This the best speaker BestBuy have in inventory.

[spacedeckman]

JBL's "Signature Sound" is essentially a midbass rise of 3-8dB depending on product, and a treble rise starting around 5k. The midbass hump is centered around 80Hz for a floorstander and 100Hz for a bookshelf.
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That is not necessary true. Some of JBL speaker may have that signature, but some don't. For example, bottom pictures are frequency response of JBL N28 $400 (measured from echo free chamber):>


The problems with trying to measure bass response in anything but an ungodly HUGE anechoic (echo free) chamber is that the charts will become corrupted below a certain frequency. CRs room is screwing up just below 100Hz. It is probably just a bit smaller than Harmans old anechoic chamber at the Northridge plant before they built the "really big one" I've never seen...but it is supposed to be sizeable. They wouldn't trust the old one below 200Hz and the new one is supposed to be okay to 80 or 100Hz. But, there is one complication to your argument. Harman, (JBL's parent company), and any other speaker company worth a crap voices their speakers in a real room. Anechoic information tells you a lot, especially about enclosure tuning and crossover, but is pretty worthless when you are voicing a speaker. Now I'd be willing to lay pretty long odds that you don't do a whole lot of listening in an anechoic chamber. (Another reason that I think CRs ratings are stupid, a glaringly obvious general ignorance of what specialized tools are used for, although I still maintain that their heart is in the right place, but they buy and expensive tool used by engineers to see how a speaker is reacting to changes in tuning, to try to explain how it works in a normal room...explain the logic in that to me please...it displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what they should be trying to do.) We as consumers, and speaker makers are concerned with how a speaker will perform in a normal room where it will be listened to. CR is worried about how it will work in a place it will never be used.

Now, take these speakers and put them in a "normal" sized room. JBL's old set-up used a modest sized room and a larger one...just rooms proportioned to keep bad things from happening. The rooms are different now, but I would imagine the concept has pretty much stayed the same.

There are a few things I can tell you from the charts. On the N28, the crossover is set at about 3.5K. The little hump right at 3K is probably a summation error from the woofer being run just a bit higher than it liked, or a diffraction problem...could be both. The tweeter is pretty crappy with a very non-linear response and a heavy 6k peak with a pretty steep roll-off above that. CR's chamber has a cancellation problem at about 80Hz, so anything from about an octave up (160Hz, but in reality 200Hz) is going to be pretty much worthless. However, there is a noticable hump between 80 and 800Hz that would be reinforced in a normal room. Between that 800Hz and 3k, there is a noticable dip. Ready for review? 6k peak (I said "around 5k"...score: Space 1) Hump from 80-800Hz, room problems preclude finding true tuning frequency, although, similar "humps" (more concerned with "drops") at 120Hz on N28 and 150Hz on S26 are a bit of an indicator, although could be room anomoly (I said "hump" and the S26 shows an obvious hump, just don't know if that is a room problem, but there would be a noticable hump in a real room...Score Space 2)

Now the S26 is supposed to be a "classier" speaker. You can tell so by the high frequency response. There is a slight peak at 4K, but is going to be far less noticable than the N28 (less "sizzle", more detail and extension). Overall frequency response is much flatter until the midbass (which is going to be an inaccurate reading) which besides room problems, seems to show that they are trying to make the S26 catch a bit of attention by adding some "bump" to the bottom end. I highly doubt that it is as radical as the chart shows, but there is some added "umph" down there. The Studio series was designed to be a much flatter overall response (be less like JBL consumer and more like JBL Pro..hence the "studio" moniker)

Geez Smokey, didn't realize there was that much information there, did ya? Besides knowing how to read "anechoic" (putting me one step up on CR), I've also been in on the design and final tuning/listening stages on a couple of speaker projects for JBL on the consumer side. My info comes from the source.

On the Yamaha front, the 638 is NOT a 555 or 777. The 638 is essentially the same speaker Yamaha has been selling for the past 8 or 9 years. They've sold a million of these things (I think they literally HAVE sold nearly a million units) It is a really cheap $100/pr list price speaker. Again, trying to accurately tell you what's happening below 200Hz isn't easy, but overall the response above 200Hz is remarkably flat for a speaker of this price and could easily be considered the equal, if not slightly superior to the N28 from 200Hz on up. But, alas, this wasn't the speaker, nor even the series of speakers I was talking about. The 555 and 777 (I'm glad they are easy model numbers so I can remember them, I couldn't have told you 638 for nothing) are a bit higher performance, and a bit higher priced, at $500 and $600/pr respectively. They share no components whatsoever with the 638, and since they were the focus of my comments (keywords:New Speakers from Yamaha) were the more expensive speakers that compete with the JBL, Klipsch, and Athena tower speakers, we can get no further on that one.

