JBL's Internal Monster Wiring

[woodman]

The owner's manual for Harman International's new JBL K2 S5800 speakers, introduced last year at $18,000 per pair list, not only recommends the use of audiophile cables but points out that these speakers are internally wired with Monster Cable specially designed for JBL. The manual can be found at JBL's web site:

okiemax:
You're not actually suggesting that the use of a specific brand of wire inside a speaker cabinet is somehow going to effect an improvement to the speaker's performance, are you? I sure hope not.

Regarding what Dr. Floyd Toole does or does not believe about the sonic properties (or lack thereof) of different wires and cables, it matters not even a little tiny bit. As markw pointed out in his replies to this thread, it's very seldom that any engineer - or the entire engineering dept. has much of any "say" in final product design and configuration. During the course of my extensive career in consumer electronics, I've had many discussions about this very topic with many engineers from both audio and video companies. They have all said essentially the exact same thing ... it's the MARKETING DEPT. that "drives the bus". The engineers have to sit in the back of the bus - with just about nada,zip,zilch to say about whereinthehell the bus is headed!

[Pat D]

It was Pat D and Monstrous Mike, not I, who made claims about what Dr.Toole found. If you believe the obligation for proof is on those who make the claims, you should be asking them to email Dr.Toole for an explanation instead of asking me. Whoever does it should post the correspondence on this Forum.

PCT thinks Dr. Toole never looked into cables, but very credible people who know have said he did. If you do not wish to draw a conclusion from the evidence, you don't have to. Here are a couple of references.

"Audiolab Test: Six Power Amplifiers", Masters, Ian G., Audio Scene Canada, May 1977, pg 44-50.

"Audiolab Test: Amplifiers and Speaker Cables", Masters, Ian G., Audio Scene Canada, Jun 1981, pg 24-27.

Go ask Ian Masters, Alan Lofft, or Dr. Toole himself whether the NRC looked into cables to see if they were relevant to their speaker testing. Why get it second or third hand from us? Get it first hand from people who were involved.

[Pat D]

From my young teen-age experiences along Canal Street in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, someone who allows his name, face, reputation and writing to be prominently displayed for all the world to see on the home page of an international audio conglomerate who fundamentally disagrees with a significant component of that company's marketing strategy is called a "whore".

So which is he Mark? Is he (1) a professional engineer who, for engineering reasons, supports the use of Monster Cable in the JBL speakers and supports the recommendation regarding use of speaker cables, or (2) a whore?

What you propose to accomplish with them in a Cable Forum is an unanswered question. Are you just being vicious?

[markw]

What you propose to accomplish with them in a Cable Forum is an unanswered question. Are you just being vicious?

If I read correctly he was either

1) saying that Mr Toole accepted the fact that cables make an audiable difference

or

2) was trying to drag Mr Toole down to his level.

Further evidence seemed to rule out option 1.

[okiemax]

okiemax:
You're not actually suggesting that the use of a specific brand of wire inside a speaker cabinet is somehow going to effect an improvement to the speaker's performance, are you? I sure hope not.

Regarding what Dr. Floyd Toole does or does not believe about the sonic properties (or lack thereof) of different wires and cables, it matters not even a little tiny bit. As markw pointed out in his replies to this thread, it's very seldom that any engineer - or the entire engineering dept. has much of any "say" in final product design and configuration. During the course of my extensive career in consumer electronics, I've had many discussions about this very topic with many engineers from both audio and video companies. They have all said essentially the exact same thing ... it's the MARKETING DEPT. that "drives the bus". The engineers have to sit in the back of the bus - with just about nada,zip,zilch to say about whereinthehell the bus is headed!

You can rest easy, Woodman. It is the speaker owner's manual, not I, that suggests improvment from internal Monster Cable wiring designed for the speaker. I made no suggestion -- just told what was in the manual. And I have no opinion.

I'm not sure I agree with your "back of the bus" generalization about engineers. Are you suggesting engineers have trouble seeing the big picture?

[skeptic]

I think there would be loud protests from the engineering department if the speaker wire actually caused poorer performance. From the look of some of these wires, wiring anything with them would be a step in the wrong direction.

