@dep14
The low end is more than adequate for my needs. My JBL are essentially corner loaded and as such, have a low end extension that is more like -2db at 30hz, as opposed to the rated -6db. As you’d expect with a speaker with dual 15” woofers, it’s gonna kick like a mule. I mentioned bass briefly in my original post but I guess I didn’t really go over it aside from mentioning the Sheffield Test track.
Some of my other reference tracks include Lenny Kravitz American Woman, which has very nice, very low subbass harmonics in the kickdrum, Keb Mo I Don’t Know, which has extremely powerful and musical sounding low end bass guitar notes, and the entirety of the Tron Legacy soundtrack by daft punk. That album in particular has very complex bass that can get lost amid the middbass. If your woofers have control on that album, they’ll have control on basically anything. Goes without saying that the JBL performed as admirable as I hoped.
I guess I should also mention how the JBL perform in movies. After all, the Synthesis line is right at home in a home cinema environment. I haven’t had the time yet to playback a lot of my reference movie scenes, but I did a few of my favourites. One of my favourite scenes for subbass is War of the Worlds tripod scene. When the gravel starts to crumble as the tripod shifts underground, you get a crunching of rock and earth that is probably the most accurate sounding depiction I’ve ever heard. It is truly a subterranean bass moment and the woofers on the JBL do a damn good job recreating that noise. I also liked the low whoof noise of the cannonballs firing over heads in the opening attack scene in master and commander, the drone attack and bass sweep in oblivion, when his safety line is cut, and the hilariously mixed 0dbfs opening credits sequence of edge of tomorrow. Put THAT scene on for a laugh, 10hz reference level volumes, I think the sound engineer of that Blu-ray Disc was having a laugh. (Ps. Yes I’m a big fan of Tom cruise)
Will the JBL 4367 have enough bass if placed a significant amount away from the boundaries? Possibly not, maybe yes. It depends on your expectations. However I must tell you, the way bass sounds on a single 15inch woofer is very very different than bass on two 8inch or 4 6inch woofers. You’re getting ACTUAL displacement of air. What the engineers at JBL have done is create a speaker that is or more than capable of playing back all forms of music because of the massive surface area of two 15” woofers, and the significantly larger volume size of the cabinent compared to a speaker with a thin baffle with two 8” drivers stuck on the front. This type of speaker is just all too common, and they always claim a frequency response of around 35hz, but in reality it’s just small sounding bass compared to the JBL.
That turned out to be a longer post than I intended. I will be sure to include all of this information in a much more concise manner when I take another look with you guys in 3-4 months time.