So, I'm afraid, after all this that it is you, Smokey, are the one who stands corrected. My JBL "generalization" came straight from JBL. If you want to know another Harman "deep corporate secret", Infinity's "signature" is pretty much like JBL's without the midbass hump. Yup, I was PAID to do that "hump thing". You did show me something I have suspected for a long time...JBL has got to start using some better tweeters. The one on the S26 isn't bad, but it isn't as flat as the older ones were, and the one on the N28 is a disaster on a speaker of that price point. (It didn't sound very good either...zingy with no extension)

As for the Yamaha thing, you brought a picture of a pen-knife to a thermonuclear war. Can't discuss much on that one.

On the upside, you learned more about reading anechoical FR charts than anyone at CR knows. You also should have learned that you didn't have the proof you thought you had. It's not that the information was wrong, CR just used it incorrectly, and incorrectly convinced you that it was relevant to this or any other discussion of speakers being used in real world situations. BTW, these charts are more than likely done with one speaker, directly on axis. You will listen with at least two speakers, off axis, rendering these charts even more worthless.

Sorry to make it seem like I'm dogging you, honestly, I'm not. But, if you string together what I have said about CR's shortcomings, especially with this post, I hope you can get a better idea of why I really don't like them getting involved in audio. You, on the other hand, still haven't been able to let go of them as a "reputable source" of information. Again, I honestly think they mean well, and are really not trying to (with one exception I'm not going to touch here) hoodwink anyone, they are continually handing out irrelavent and improperly used information. They don't understand that they are goofing up, and that's why they are often out of synch with the real world in this area. Now, put that together with my comments on the JBLs, Klipsch, Yamaha, and Athena, and you may have an idea of where I'm coming from.

Have a happy New Year if I don't get a chance to post at you again this week.

[skeptic]

Thank god you didn't say the "B" word and it doesn't ryhme with witch.

While you may be right about CRs speaker reviews, you can take their small appliance reviews to the bank. They know food processors like nobody's business. I wonder how much hum and noise you get out of a Cuisinart. Funny, they didn't say.

[skeptic]

...who put the bomp in the bomp sha bomp sha bomp, or who put the rhyme in the rhyma lima ding dong, but at least now I know who put the hump in the JBL speaker response.

Yup, I was PAID to do that "hump thing".

No surprise here. The "voicing" of speakers is usually IMO done by the marketing department telling the engineers what kind of sound they think will sell best. Tough problem when you are considering a typical sound room such as those at Circuit City or Best Buy and you are competing for a customer's attention against dozens of other products and you may only get a few seconds to avoid getting eliminated on the first round, especially if you can't come across with the "perks" to give out to the salesman for pushing your products.

Besides, most customers don't want really accurate speakers anyway and wouldn't know one if it hit them over the head. So sell boom and sizzle and when they get it home and don't like it and call the salesman back, he can give them a story about breaking them in or switching to vinyl or buying a tube amplifier or special cables to roll off the high end. That's what you get when you are selling to a market that has much more money than knowledge.

[spacedeckman]

"Besides, most customers don't want really accurate speakers anyway and wouldn't know one if it hit them over the head"

Skeptic! we agree on this point (Your tally will be updated to reflect this)
The JBL "Signature Sound" was in place long before I got there, and will be there for many years to come. It just gets spiced up or toned down depending on the target audience.

"he can give them a story about breaking them in or switching to vinyl or buying a tube amplifier "

Vinyl and tubes aren't for everybody. I like them, but I'm not into the "old tube" sound, nor the "old vinyl" sound which is what you describe. Things have changed out there.

"or special cables to roll off the high end"

Skeptic, you have just stepped into the "doo-doo". You have now admitted to coming over to my side of the cable debate. It IS possible to build cables to tune a system, there can be differences, and often those differences are destructive in nature. Don't you feel better now? (Your tally will be updated to reflect this)

[skeptic]

"Besides, most customers don't want really accurate speakers anyway and wouldn't know one if it hit them over the head"

Skeptic! we agree on this point (Your tally will be updated to reflect this)
The JBL "Signature Sound" was in place long before I got there, and will be there for many years to come. It just gets spiced up or toned down depending on the target audience.

"he can give them a story about breaking them in or switching to vinyl or buying a tube amplifier "

Vinyl and tubes aren't for everybody. I like them, but I'm not into the "old tube" sound, nor the "old vinyl" sound which is what you describe. Things have changed out there.

"or special cables to roll off the high end"

Skeptic, you have just stepped into the "doo-doo". You have now admitted to coming over to my side of the cable debate. It IS possible to build cables to tune a system, there can be differences, and often those differences are destructive in nature. Don't you feel better now? (Your tally will be updated to reflect this)

Do I have to keep saying it? Tuning or equalizing a sound system by changing cables has got to be the dumbest, most expensive, least predictable, least controllable, least efficient way there is to do it assuming that it can be done at all.