If this is the speaker I've seen recently on the Lansing Heritage website, the one with a super tweeter which "reproduces" sound over 20 Khz, you can see the extent to which JBL has prostituted itself. Some of you may recall an interesting thread appearing here within the last year about the Japanese experiment with just such a tweeter. It was designed to show that even the best intended experiments conducted by the most objective scientists can be flawed. In that experiment as I recall, a professor of electrical engineering intended to demonstrate that reproduction above 20 khz was inaudible. He designed a loudspeaker which performed to well beyond 20 khz and when the signal included components above 20 khz, the students could easily distinguish it from when it didn't. As it turned out, the experiment was fatally flawed because the over 20 khz components were causing distortion within the audible passband. When the experiment was repeated with a separate supertweeter dedicated to the over 20khz spectrum, the expected result was obtained. If JBL is marketing such a speaker, it may be because Sidney Harman is still obsessed with this ultrasonic region. His vacuum tube amplifiers of the 1950s and 1960s routinely had bandwidths to 70Khz and his first solid state venture had a bandwidth of 1 Mhz. He may be rich and successful, but he's also nuts.

[Monstrous Mike]

I'm not sure I agree with your "back of the bus" generalization about engineers. Are you suggesting engineers have trouble seeing the big picture?

There are many factors to consider other than the best engineering design. Among them are cost, reliability, perception of the buyer, speed from R&D to market, affiliations with other companies, national and international laws, etc. I can say with all certainty as a member of the military in an engineering capacity that I have had many recommendations overturned for a variety of reasons from political to practical.

The bottom line of any business is profit. Final decisions are made for business reasons and not engineering reasons. And I certainly don't mean to imply that this is not how it should be. As a young design engineer my point of view was fairly idealistic in that I could not see how the best design with the best performance should not be the one to hit the streets. But in the big picture, this is usually never the best business decision. And as far as engineers seeing the big picture, well that is usually reserved for the more experienced engineers with business administration skills and usually in consultation with people of other skill sets like marketing, manufacturing, distribution, etc.

If you think about, scientists and inventors are usually the least business oriented and thus less likely to be affluent. Engineers are a little better but the real overachievers are the salesman. And unfortunately, sometimes the quality of the product isn't much of a factor in the sales, it's the sales pitch that does it combined with the lack of information and discretion on the part of the consumer.

So if Dr. Toole said in a meeting that regular zip cord was good enough for their JBL speakers and business types calculated that this would lead to a decrease in sales and profit since other speaker manufacturers have captured the market with internal wiring and bi-wiring marketing, then guess what path Harmon would choose to take?

If you think about, what hope does 12 gauge zip cord have in hi-end audio? It's not marketed by anybody. It is simply available at Home Depot. And not only that, it is poo-pooed on most audio boards on the Internet and anybody who supports using it is considered either deaf or having a bookshelf audio system incapable of resolving the performance of high end cabling.

If we did an experiment using wine, I believe we could come up with the same phenomenon. Let's say we filled one hundred bottles with the same wine. Then we put on a different label on each bottle. I can guarantee you that if 50 of those bottles were marketed, priced higher than the other fifty and talked about on the Internet, then in a year, you would see arguements claiming that those fifty brands were "better".

I'm not saying that is what is happening in audio cabling but rather I was speculating on an answer to your original post. If the winemaker said that his company's $100 bottle was no better than some other $5 bottle, would that company and its business managers change it's label and start selling their bottles for $5?

[skeptic]

Cables aside, this is one miserable speaker. It's neither fish nor fowl. As a home high fidelity reproducer, it shows the characteristic benefits and limitations of horn speakers. While it is highly efficient, it cannot reproduce not only the lowest octave of bass but the next to the lowest half of an octave as well. With a 6 db down point of 50 hz, it cannot reproduce not only organ pedal notes but the lower registers of pianos, double basses and other low freqeuncy instruments. What are they going to tell you after you've spent $18,000 if this is the kind of music you listen to, buy a subwoofer? For professional use, its price is beyond the pale. For $18,000 you can buy enough horn speakers to fill a sports arena with sound. This is a dumb dumb dumb idea which can only be sold to people who have too much money. This is what happens when you must produce a new flagship product and you've completely run out of ideas. IMO, if you must have a horn speaker, a Klipschorn would be a far better choice and at a much lower price.

[filecat13]

Where to start? Where to start?

