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Coast to Coast Sound - Part 1
My first speakers were a pair JBL L-100As that I bought in 1973. I always enjoyed them and still use them today. Their easily identified sound, the so-called West Coast sound, was once a highly touted marketing feature. Ad copy claimed that musicians and recording engineers were buying or stealing the original model 4310 (a professional studio monitor that preceded the L-100s) for home use. JBL did succeed in installing these monitors in most large recording studios in the 1970s, including Angel, Capitol, Deutsche Grammophon, Elektra, EMI, London/Decca, MGM, RCA, Reprise, Vanguard, and Warner Bros. Although they may have been responsible for some bad studio mixes from the '70s and '80s, even by today’s standards, they do amazingly well for a 3-way speaker with only 2 crossover components. Their relatively high sensitivity generates an incredible attack giving music an energy and presence that few other speakers could reproduce then or today.
Figure 1 JBL L-100.jpeg
When I got a home theater audio set up in 2000, I built it around the nearly 30-year old JBLs because they were still in great shape and I could find no full-range speakers for less than $2,000 a pair that satisfied me. Audiophiles have whined about the vintage JBL sound for as long as I can remember. Some of this may have been sour grapes due to their widespread sales success. And some of this was no doubt due to their obvious coloration. I soon learned to keep silent around the more outspoken audiophiles because I got tired of hearing those lectures about my misguided ways. Maybe part of my motivation here is to deliver, at long last, a rebuttal to those lectures.
A few years ago, I began playing with DIY speaker building. I was originally interested in learning what features are important in making a speaker sound good. To make a long story short, it’s all in the crossover, and to a lesser extent, cabinet design. A well designed crossover can make average or even
poor drivers sound decent, and a well designed crossover combined with genuinely good drivers can make for a truly excellent speaker. Other exotic or expensive tweaks that we so often hear about all make much smaller differences – if they are audible at all – in comparison to the big improvements from a good crossover.
I eventually hit upon a DIY design that is my favorite, the CAOW1, a small 2-way speaker designed by Dennis Murphy (http://murphyblaster.com/) that combines a 5¼" midwoofer (Seas CA15RLY) with a ¾" dome tweeter (Hiquphon OW1). Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was carefully avoiding any DIY 3-way design that might compete with my JBLs. After I built the CAOW1s, I found that I preferred listening to music over them. Except for the obvious lack of deep bass below 50 Hz, they sound much more balanced and are more satisfying for listening. Not surprisingly, their frequency response curve is flat. The JBLs, my first love, sat in silence, except for movies. They just didn’t do it for me any more. I occasionally cranked them up to get a taste of their wonderful bass attack, but they now sound wrong in the critical midrange frequencies. But before completely giving up on them, I decided to test the idea that it’s all in the crossover.
Continued
My first speakers were a pair JBL L-100As that I bought in 1973. I always enjoyed them and still use them today. Their easily identified sound, the so-called West Coast sound, was once a highly touted marketing feature. Ad copy claimed that musicians and recording engineers were buying or stealing the original model 4310 (a professional studio monitor that preceded the L-100s) for home use. JBL did succeed in installing these monitors in most large recording studios in the 1970s, including Angel, Capitol, Deutsche Grammophon, Elektra, EMI, London/Decca, MGM, RCA, Reprise, Vanguard, and Warner Bros. Although they may have been responsible for some bad studio mixes from the '70s and '80s, even by today’s standards, they do amazingly well for a 3-way speaker with only 2 crossover components. Their relatively high sensitivity generates an incredible attack giving music an energy and presence that few other speakers could reproduce then or today.
Figure 1 JBL L-100.jpeg
When I got a home theater audio set up in 2000, I built it around the nearly 30-year old JBLs because they were still in great shape and I could find no full-range speakers for less than $2,000 a pair that satisfied me. Audiophiles have whined about the vintage JBL sound for as long as I can remember. Some of this may have been sour grapes due to their widespread sales success. And some of this was no doubt due to their obvious coloration. I soon learned to keep silent around the more outspoken audiophiles because I got tired of hearing those lectures about my misguided ways. Maybe part of my motivation here is to deliver, at long last, a rebuttal to those lectures.
A few years ago, I began playing with DIY speaker building. I was originally interested in learning what features are important in making a speaker sound good. To make a long story short, it’s all in the crossover, and to a lesser extent, cabinet design. A well designed crossover can make average or even
poor drivers sound decent, and a well designed crossover combined with genuinely good drivers can make for a truly excellent speaker. Other exotic or expensive tweaks that we so often hear about all make much smaller differences – if they are audible at all – in comparison to the big improvements from a good crossover.
I eventually hit upon a DIY design that is my favorite, the CAOW1, a small 2-way speaker designed by Dennis Murphy (http://murphyblaster.com/) that combines a 5¼" midwoofer (Seas CA15RLY) with a ¾" dome tweeter (Hiquphon OW1). Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was carefully avoiding any DIY 3-way design that might compete with my JBLs. After I built the CAOW1s, I found that I preferred listening to music over them. Except for the obvious lack of deep bass below 50 Hz, they sound much more balanced and are more satisfying for listening. Not surprisingly, their frequency response curve is flat. The JBLs, my first love, sat in silence, except for movies. They just didn’t do it for me any more. I occasionally cranked them up to get a taste of their wonderful bass attack, but they now sound wrong in the critical midrange frequencies. But before completely giving up on them, I decided to test the idea that it’s all in the crossover.
Continued
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