Brad,
Pro has been reorganized!
For example JBL PD764-WRX Very High Output Mid-High Loudspeaker System PD764-WRX
Bad enough a simple JBL ceiling loudspeaker is now $144 and discounted everywhere, now "Engineered" product is discounted.
For those who don't understand, when I do a system design and price it, the customer will often compare prices on the internet to see where I stand. So we price everything at the internet price. However we are not drop shipping a box without any real expense. It has to come in to our shop, be fitted to the mounting system and tested. Now the process to build the larger loudspeakers just about guarantees the dimension vary from unit to unit. (Spray weather proof finish.)
When the standard electrical time books give say 4 hours to mount said loudspeaker, that would result in a significant loss on each and every one.
And to get real who is going to buy a stadium loudspeaker from a camera store on the internet?
The result is we are going to lesser know brands of the same or better quality, as the recommendation is based on our reputation.
Now on a midsize sound system of $1,000,000.00 that make take a year or two to price, install and finally get paid what margin would you expect?
(Answer typical is 5% if everything goes right.)
Pro has been reorganized!
For example JBL PD764-WRX Very High Output Mid-High Loudspeaker System PD764-WRX
Bad enough a simple JBL ceiling loudspeaker is now $144 and discounted everywhere, now "Engineered" product is discounted.
For those who don't understand, when I do a system design and price it, the customer will often compare prices on the internet to see where I stand. So we price everything at the internet price. However we are not drop shipping a box without any real expense. It has to come in to our shop, be fitted to the mounting system and tested. Now the process to build the larger loudspeakers just about guarantees the dimension vary from unit to unit. (Spray weather proof finish.)
When the standard electrical time books give say 4 hours to mount said loudspeaker, that would result in a significant loss on each and every one.
And to get real who is going to buy a stadium loudspeaker from a camera store on the internet?
The result is we are going to lesser know brands of the same or better quality, as the recommendation is based on our reputation.
Now on a midsize sound system of $1,000,000.00 that make take a year or two to price, install and finally get paid what margin would you expect?
(Answer typical is 5% if everything goes right.)
Not seen evidence of these golden ears you speak of no.
Nope. Would love to believe that some of have amazing hearing. Just not seen any evidence it's the case. Tetrachromics yes. Golden ears no.But notwithstanding you have very strong beliefes about the perceptibility of the effects we are discussing in this thread (and others). Not to mention strong believes about the "wife in the kitchen", right?
Yes please. It is your claim so you should back it up.
I've not kept very up-to-date, although I do know that Charles Sprinkle (the Mind Behind the M2) migrated there after dissatisfactions with Consumer.
But the Connecticut suit brigade I believe capable of anything.
Another "brilliant" move on the part of Consumer was to say they didn't need a certain talented transducer and system designer. When Brendon appealed this decision the one guy (now long gone) threw him out of his office. Meanwhile the speaker engineer who was alleged to be the equivalent of the aforementioned designer desperately sought help off the record from Mark T.
The precipitating event for Jim D. losing control was the conflict between Consumer and Multimedia about who would be pitching to Samsung for loudspeakers in TVs. Things got very nasty behind the scenes. But the situation was absurd---Consumer was proposing to source someone else's drivers and mark them up and sell to Samsung, whereas HMM engineered them from scratch and tailored them to the application. It didn't help that Gina and Jim had a mutual and intense dislike for one another.
I am told that D. has changed a lot. As Joni Mitchell sings in The Gallery, "They've monitored your brain, you say, And changed you with religion".
What I have seen with HK and other similar corporations is that a great deal of time and energy is expended in upper and mid-management games, and audio quality is usually almost left aside.
Now, JBL WAS a darn good company in the 1950's. It made really high quality drivers, and even some very interesting, all-out speaker systems. However, by the 1970's, many of these speaker drivers, especially the horns, were effectively obsolete due to excessive horn throat distortion and marginal directivity. The horn throats in the drivers were just too small and narrow to match the improved power capability of the drivers attached. I, in 1973, measured 3% distortion at 1KHz at 2W out just from horn throat distortion in a single horn driver. We were running a quad of them from 2W-20W each above 1KHz. They really did not do too well. When I mentioned this to the JBL rep, he was not happy with me. Emilar, a competing offshoot from Altec, came up with a superior horn in 1974, that really had constant directivity with frequency, based on 'chopping off' part of the horn. This was a compete contradiction to what Olsen and others proposed in their horn calculations decades before. It was a breakthrough that JBL apparently has taken seriously in recent decades, leading to the M2. It is amazing that large corporations will spend millions on R&D just to make something to talk about, but seem to ignore real improvements that others have to do first, before they take it themselves.
Now, JBL WAS a darn good company in the 1950's. It made really high quality drivers, and even some very interesting, all-out speaker systems. However, by the 1970's, many of these speaker drivers, especially the horns, were effectively obsolete due to excessive horn throat distortion and marginal directivity. The horn throats in the drivers were just too small and narrow to match the improved power capability of the drivers attached. I, in 1973, measured 3% distortion at 1KHz at 2W out just from horn throat distortion in a single horn driver. We were running a quad of them from 2W-20W each above 1KHz. They really did not do too well. When I mentioned this to the JBL rep, he was not happy with me. Emilar, a competing offshoot from Altec, came up with a superior horn in 1974, that really had constant directivity with frequency, based on 'chopping off' part of the horn. This was a compete contradiction to what Olsen and others proposed in their horn calculations decades before. It was a breakthrough that JBL apparently has taken seriously in recent decades, leading to the M2. It is amazing that large corporations will spend millions on R&D just to make something to talk about, but seem to ignore real improvements that others have to do first, before they take it themselves.
I don't know why the usual politics, hubris, over-confidence, other biases and heuristics, etc., so often seen in human nature should be taken as amazing.
JBL has done a very innovative design on the horn, leading to an unparalleled smooth directivity index v. frequency. They combined the best existing technologies, many of them already their own, with innovative engineering on the horn. No doubt patents are or will be granted for the latter. It is unique in performance and cosmetics, and will for sure become iconic.
Because I had googled JBL before, I got this banner while shopping for a led-driver:
PD764 Products | JBL Professional
The specsheet is in the right upper corner and shows a FR measurement. This a speaker that can play 137 dB @ 1m and has a virtually flat FR, better than anything high end has ever produced. And the same goes for the directivity index versus frequency.
They must have diverted quite a considerable sum of talk promoting money into research!
Footnote: this would be the perfect speaker to play around with Bear's idea.
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Vaccy,
It has been around for 15 years. The HF horn as designed using rapid (overnight) prototyping. The horn design is based on Don Keele's work.
Pretty sure by now I have used close to a hundred or so. Folks in Louisville can hear them in their arena, Seattle in both pro and college football stadia for my part. Large venues generally have those or the Danleys these days.
Since Bose won the last patent battle JBL hasn't patented much. Besides the market is not very large.
It has been around for 15 years. The HF horn as designed using rapid (overnight) prototyping. The horn design is based on Don Keele's work.
Pretty sure by now I have used close to a hundred or so. Folks in Louisville can hear them in their arena, Seattle in both pro and college football stadia for my part. Large venues generally have those or the Danleys these days.
Since Bose won the last patent battle JBL hasn't patented much. Besides the market is not very large.
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M2 Master Reference Monitor Products | JBL Professional
5 patents and one pat pending are mentioned for the M2, so I guess it depends on the definition of 'much'?
5 patents and one pat pending are mentioned for the M2, so I guess it depends on the definition of 'much'?
Yes Dr. Harman has passed on. New management and much more of it. The number of things they should have patented is reàlly quite amazing. A few of their engineers who have moved on are quite grateful for that.
I just saw the line about the patented port design. That is the subject of the patent issue Bose won! So it still has influence. (Harman's lawyers really managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in that case!)
The five woofer patents I think also predate the loss.
So that leaves the horn and port ones.
The one on voice coil thermal properties is an old one. The high frequency compression driver is actually a slight variation on someone else's design.
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The horn seems to use a sort of chaotic diffraction concept combined with classic horn theory. I don't think it isn't something that hasn't been thought of before but they did commercialize the concept and make it work. The dual diaphragm compression is a ripoff of others designs, no question that was something they were purchasing from others before they came out with their own version.
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