All right, here's a simple question and some follow ups: How many of this speaker's detractors have audtitioned this speaker? Of those who audtitioned it, how many opened the enclosure, ripped out the debated Monster cable, and replaced it with another brand? With rip cord? With solid copper wire? With silver cable? What were the measurable differences?

Here's a second question. Has anyone seen JBL advertise this speaker? If so, was the inclusion of Monster Cable used as a selling point? Don't confuse the issue by noting that it says Monster on page 14 in the owner's manual, which you'd normally get AFTER puchasing the product. How about here on JBL's own Web site:

http://www.jbl.com/home/products/pro...rId=K2&sCatId=

See any Monsters? Or do you have to go online and deliberately download the manual (before ever hearing or purchasing the speaker), then read the first fourteen pages to find the word Monster? How is that being a whore again?

Let's look at who had engineering control over this speaker. Who was it? People seem to think it was all Floyd Toole. Better check again. Do the names Greg Timbers, Doug Button, and Francher Murray mean anything to you? In fact, Toole's name does not even come up on the engineering team, while Timbers, as chief engineer, even appears in the K2 marketing material, while Monster Cable does not.

http://www.lansingheritage.org/html/...1-k2-s9800.htm

Someone who didn't know better could read this thread and conclude that JBL tried to validate the quality of its product by associating with Monster Cable and that its engineers were patsies to a corproate marketing rip off. This is incorrect and ignorant. If our objective were to research and learn rather than speculate and make sensationalist statments, all this is easy to find out.

[filecat13]

Cables aside, this is one miserable speaker. It's neither fish nor fowl. As a home high fidelity reproducer, it shows the characteristic benefits and limitations of horn speakers. While it is highly efficient, it cannot reproduce not only the lowest octave of bass but the next to the lowest half of an octave as well. With a 6 db down point of 50 hz, it cannot reproduce not only organ pedal notes but the lower registers of pianos, double basses and other low freqeuncy instruments. What are they going to tell you after you've spent $18,000 if this is the kind of music you listen to, buy a subwoofer? For professional use, its price is beyond the pale. For $18,000 you can buy enough horn speakers to fill a sports arena with sound. This is a dumb dumb dumb idea which can only be sold to people who have too much money. This is what happens when you must produce a new flagship product and you've completely run out of ideas. IMO, if you must have a horn speaker, a Klipschorn would be a far better choice and at a much lower price.

So you have heard it, skeptic? Or is your position, "I don't need to hear it; I can read a graph."

I don't think my local sports stadium has an $18k speaker system. I'd hate to be in it if it did. I know from the press materials that they spent quite a bit more than that, thankfully.

The engineering team for this speaker had a lot of ideas, so to characterize them as "out of ideas" would be incorrect. You may not like the ideas, and you may be correct that the ideas are insufficient to make this a great or even marginally acceptble speaker, but to declare someone bankrupt by ignoring their accomplishments and failing to give anything other than "IMO" to validate your claims is very thin indeed. That's not being skeptical, that's being illogical.

[skeptic]

What makes this speaker better than the Paragon or the Hartsfield for that matter. I've been a JBL fan for over 40 years. This is NOT one of their proudest moments. They still haven't addressed the problem of integrating the speaker into the room acoustics.

BTW, nobody uses a single $18,000 speaker for a sports arena. They use them in arrays. As I said in another thread, controlled dispersion is a hallmark of modern horn speakers and one of the reasons why they are the system of choice for PA and sound reinforcement in large public spaces. It gives them the advantage of uniform coverage over a wide area and maximum gain before feedback. High efficiency and high maximum sound pressure levels before distortion are two others. But they do not adapt well for use as home high fidelity speakers especially where two are needed for stereo. They are large, very heavy, of limited and often irregular frequency response, do not have the best high frequency dispersion (this seems to be different because of the tweeter design) and do not produce adequate bass unless they are folded and still enormous as in Paragon which reaches down to 26 hz at -3db beating the pants off this one at -6db at 50 hz. As I said elsewhere, my favorite is Paragon and one day I hope to build one. BTW, what does this design say about capacitors, that they don't behave linearly at small signal levels unless they have a dc bias? What does that tell you about EVERY OTHER speaker crossover network including their own if they are right? Baloney. If this is the flagship their current crop of engineers produce, then sadly their best days are behind them.