Spiced up or toned down, the target audience is that segment of the market that particular product is aimed at. The high end doesn't want accuracy any more than the low end. If you want to see who wants accuracy just check the kind of music they are listening to. If it's classical, there is a good chance they want accurate. If it's jazz, there is still a possibility but don't count on it. Anything else and the term doesn't even have a meaning.

JBL and its sister company Alec Lansing was originally a supplier of theater speakers. Loud, efficient, utterly reliable, and not particularly accurate, they didn't have to be, until the mid 1950s recorded sound didn't contain anything above 8 khz. The basic 2 way horn design was their signature. Their ultimate design was the Hartsfield. Frankly, if I were looking for a great toy or ambitious enough to build one for myself, I'd go for a Paragon.

Klipsch's ultimate speaker which the Hartsfield was designed to compete head to head against was and still is the Klipschorn. But the JBL used higher quality drivers. The Altec A7 voice of the theater is another one in that league and let's not forget Tannoy's dual gold concentric monitor, also in that same market. The revolution towards accuracy began in the 1950s with AR and KLH. By introducing the Acoustic suspension design and dome tweeters, there was a possibilty for making much better more accurate speakers and they fit in most homes unlike the big horns. But the limits of that paradyme were completely exploited by the 1980s and while materials have improved and some slight conceptual improvements have been made like Linquist Riley crossover networks and Theil Small modeling for ported designs, not much of real significance has happened. Today's me too designs just don't seem to offer much promise of better things to come either. Basically, what started out as a hobby for some poineers in this area or was a transistion from pro sound to exploit a consumer market has died of its own commercial success.

As for vinyl tubes, I've had a lifetime of them, still have them in my basement but as far as I'm concerned, while they bring back the nostalgia of my youth, as pretenders to being state of the art, they basically suck.

[spacedeckman]

Lansing went from Altec to found JBL. There was a lot of shared technology due to the whole egress/founding thing. Lansing (Martini actually) brought many of his patents with him. Altec was originally All Technical Services. The only common thread between them was James B Lansing.

As for changes, the biggest have come in the form of tweeters. 20 years ago, tweeters sucked. Now, many suck, but, there are some good ones out there. Otherwise, computers and computer modeling have changed a lot of things. Companies can now make drivers specifically for a speaker with different voice coils and motor geometrys to do very specific things. An engineered roll-off allows the use of a simpler crossover, less is more. I hold out more hope than you, but the contamination of marketing and loss of interest in quality will be audio's ultimate demise. Sony is already finding that out with SACD. The "revolution" that they are going to cram down everyone's throat in a couple of years due to lack of interest in better sound. MP3 is the "hot thing", and that is only acceptable at best as far as sound quality goes at the highest bit rates. There just aren't many out there who care anymore.

I've known a bunch of old guys with "Voice of the Theater" systems. Never any Hartsfield guys though. All that fancy wood stuff went away when the head wood working guy died. Sorry, I don't recall his name. But speaker "sculpture" had pretty much died by then anyway.

[Geoffcin]

No surprise here. The "voicing" of speakers is usually IMO done by the marketing department telling the engineers what kind of sound they think will sell best. Tough problem when you are considering a typical sound room such as those at Circuit City or Best Buy and you are competing for a customer's attention against dozens of other products and you may only get a few seconds to avoid getting eliminated on the first round, especially if you can't come across with the "perks" to give out to the salesman for pushing your products.

I gotta agree 100% on this statement. It's just something that is unavoidable. Consumer speakers have to be voiced to stand out in a crowd or they don't get bought. If you dropped a speaker in there with no sizzle on the top, or punchy mid-bass boom, you wouldn't sell them.

What I find interesting is that the JBL's that the original poster likes are so similar in design to the CSW Classic II, a speaker you can have today for LESS than the JBL's, and also comes with a 10 year warrantee to boot. I'm sure there are other speakers with similar designs too, but the CSW is the one I'm most familiar with. Although it would be nearly impossible to hear these side by side without purchasing both, I have found that similar designs sound similar to some degree. One difference I do note is that the CSW's are 65lbs each, while the JBL's are 48lbs. My guess is that the CSW's use thicker MDF in construction, or larger magnet structures, or both.

There's so many speakers out there in the $500-$1000 it make my head spin. You gotta feel sorry for the guys who have to make this kind of decision, as they can never even begin to touch the surface of what's available before making a decision. To top it all off if they come here looking for some input there's three different direct-to-consumer companies advertising right on this page all claiming that they are the best buy in speakers today.

[spacedeckman]

Funny things happen when sales floor reality meets consumers, marketing, and engineering.

