JBL Cinema Sound Speaker System By Mark Fleischmann •
The well-tempered speakers.
Some speakers start communicating immediately. Ten seconds after I got these JBLs started, I was engrossed. Before I set them up, I'd just gotten halfway through the first disc of Vladimir Feltsman's hard-to-find four-disc set of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier. Having just rearranged my reference system to better visual and sonic advantage, I was loath to pull it apart again, but duty called. The Cinema Sound speakers simply picked up where my reference speakers left off. They sounded neutral, substantial, and well able to keep up with both the recording's shifting dynamics and its liquid beauty.
Just because a speaker has morphed into an agreeable shape doesn't mean it will sound good. Slim towers rarely move me. Usually, they sound thin. What probably makes the difference in the Cinema Sound speakers' case is what's inside the tower.
JBL has endowed the Cinema Sound with what they call a HeatScape motor structure to dissipate heat during high-volume blasting. They use Neodymium magnets, which aren't exactly cheap, in both the cones and domes. The woofers are constructed of PolyPlas, a polymer-coated cellulose fiber, and they're in both the towers and the center for better power handling. The tweeters are JBL's titanium laminate—that's titanium deposited on a lightweight GE Ultem substrate. Titanium (laminated or not) is a JBL tradition. No matter how a JBL speaker is voiced, it always has a clear, blue-sky, "I can see for miles" treble. These materials will be familiar to any JBL buff,but rarely has JBL so cleverly deployed them in such a good-looking speaker.
The well-tempered speakers.
Some speakers start communicating immediately. Ten seconds after I got these JBLs started, I was engrossed. Before I set them up, I'd just gotten halfway through the first disc of Vladimir Feltsman's hard-to-find four-disc set of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier. Having just rearranged my reference system to better visual and sonic advantage, I was loath to pull it apart again, but duty called. The Cinema Sound speakers simply picked up where my reference speakers left off. They sounded neutral, substantial, and well able to keep up with both the recording's shifting dynamics and its liquid beauty.
Just because a speaker has morphed into an agreeable shape doesn't mean it will sound good. Slim towers rarely move me. Usually, they sound thin. What probably makes the difference in the Cinema Sound speakers' case is what's inside the tower.
JBL has endowed the Cinema Sound with what they call a HeatScape motor structure to dissipate heat during high-volume blasting. They use Neodymium magnets, which aren't exactly cheap, in both the cones and domes. The woofers are constructed of PolyPlas, a polymer-coated cellulose fiber, and they're in both the towers and the center for better power handling. The tweeters are JBL's titanium laminate—that's titanium deposited on a lightweight GE Ultem substrate. Titanium (laminated or not) is a JBL tradition. No matter how a JBL speaker is voiced, it always has a clear, blue-sky, "I can see for miles" treble. These materials will be familiar to any JBL buff,but rarely has JBL so cleverly deployed them in such a good-looking speaker.
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