[filecat13]

So you've heard it then?

[skeptic]

After a little reflection, it has occurred to me that there is no point in listening to them. By the manufacturer's own admission, they cannot reproduce one and a half to two octaves of the ten audible octaves humans can hear. This includes all of the deep bass that defines rhythm, one of the critical elements in most music and an aspect indespensible for my enjoyment of it. Therefore they cannot be considered "high fidelity." This would be unacceptable at $1,800. At $18,000 is is outrageous. Of course I feel exactly the same way about other expensive loudspeakers which cannot reproduce an orchestral crecendo because their maximum loudness is grossly inadequate and expensive peewee amplifiers which cant provide sufficient power to drive 95 percent or more of the loudspeakers on the market to acceptable loudness levels. Whatever their attributes, their limitations make them fatally flawed for attracting my dollars or attention.

[skeptic]

"How many of this speaker's detractors have audtitioned this speaker? Of those who audtitioned it, how many opened the enclosure, ripped out the debated Monster cable, and replaced it with another brand? With rip cord? With solid copper wire? With silver cable? What were the measurable differences?"

They don't let you "rip out" the internal wiring of a loudspeaker and replace it for an $18 a pair of speakers let alone an $18,000 pair unless you buy it first and then it belongs to you so you can do whatever you want with it.

"Someone who didn't know better could read this thread and conclude that JBL tried to validate the quality of its product by associating with Monster Cable and that its engineers were patsies to a corproate marketing rip off. This is incorrect and ignorant."

Actually it's not. They would never admit to having been paid off by Monster to play this little harmless stunt advancing Monster's prestige while trying to trick gullible customers into drawing wrong conclusions about their speakers. In a letter to the editor of Sound and Video Contractor magazine about 20 years ago, one industry insider wrote pointing out that when the cable guys come around to the speaker manufacturers, they don't make the slightest pretense about better quality of their wire because they know they'd get booted out the door before the last sylable was out of their mouths. What they tell the speaker manufacturer is that their customers expect and like to see it as internal wiring because that's what they get suckered into buying for their own home audio systems. In a perverse sense, there is some logic to this.

Funny how so many of the best and most expensive speakers of the past never used any special audiophile cable for internal wiring. Like for example, Infinity IRS or RGA's favorite Klipschorn. How about your Vandersteens PC, any special brand of wiring in them? And no batteries for charging up the crossover network capacitors either? Is that a new trend in audio lunacy?

[pctower]

"How many of this speaker's detractors have audtitioned this speaker? Of those who audtitioned it, how many opened the enclosure, ripped out the debated Monster cable, and replaced it with another brand? With rip cord? With solid copper wire? With silver cable? What were the measurable differences?"

They don't let you "rip out" the internal wiring of a loudspeaker and replace it for an $18 a pair of speakers let alone an $18,000 pair unless you buy it first and then it belongs to you so you can do whatever you want with it.

"Someone who didn't know better could read this thread and conclude that JBL tried to validate the quality of its product by associating with Monster Cable and that its engineers were patsies to a corproate marketing rip off. This is incorrect and ignorant."

Actually it's not. They would never admit to having been paid off by Monster to play this little harmless stunt advancing Monster's prestige while trying to trick gullible customers into drawing wrong conclusions about their speakers. In a letter to the editor of Sound and Video Contractor magazine about 20 years ago, one industry insider wrote pointing out that when the cable guys come around to the speaker manufacturers, they don't make the slightest pretense about better quality of their wire because they know they'd get booted out the door before the last sylable was out of their mouths. What they tell the speaker manufacturer is that their customers expect and like to see it as internal wiring because that's what they get suckered into buying for their own home audio systems. In a perverse sense, there is some logic to this.

Funny how so many of the best and most expensive speakers of the past never used any special audiophile cable for internal wiring. Like for example, Infinity IRS or RGA's favorite Klipschorn. How about your Vandersteens PC, any special brand of wiring in them? And no batteries for charging up the crossover network capacitors either? Is that a new trend in audio lunacy?

Afraid there is: high purity silver. And he uses batteries in the high-pass filter between pre-amp and amp. Worst of all, he claims he builds the internal cross-over to be bi-wired and strongly recommends bi-wire.