On a big box floor, speakers are working in an environment they were never meant to operate in. Best Buy is the "worst case scenario" by far. Dozens of speakers out in the open on shelves in a 30-40,000 sq ft, very loud environment. Add to that, the average consumer is...at best ignorant, and at worst, stupid. Not normally stupid, but stupid hardened by the marketing department of an audio company...speakers in our example. So, you will have three basic types of customers.

The first will have a brand already in mind, 70% of the time a brand that they have only heard the name of...never the speakers themselves. Bose is the most glaring example here. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people come into the store when I was selling, steadfastly refusing to listen to anything else. I would have to trick them into listening to something else, then 80% of the time they would buy the other product, the other 20% would admit the alternative sounded better, but they still wanted the Bose. Sound didn't matter, but the prestige they thought they would get from the purchase won out.

The second listens for about 10 seconds and testosterone pushes them to the "sensitive, boom and sizzle type" speaker. The logic is that more is better, read more midbass, more sensitivity, more sizzle makes the better choice. Cerwin Vega and Klipsch attract this kind of customer, but they are not nearly alone. It takes a patient salesman (they aren't always evil) to realize that and try to get them to slow down and make a better choice. Again, about 80% of the time this customer can be won over to a better speaker, but 20% go with the testosterone.

The third, goes in with an open mind, and listens. They will take input from a salesman, but make their own decision. They realize that they really don't know what is going on in the audio business, and what they do know wouldn't fill a thimble half full if it were run over by a truck. Instead, they use that lack of knowledge as a benefit. Having not prejudged any product, they tend to give anything a try and a real evaluation. Not an evaluation tainted by what's been crammed in their head by people who don't know or are just trying to get them to buy something.

The third person is rare, but I loved selling them things because they always asked the right questions and knew the goal was their pleasure. Even if they didn't buy something from me, it felt good dealing with them, because they were on a quest for knowledge.

So, yes, poor salespeople are directed by spiffs (bonus payments or contests for selling a product), some companies make products to call attention to themselves on a busy salesfloor, figuring the salespeople will clerk out the easy sale, engineers now try to accomplish a whole lot on smaller budgets. (This has a good side: A good engineer can make wonderful products on a little budget, any engineer can make good products on a big budget) But their creativity is usually directed by the marketing department, who limit their creativity to fit a pre-packaged concept.

That is the way the world is out there. I mentioned Best Buy, but Circuit, or any of the big box type stores are little different. The strong survive, unfortunately too many people are willing to believe that tripe is steak. People aren't often too bright. They expect a brand name to make them feel better, or earn respect out in the world. I'm actually proud that the normal person on the street would only recognize the name of my DVD changer. Name was not involved in any of my decisions, only sound, and to some extent, price.

[Smokey]

Spacedeck, I thought you won't be back until the new years. I guess the discussion got too hot for you

Funny things happen when sales floor reality meets consumers, marketing, and engineering.

On a big box floor, speakers are working in an environment they were never meant to operate in. Best Buy is the "worst case scenario" by far. Dozens of speakers out in the open on shelves in a 30-40,000 sq ft, very loud environment.

That discussion can go both ways. One can go and listen to speakers in a dedicated listening room in a dealer, but that won't guaranty the speakers sounded best in that environment will sound best in consumer's room environment. So there are too many holes in that argument.

Also on your comment about CR only measure speakers on-axis only in not correct. They measures frequency response on-axis and at various off-axis angles inside an anechoic chamber and then uses a computer program to estimate what you'd hear in a real room (I'm not sure what size room) which is a mix of on-axis and off-axis frequency responses (aka "direct and reflected sound").

[Beckman]

Nothing wrong with JBL, but there are probably better speakers for $800.

[spacedeckman]

"One can go and listen to speakers in a dedicated listening room in a dealer, but that won't guaranty the speakers sounded best in that environment will sound best in consumer's room environment."

Not really, there are far more similarities in rooms than differences. Speakers are designed to work in a "standard sized" environment, not big stores where you will get no bass reinforcement. Okay they should be. No holes in that argument. It will be nowhere near the "superstore".

"then uses a computer program to estimate what you'd hear in a real room "

They are apparently not adjusting for the limitations of the anechoic chamber. There would be fewer holes in an argument that used a real room. Consumers would be far better served by a dummy room where they took standardized measurements. All they would have to do is go to the homes of 10 or 20 people that worked there, measure each of their living rooms, and create an "average room". Far cheaper and better for their goals. What they are doing now is BS.

[Bryan]

After having a chance to listen to the E-90s I will say they are good but would not get my vote for HT, especially considering I can get five nOrh 4.0s (the speakers I have in my HT system) for $850 delivered. That being said, I would also say the E-90s were the best at Best Buy. However, the E-20s are extremely impressive, having the same sonic signature as the E-90s and go for a fourth ($200 delivered for the pair) of the price. For my money for a speaker purchase at Best Buy, the E-20s would be the way to go.