This is a review and detailed measurements of the JBL 4349 2-way Studio Monitor (passive). All of you were too cheap to buy one so I had to do it myself. Out of my own money no less! Luckily I got a discount from the retail cost of US $7,500 for a pair.
Note: our company, Madrona Digital, is a dealer for Haman, parent company of JBL. So feel free to read as much bias as you like into the following review.
The 4349 has the familiar look of "giant studio bookshelf" of the past:
The walnut finish though makes it more suitable for domestic use especially if you leave the woofer grill on (I took mine off for all of my testing as you see above). Typical of many Pro products there are a couple of trim controls but they only act on the tweeter. Response will be shown in the measurement section. The main measurements are with the dip switches at 0 dB setting.
As you can see above, this thing is not small. It is also not light. It took us to lug it around and with just the ports as handles, it was not easy!
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I performed over 1400 measurement which resulted in error rate of less than 1% until 10 kHz where the error started to linearly climb. So don't go by micro detail of the response in that region.
Testing temperature was around 69 degrees F.
Reference axis for measurements was the center of the tweeter (by eye). Grill was not used in either measurements or listening tests.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
JBL 4349 Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
I must say, I did not at all expect this kind of response from any product coming out of Harman. The dip at the crossover? I finished the measurements late at night and was miserable till I listened to the speaker today. Clearly a shelving boost is implemented for the tweeter. Fortunately if you turn the dip switches to -1, you should be able to knock that down:
The big trough occurs in my measurement "lab" when the mic is aligned with tweeter axis. I moved the mic down to the logo between the tweeter and woofer and the dip shrank to what you see in the spin data. So ignore that.
Back to crossover issue, here is our near-field measurement:
Looks to me like the woofer response is drooping too much before the tweeter gives it a hand and hence the dip there. Not sure if the tweeter could handle the load there. There are also a couple of port resonances that interfere with the response.
Our early window response is similar to on-axis which bodes well for ability to EQ:
The dip gets worse with floor and ceiling reflections. I am lucky in having a super thick carpet (4 inches or so) and tall ceilings.
Edit: forgot the PIR graph:
The star of the show is the tweeter and its directivity:
Have we seen anything this pretty? It looks textbook correct. Shame about the crossover dip before it.
Vertically, you are better off being at or below tweeter axis. I sat below it for listening tests:
An excellent supporting cast is the ultra low distortion in bass:
This thing is as good as many excellent headphones at 86 dBSPL as far as distortion!
Strange though to see the tweeter complain at higher amplitudes.
Waterfall shows some resonances due to the port:
I felt the cabinet during music and it was solid as a rock so these are acoustic ones.
Finally, impedance is substantially higher than typical 2-way speaker at 8+ ohm:
JBL 4349 Listening Tests
I must say I was in bad, bad mood before listening tests started. Had the bad measurements on top of killing myself dragging this speaker up to second floor where my listening test is. Turned on the music and wow, there was hardly much to complain about! Speaker was highly efficient and was able to pump out dynamics that were startling at times. There was a bit of brightness despite me sitting lower than the treble so I dialed in the dip switches to -1 and -1. Standing up I could hear more highs but it would be tricky to balance the clarity I was hearing versus increase high frequency energy.
I wanted to see the effect of that crossover dip so dialed in an EQ for it:
As with headphones, I could here a slight opening up of the sound and more forward/pleasant representation of female vocals I was listening to. Overall effect though was small due to the bandwidth being low (1 kHz or so). The eye was bleeding due to the graphs far more than the ear seemed to care!
I had to put in the dip at my usual 105 Hz to tame a room mode. It was not necessary for the JBL 4349 but was in what to come: comparison to my Revel Salon 2 next to it. Figured one of you rascals would ask me about it so I figured I do the work now! Immediate reaction was wow, the Salon 2s have far deeper bass. Visual impression of 4349's massive woofer (compared to Revel's) makes one think there is a ton of deep bass but there is not. To match the Salon 2 would you need a sub. That on the other hand meant that the 4349 didn't activate the room modes much so had a light, tight and dynamic bass.
Beyond the bass the impression of the two speakers was so different. The salon 2 was producing a smooth, highly integrated sound column. The 4349 seemed to have a dual character where it would be come extremely lively with high frequency dynamics. This was super pleasurable but less refined than Salon 2's reserved but excellent reproduction. My thought during the whole affair was that you really wanted both of these speakers and use them based on mood and music.
This is one of few good sounding speakers that don't have the "Revel sound" to me. It is a different way of solving the same problem.
Conclusions
As indicated above, objective test results left a sour taste in my mouth post measurements. It was not until I listened to the speakers that I got what this speaker is all about:
1. Marketing says you have to have a huge woofer and tweeter. Don't care what else you do but it has too have this retro look.
2. Engineering says so they want to compete with a party speaker. Let's build the least broken, best version we can.
So no, the 4349 is not objectively perfect. That crossover dip pushes it out of the running compared to any modern studio monitor. What it is, is re-implementing an old speaker configuration with the best know-how they could put in there. An active version would have dealt with the deficiency there but the formula did not allow it. Fortunately we can put EQ in front of the speaker and remedy that.
A side note. I hardly ever come home from a show thinking of replacing my speakers with anything I see there. The only exception was a set of large horn speakers that had dynamics that I could not replicate with my Salon 2s. The 4349 allowed me to get there and so points to high efficiency mattering. People routinely underestimate how much power it takes to reproduce dynamics well. Even my high power amplifier struggles to push the Salon 2 there. But with 4349, that struggle disappeared with a bunch of headroom left.
