My friend, the audio dealer, brought in a set of JBL 4367's, the new model based on the M2 Master Reference Studio Monitor. The 4367 is passive though and marketed for home use. I've had a passion for true horn type speakers, or pro speakers, since back in the day when I sold Electro-Voice, so I wanted to give the 4367 a listen.

The 4367 is like having the performance in your room. This is the type of speaker you want if you really want to hear and feel a drum kit in the room. The horn drivers are not fatiguing and provide great detail. The bass is big and powerful while being quick and detailed. I had to do some breaking in when I got them so they could still have even more improvement in store. The bass isn't quite as fast as the 6" drivers in my F52's at this point, nor do they play as low. However, the two sounds are quite different. I read one analogy I thought fit well, the 4367 is like a sports car where speakers you read about in TAS or Stereophile are typically luxury cars. Meaning the luxury is designed for "audiophile" type sound and speakers like the 4367 is like, well, as I mentioned prior, when you want to hear and feel the drums in your room. You can give the 4367 as much clean power as you can stand and it will be distortion free presenting the same frequency response as it will at a lower level. And, you know how sometimes you'll get a recording and you can tell there's horns in the background but it's a bit undefined or lacking clarity, the 4367 is able to present the horns to where you can hear a defined horn and someone is back there playing it. Things like piano, cymbals and brass sound great. Vocals come through like the person is there, you get good detail and inflection. But as with a sports car none of the bumps get smoothed out on the road and it's always raring to go.

The sound stage is wide but it doesn't arc up like most dome tweeter speakers, just a limit of a horizontal horn. Plus, I don't have the spikes or platforms. The horns should be a bit closer to my ear level. The 4367 has two sets of binding posts, rated at 94dB & 6 ohms. 94dB would lead you to believe these could be easily driven, and maybe so, but if they are like the Array 1400's you'll still need some sturdy solid state or powerful tubes. My CJ 100 watt monoblocks didn't get the 1400's off the ground.