JBL is targeted at a different market which is NOT a true audiophile market. I think that there has been a lot of dissention and turmoil among the old timers at JBL since Sidney Harman took them over. They have been very resistant to change. They have a heritage of producing speakers for the movie theater industry and were in the vanguard of what was once referred to as "The West Coast Sound." I didn't think that this was a real phenomenon until I read it in Sam's Audio Engineering Handbook but it apparantly was real. Of course, accuracy in live versus recorded terms knows no geographical boundaries. It is fortunate that the revenues from JBL's financial success both in the professional market and in the low to middle price consumer market can be used to finance the research of the likes of Revel. JBL also always liked to have a flagship product which was highly innovative such as the Hartsfield and the Paragon. This latest manifestation is just one more of them which will undoubtedly have a very limited production and appeal. As I recall, there's a fair amount of information about it at the Lansing Heritage Site. Like many companies with such high profile low volume (and maybe zero profit) projects, it's a wonderful reward opportunity for their best engineers to run amok with their wildest ideas, whether they are practical or not. In these cases, it's best for top management to keep a hands off policy and just occasionally peek into what they are doing to let them know they are interested but will not be heavy handed. That is another possible explanation of why O'Toole didn't put a stop to the Monster Cable idea. If Monster Cable did develop something for them, it's my hunch they farmed it out to a Belden or an Alpha, and put their name on it for the prestige of being able to say that they are part of the project. It's good advertising for them as well.