He says that bi-wiring with modest speaker cables is usually more productive than more expensive single cables. I'm afraid he's a yeasayer when it comes to cables. Perhaps just as bad, he personally prefers tube gear and spends a lot of time tweaking his own personal amps with special parts. He's a former truck-driver, so what do you expect?

Amazing, though, how over the years he has developed a strong reputation for usually providing the best bang for the buck in loudspeakers at all price ranges up to $15,000. He believes anyone building a speaker system for more than $15,000 is either over-charging or under-engineering.

For what it's worth - I didn't have a clue as to what kind of wire he used in his speakers before I bought any of the 4 different pair I've owned, including my current Model Fives.

[skeptic]

How often do you change your "speaker batteries?" Which brand of batteries sound the best? (Before Mtrycrafts asks) have you DBT tested different batteries or are you just guessing? Here we go, a whole new field of nonsense, "Audiophile Crossover Network Batteries." Why didin't I think of that? OK everybody, if you don't have speakers which charge the capacitors in you crossover network, you are NOT a serious audiophile. But then again, you probably listen to solid state amplifiers so you are only mid fi anyway.

[Tony_Montana]

Just showing that use of MontserCable in JBL is more of marketing than sonic benefits, note that Yamaha speakers (starting with their $150 a pair speakers) also use Monster cables for speaker internal wires. It just make one wonder as to how much of $18,000 price tag for JBL speakers went for internal Monster cable.....$10, $15 or $20

http://www.yamaha.com/yec/products/HXseries/NSP333.htm

[skeptic]

The joke of it is that unlike the run between the amplifier output and the speaker input where the relationship resulting from the distance between the conductors and the type of insulation can affect the inductance and capacitance, inside the speaker box, the two conductors are often nowhere near each other. They are "unzipped."

[okiemax]

PCT thinks Dr. Toole never looked into cables, but very credible people who know have said he did. If you do not wish to draw a conclusion from the evidence, you don't have to. Here are a couple of references.

"Audiolab Test: Six Power Amplifiers", Masters, Ian G., Audio Scene Canada, May 1977, pg 44-50.

"Audiolab Test: Amplifiers and Speaker Cables", Masters, Ian G., Audio Scene Canada, Jun 1981, pg 24-27.

Go ask Ian Masters, Alan Lofft, or Dr. Toole himself whether the NRC looked into cables to see if they were relevant to their speaker testing. Why get it second or third hand from us? Get it first hand from people who were involved.

Pat, I think you are telling me your information is hearsay, and you don't really know what Dr.Toole thinks about cables. Nevertheless, I get the impression you like to think he believes zip cord is as good as any audiophile speaker cable in any system. Perhaps you are right. If you are right, I think you would agree his position conflicts with information given in some of his organization's manuals.

While you are not claiming to have information on Dr.Toole's views on cables directly from him, you are claiming to have it second-hand from good sources, and are presenting it as reliable. It would be easy for you to verify that your information is accurate. Just ask Dr. Toole by e-mail about his views on cables and whether they have changed. Regardless of his response, you will have done the right thing.

[mtrycraft]

Pat, I think you are telling me your information is hearsay, and you don't really know what Dr.Toole thinks about cables. Nevertheless, I get the impression you like to think he believes zip cord is as good as any audiophile speaker cable in any system. Perhaps you are right. If you are right, I think you would agree his position conflicts with information given in some of his organization's manuals.

Well, I sent him a number of emails some time in the past and it is no speculation what his position is. Contact him. Why don't you?

Please explain how the manual in any way conflicts his position? Now YOU are the speculator with no evidence. Just because the Monster cable is used is not evidence of anything. Are you telling me I cannot like or prefer the Monstre brand of cables?


It would be easy for you to verify that your information is accurate. Just ask Dr. Toole by e-mail about his views on cables and whether they have changed. .

Precisely. So, contact him and see. While you are at it ask about the use of Monster. Chicken?

[okiemax]

Pat, I think you are telling me your information is hearsay, and you don't really know what Dr.Toole thinks about cables. Nevertheless, I get the impression you like to think he believes zip cord is as good as any audiophile speaker cable in any system. Perhaps you are right. If you are right, I think you would agree his position conflicts with information given in some of his organization's manuals.

