir]

I leave the luddite topic in your capable wrinkled hands, gents. When I say PA, I think of JBL EONs, not Altec VOTs, so I'll just grab me coat and whistle my way out of this one..

 

[Blacksabbath25]

Very interesting posts I have been reading them all you do not seem to see meany speaker makers make big speakers with big drivers in them this days I used to have some big pioneer speakers back in the early 1990s but they used to be a bit of a handful with the bass I had 4 of this speakers side by side like a wall back when I was young and stupid and Jamo used to make some big speakers too what I remember . Anyway nise to see a good post better then talking about bloody speaker cables !

Cable threads still going. Ive changed the way i look at speaker design now and also the way i look at speaker manufacturers now also but seems i cant play music now i am missing my old r700s

so what are you thinking about going for then ? The JBL M2s are massive and the price £7000 your need some room for them . Anyway I am more taking a back seat on this as I do not no much about big speakers a specially bin's , horns but would like to know what the horns do in a big speaker and what there purpose is

 

[Andrewjvt]

I leave the luddite topic in your capable wrinkled hands, gents. When I say PA, I think of JBL EONs, not Altec VOTs, so I'll just grab me coat and whistle my way out of this one..

I appreciate your input very much

 

[Andrewjvt]

Very interesting posts I have been reading them all you do not seem to see meany speaker makers make big speakers with big drivers in them this days I used to have some big pioneer speakers back in the early 1990s but they used to be a bit of a handful with the bass I had 4 of this speakers side by side like a wall back when I was young and stupid and Jamo used to make some big speakers too what I remember . Anyway nise to see a good post better then talking about bloody speaker cables !?

Cable threads still going. Ive changed the way i look at speaker design now and also the way i look at speaker manufacturers now also but seems i cant play music now i am missing my old r700s

so what are you thinking about going for then ? The JBL M2s are massive and the price £7000 your need some room for them  . Anyway I am more taking a back seat on this as I do not no much about big speakers a specially bin's , horns but would like to know what the horns do in a big speaker and what there purpose is 

Ill be looking at anything jbl very closely. Btw those m2 look great. Id like to hear them and i might to see what other older products i could get thats close maybe

 

[Blacksabbath25]

Very interesting posts I have been reading them all you do not seem to see meany speaker makers make big speakers with big drivers in them this days I used to have some big pioneer speakers back in the early 1990s but they used to be a bit of a handful with the bass I had 4 of this speakers side by side like a wall back when I was young and stupid and Jamo used to make some big speakers too what I remember . Anyway nise to see a good post better then talking about bloody speaker cables !

Cable threads still going. Ive changed the way i look at speaker design now and also the way i look at speaker manufacturers now also but seems i cant play music now i am missing my old r700s

so what are you thinking about going for then ? The JBL M2s are massive and the price £7000 your need some room for them . Anyway I am more taking a back seat on this as I do not no much about big speakers a specially bin's , horns but would like to know what the horns do in a big speaker and what there purpose is

Ill be looking at anything jbl very closely. Btw those m2 look great. Id like to hear them and i might to see what other older products i could get thats close maybe

there is some JBLs 4733 on eBay £1000 1600 watts each secondhand

 

[davedotco]

Very interesting posts I have been reading them all you do not seem to see meany speaker makers make big speakers with big drivers in them this days I used to have some big pioneer speakers back in the early 1990s but they used to be a bit of a handful with the bass I had 4 of this speakers side by side like a wall back when I was young and stupid and Jamo used to make some big speakers too what I remember . Anyway nise to see a good post better then talking about bloody speaker cables !

Cable threads still going. Ive changed the way i look at speaker design now and also the way i look at speaker manufacturers now also but seems i cant play music now i am missing my old r700s

so what are you thinking about going for then ? The JBL M2s are massive and the price £7000 your need some room for them . Anyway I am more taking a back seat on this as I do not no much about big speakers a specially bin's , horns but would like to know what the horns do in a big speaker and what there purpose is

Ill be looking at anything jbl very closely. Btw those m2 look great. Id like to hear them and i might to see what other older products i could get thats close maybe

Just a word of warning.

Classic JBLs are rare and pretty expensive, and there was a fair amount of tosh produced during the 80s and 90s so you need to be picky.

One of the cheapest ways of getting a taste of 'domesticated' bin and horn systems are the still current Klipsch Cornwall and Heresey models. These are relatively low cost speakers which shows in the quality of their drive units but totally old school and very simple.

Sensitivity is astonishing by modern standards so the transient response is first rate and the lack of dynamic compression makes then very different to just about any speaker you may have heard.

I have owned several of the JBL 15 inch systems in my time and they were all huge fun, if musical scale and presence are what you like, these are just brilliant.

 

[Vladimir]

Very interesting posts I have been reading them all you do not seem to see meany speaker makers make big speakers with big drivers in them this days I used to have some big pioneer speakers back in the early 1990s but they used to be a bit of a handful with the bass I had 4 of this speakers side by side like a wall back when I was young and stupid and Jamo used to make some big speakers too what I remember . Anyway nise to see a good post better then talking about bloody speaker cables !

Cable threads still going. Ive changed the way i look at speaker design now and also the way i look at speaker manufacturers now also but seems i cant play music now i am missing my old r700s

so what are you thinking about going for then ? The JBL M2s are massive and the price £7000 your need some room for them . Anyway I am more taking a back seat on this as I do not no much about big speakers a specially bin's , horns but would like to know what the horns do in a big speaker and what there purpose is

Ill be looking at anything jbl very closely. Btw those m2 look great. Id like to hear them and i might to see what other older products i could get thats close maybe

Watch out for the JBL Synthesis 1400 Array.

So while I'm suspicious of horn-loaded designs, I'm not surprised that the Synthesis 1400 Array BG offers both superb speaker engineering and superb measured performance. I keep returning to that remarkably flat and even in-room response: Good grief!—John Atkinson

A more contemporary layout is the JBL Synthesis LS80. But I'd rather have the JBL Model 4429 or 4344M or 4365 or... *wacko*

 

[Vladimir]

And tubes. Oh Lawd, I gotsa has tubez! *wacko*

 

[lindsayt]

I agree with DDC in that the more desirable classic JBL's go for relatively high amounts of money on the 2nd hand market. The trick is to find examples selling well below the going rate.

Or to look at the highly viable alternatives to JBL, such as Altec, EV, Vitavox, Urei, big Klipsch.

Klangfilm are great too, but have become in the highly desirable collectable bracket too.

Klipsch Heresy's display the Achiles heel of high efficiency speakers: how do you get the bass up to the efficiency of the midrange units and therefore achieve a neutral tonal balance plus and acceptable amount of bass extension? With the Heresy's they need all the room reinforcement they can get - and even then, to my ears they can sound too lean.

 

[Ajani]

For good old school dynamics at a much more reasonable price I'd opt for the Cerwin Vega XLS215: