New JBL Monitor, M2 ...why so many Watts required?

[Richard Ellis]

Congratulations to JBL making a new Large format Monitor. Knowing that horns are necessity for large formats, JBL comes up with weird horn, an engineer saying "There's a lot of math there" making this horn. For the woofer they took a page from the Watkins Woofer camp from Infinity decades ago.
My overall pet peeve, at 92Db sensitivity, JBL calls for 1200 Watts worth of power to drive this....that's per unit!
Now, the amp "designated" for this monitor just so happens to be the Crown brand, not surprisingly also a "HARMON" product. So....this kinda leaves the rest of us out in the cold , so to speak........at $6K per monitor, this leaves little room for us to drive it with our paltry 100-350 watt amps....what's going on here?


______________________________________________________Rick..........

 

[DUG]

92dB sensitivity at 10W of driven power is the same whether the unit is rated for 50W or 1200W.

Yes?

 

[Richard Ellis]

Not really........You maybe misunderstanding, it's the recommended power "they" want into this monitor, not the absolute maximum. The sensitivities are rather standardized at 2.83 Volts RMS, not 10W,..(Typically 1K hertz) into the unit at One Meter distant. For the eight ohm driver that is 1 W ...or as typically written ... 92Db@1W@1M....that will change for a four ohm unit, so it gets rewritten as 2.83VRMS, so 92Db@2.83VRMS@1M.
This new JBL monitor has a specific Model & make of 'recommended' amp to make it go.....rated at 1200 Watts.
This comes out to 122 Db at 1024 Watts......that's a lot of Decibels Frankie!
A "mere" 200 watts will get you a "rock concert" level around 115 Db...why the extra?

 

[jcx]

maybe they expect you to listen a little further away than 1 m?

 

[Jay1234]

Hi,
My two cents worth.
I think JBL have a policy of lets make speakers as power hungry & loud as it can possibly be.

I have a pair of JBL Tki 10s, That I MADE MYSELF...... lovely to look at stunning to hear & can run, just about, on One Harmon signature power amp I have two so they sound halfway decent but still sound way better with 4 amps per speaker. so you need to be in the next county, to take in some of the subtleties, that these speakers can give!

Jay

 

[Jay1234]

Ps
the Signatures were 250 w per channel & 600w when bridged so with 4 amps per monitor thats 4,800w per pair! for domestic speakers!!!.......I realise that these Flagship JBLs were probably loss leaders as I don't think that many were sold (£ 8,000 each unit) in England, as iv'e not seen or heard of any others...

perhaps we could start an Exclusive top of the range JBL owners club or will it be a club for one.....lol
Btw it took 3 yrs to make mine
Jay

 

[JoeDJ]

Kind of makes one long for the old "L100" .

 

[Jay1234]

MMM the L 100 what fab little thing that was I so wish I still had them

 

[Charles Darwin]

JBL is a fairly old-fashioned company and I suppose their recommended amp power is twice what the speakers can take continuously as was common in the olden days.

Tannoy is/was like that too. My LittleReds can take 125Wrms and the manual recommends using amps of 250W.