Well, I sent him a number of emails some time in the past and it is no speculation what his position is. Contact him. Why don't you?

Please explain how the manual in any way conflicts his position? Now YOU are the speculator with no evidence. Just because the Monster cable is used is not evidence of anything. Are you telling me I cannot like or prefer the Monstre brand of cables?


It would be easy for you to verify that your information is accurate. Just ask Dr. Toole by e-mail about his views on cables and whether they have changed. .

Precisely. So, contact him and see. While you are at it ask about the use of Monster. Chicken?

There may be no need for anyone to contact Dr.Toole if, as you imply, you have already discussed the matter with him. All you have to do is post the correspondence. Unless some questions remain unanswered, that should be the end of it.

[Pat D]

Pat, I think you are telling me your information is hearsay, and you don't really know what Dr.Toole thinks about cables. Nevertheless, I get the impression you like to think he believes zip cord is as good as any audiophile speaker cable in any system. Perhaps you are right. If you are right, I think you would agree his position conflicts with information given in some of his organization's manuals.

While you are not claiming to have information on Dr.Toole's views on cables directly from him, you are claiming to have it second-hand from good sources, and are presenting it as reliable. It would be easy for you to verify that your information is accurate. Just ask Dr. Toole by e-mail about his views on cables and whether they have changed. Regardless of his response, you will have done the right thing.

No, the question at issue was whether the NRC under Dr. Toole's direction looked into whether they needed to worry about special cables. Ian Masters' articles are not second hand information on this question, BTW.

I note that you wish mtrycrafts to make private Emails public. In any case, if you don't believe our second or third hand information, which you evidently don't, go ask Dr. Toole yourself. Or if that's too intimidating for you, write Ian Masters.

[pctower]

PCT thinks Dr. Toole never looked into cables, but very credible people who know have said he did. If you do not wish to draw a conclusion from the evidence, you don't have to. Here are a couple of references.

"Audiolab Test: Six Power Amplifiers", Masters, Ian G., Audio Scene Canada, May 1977, pg 44-50.

"Audiolab Test: Amplifiers and Speaker Cables", Masters, Ian G., Audio Scene Canada, Jun 1981, pg 24-27.

Go ask Ian Masters, Alan Lofft, or Dr. Toole himself whether the NRC looked into cables to see if they were relevant to their speaker testing. Why get it second or third hand from us? Get it first hand from people who were involved.

PCT thinks Dr. Toole never looked into cables, but very credible people who know have said he did. If you do not wish to draw a conclusion from the evidence, you don't have to. Here are a couple of references.


Why do you blatantly lie like that? Please show me where I have ever made a statement like that.

I have merely said I had seen no direct evidence that he had. I have never seen those two articles cited before.

Of course, they are difficult to access and are over 20 years old, so of course they do not cover cables developed since then. For that matter, you don't indicate what specific cables were tested.

[pctower]

No, the question at issue was whether the NRC under Dr. Toole's direction looked into whether they needed to worry about special cables. Ian Masters' articles are not second hand information on this question, BTW.

I note that you wish mtrycrafts to make private Emails public. In any case, if you don't believe our second or third hand information, which you evidently don't, go ask Dr. Toole yourself. Or if that's too intimidating for you, write Ian Masters.

You and mtrycrafts are the one's making claims about what Toole says in personal e-mails. You are the one's having the burden of proof. Isn't that what you are always telling yeasayers about their claims?

Either produce the evidence to support your claim or admit that your claim is without substantiation. Given your attitude toward the truth, why should anyone believe what you say?

[markw]

Well, given that you and okie have attributed several statements and corporate decisions to Mr Toole himself, it would seem to me that it's more likely that we ask you to prove your initial statements.

Now, since y'all have no problems asking others to violate the unwritten net ettiquette against posting personal corrospondence, I feel you should be a man for once and confront Mr. Toole himself with your accusations. Then, feel free to violate net ettiquette amd post his responses here on the forum.

Aftet all, we're not all lawyers. We find ouselves trying to abide by certain rules of conduct whenever possible, not just when we find it convenient.

It's not like y'all have any problems making outlandish statements. ...just backing them up and expecting others to prove you wrong.

Oh, and when corrosponding with Mr Toole, you might want to let him know you consider him a whore.