I am going to put the JBL 4349 on my recommended list. Go ahead and hate on me due to objective measurements above. I am ready to take it!
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150
Note: our company, Madrona Digital, is a dealer for Haman, parent company of JBL. So feel free to read as much bias as you like into the following review.
The 4349 has the familiar look of "giant studio bookshelf" of the past:
The walnut finish though makes it more suitable for domestic use especially if you leave the woofer grill on (I took mine off for all of my testing as you see above). Typical of many Pro products there are a couple of trim controls but they only act on the tweeter. Response will be shown in the measurement section. The main measurements are with the dip switches at 0 dB setting.
As you can see above, this thing is not small. It is also not light. It took us to lug it around and with just the ports as handles, it was not easy!
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I performed over 1400 measurement which resulted in error rate of less than 1% until 10 kHz where the error started to linearly climb. So don't go by micro detail of the response in that region.
Testing temperature was around 69 degrees F.
Reference axis for measurements was the center of the tweeter (by eye). Grill was not used in either measurements or listening tests.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
JBL 4349 Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
I must say, I did not at all expect this kind of response from any product coming out of Harman. The dip at the crossover? I finished the measurements late at night and was miserable till I listened to the speaker today. Clearly a shelving boost is implemented for the tweeter. Fortunately if you turn the dip switches to -1, you should be able to knock that down:
The big trough occurs in my measurement "lab" when the mic is aligned with tweeter axis. I moved the mic down to the logo between the tweeter and woofer and the dip shrank to what you see in the spin data. So ignore that.
Back to crossover issue, here is our near-field measurement:
Looks to me like the woofer response is drooping too much before the tweeter gives it a hand and hence the dip there. Not sure if the tweeter could handle the load there. There are also a couple of port resonances that interfere with the response.
Our early window response is similar to on-axis which bodes well for ability to EQ:
The dip gets worse with floor and ceiling reflections. I am lucky in having a super thick carpet (4 inches or so) and tall ceilings.
Edit: forgot the PIR graph:
The star of the show is the tweeter and its directivity:
Have we seen anything this pretty? It looks textbook correct. Shame about the crossover dip before it.
Vertically, you are better off being at or below tweeter axis. I sat below it for listening tests:
An excellent supporting cast is the ultra low distortion in bass:
This thing is as good as many excellent headphones at 86 dBSPL as far as distortion!
Strange though to see the tweeter complain at higher amplitudes.
Waterfall shows some resonances due to the port:
I felt the cabinet during music and it was solid as a rock so these are acoustic ones.
Finally, impedance is substantially higher than typical 2-way speaker at 8+ ohm:
JBL 4349 Listening Tests
I must say I was in bad, bad mood before listening tests started. Had the bad measurements on top of killing myself dragging this speaker up to second floor where my listening test is. Turned on the music and wow, there was hardly much to complain about! Speaker was highly efficient and was able to pump out dynamics that were startling at times. There was a bit of brightness despite me sitting lower than the treble so I dialed in the dip switches to -1 and -1. Standing up I could hear more highs but it would be tricky to balance the clarity I was hearing versus increase high frequency energy.
I wanted to see the effect of that crossover dip so dialed in an EQ for it:
As with headphones, I could here a slight opening up of the sound and more forward/pleasant representation of female vocals I was listening to. Overall effect though was small due to the bandwidth being low (1 kHz or so). The eye was bleeding due to the graphs far more than the ear seemed to care!
I had to put in the dip at my usual 105 Hz to tame a room mode. It was not necessary for the JBL 4349 but was in what to come: comparison to my Revel Salon 2 next to it. Figured one of you rascals would ask me about it so I figured I do the work now! Immediate reaction was wow, the Salon 2s have far deeper bass. Visual impression of 4349's massive woofer (compared to Revel's) makes one think there is a ton of deep bass but there is not. To match the Salon 2 would you need a sub. That on the other hand meant that the 4349 didn't activate the room modes much so had a light, tight and dynamic bass.
Beyond the bass the impression of the two speakers was so different. The salon 2 was producing a smooth, highly integrated sound column. The 4349 seemed to have a dual character where it would be come extremely lively with high frequency dynamics. This was super pleasurable but less refined than Salon 2's reserved but excellent reproduction. My thought during the whole affair was that you really wanted both of these speakers and use them based on mood and music.
This is one of few good sounding speakers that don't have the "Revel sound" to me. It is a different way of solving the same problem.
Conclusions
As indicated above, objective test results left a sour taste in my mouth post measurements. It was not until I listened to the speakers that I got what this speaker is all about:
1. Marketing says you have to have a huge woofer and tweeter. Don't care what else you do but it has too have this retro look.
2. Engineering says so they want to compete with a party speaker. Let's build the least broken, best version we can.
So no, the 4349 is not objectively perfect. That crossover dip pushes it out of the running compared to any modern studio monitor. What it is, is re-implementing an old speaker configuration with the best know-how they could put in there. An active version would have dealt with the deficiency there but the formula did not allow it. Fortunately we can put EQ in front of the speaker and remedy that.
A side note. I hardly ever come home from a show thinking of replacing my speakers with anything I see there. The only exception was a set of large horn speakers that had dynamics that I could not replicate with my Salon 2s. The 4349 allowed me to get there and so points to high efficiency mattering. People routinely underestimate how much power it takes to reproduce dynamics well. Even my high power amplifier struggles to push the Salon 2 there. But with 4349, that struggle disappeared with a bunch of headroom left.
I am going to put the JBL 4349 on my recommended list. Go ahead and hate on me due to objective measurements above. I am ready to take it!
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150
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