Paradigm Studio 20 vs B&W 602 S3

[Woochifer]

Thanks Wooch, for the little history lesson on the "demise" of JBL...Too bad, I guess. I've got no problem with pushing inexpensive models if there's demand, but it's unfortunate if causes your better products to disappear because of this.

JBL has made numerous speaker models designed to compete in the high end, but hardly anyone in North America sells them since JBL is barely a blip among high end dealers for the aforementioned reasons. You certainly won't see Best Buy stocking the K2 models (includes a $25k horn speaker with a 15" woofer that weighs 200 lbs)! And they even have a second assembly plant in Denmark that manufactures an entirely different line of speakers exclusively for the European market.

All these other manufacturers that have pushed their way into some of the mass merchants in recent years have tried to avoid the pitfalls and bad blood that JBL created when they went mass market. That's why you see guys like Yamaha, Klipsch, Denon, Sony, and Onkyo going to a two-tiered distribution system. Yamaha gives its specialty dealers the RX-V series, while the mail order houses and mass merchants get the HTR series. Klipsch sells the Synergy series through Best Buy, while the Reference series goes to the specialty dealers. Denon has a number of rebadged products that they sell at Sears and other mass merchants. Onkyo sells its Integra branded products through specialty dealers, and its own products everywhere else. And it's the same rationale behind Sony ES and Pioneer Elite, which have numerous products that are simply rebadged versions of garden variety Sony and Pioneer models.

But still, even hearing their inexpensive junk, to me it's not nearly as bad as alot of people say it is. Not my first choice, but not terrible.

I don't think it's coincidental that in recent years JBL's speakers have begun to sound more like the Paradigm/Energy/PSB speakers whose performance parameters were influenced by Floyd Toole's research at the NRC. He was hired on at Harman in 2000, and the quality of the JBL's recent Studio and Northridge speakers are a noticeable step up from what they were producing before. Not my favorite speakers either, but certainly not junk and actually a decent value considering how often I see them on sale. Unfortunately, it takes more than just better products to recover from a tarnished reputation.

I know first hand that big box stores can back fire in a big way for large manufacturers. If JBL becomes too dependant on Best Buy and Circuit City and such for distribution, these stores can command a lot influence on the MSRP, etc. Sometimes they prevent savings from being passed on to the consumer. And besides, who among us has really heard a Polk or JBL system properly calibrated and setup in a decent room with running on decent equipment recently? My trip the other day to Future Shop (Best Buy Canada) might as well have been a stroll through a large grocery store...Crowded shelfs, messy wires, 20 foot tall boxes of gear and 200 screaming customers isn't what I'd call optimal listening conditions.

Check out the thread that I started in the Home Theater section about Best Buy adding Magnolia (a high end AV chain on the west coast that BB acquired in 2000 and currently operates as an independent subsidiary) ministores to some of their California locations. These ministores have acoustically treated demo rooms, with a separate sales staff and noticeably higher tier products. If these ministores stores perform well, then brands like Primare, Vienna Acoustics, Def Tech, M&K, and maybe Sonus Faber, Martin Logan, B&K, and McIntosh will be available nationally by walking into Best Buy.

Surprisingly, Polk has managed to straddle that line between distributing into mass merchandisers and still maintaining at least some portion of their dealer network. Even among high end dealers, it's very hard to find any of them with optimally set up multichannel systems. My local Paradigm dealer was one of only two dealers in my area that sets up their multichannel demos using the ITU reference alignment.

I'd be curious to know exactly what happened to Acoustic Research...seems to me they've long since fallen from grace...any ideas there?

Their parent company, Recoton, went bankrupt. NHT spun off as its own company, and Recoton tried for a long time to peddle the remaining brands. The main interest in AR was its accessories line.

Audiovox wound up acquiring most of the remaining brands (which include Advent and Jensen), including the entire AR lineup. In the meantime, I've seen that AR introduced some new speaker models, but none of their former dealers in my area stock them. Not sure how the AR brand will be handled given that Audiovox is mostly known as a low cost mobile and wireless electronics manufacturer. Considering AR's illustrious history with both speaker and turntable innovations, I would have preferred a more worthy suitor, but that's the times we live in.