JBL 4410A Studio Monitor loudspeaker review
These speakers are large bookshelf-style front-firing speakers, using a 3-way set of drivers in a vented cabinet. The drivers include a 10” woofer, 5” midrange, and 1” metal dome tweeter.
The first thing that struck me about the sound of these speakers is that they have a very “clean” sound. Naturally, this made me want to turn up the volume, and they still sounded clean! Apparently, there are kinds of distortion that you just get accustomed to hearing when you listen to loudspeakers – with these speakers, such distortion was at a significantly lower level than with most speakers. The result is that they are easy to listen to, without fatigue during extended listening, and even at high volume.
The second thing to impress me was the excellent tonal balance delivered by these speakers, over their full range, from the deep bass to the high treble. I have a multi-band equalizer which I’ve used in the past to compensate for frequency response flaws in speakers that I’ve used in the past, however, I’ve found no need to use it with these speakers since their natural frequency response is so well balanced.
Overall, the sound is smooth, and yet very clear and detailed – without being harsh. I think the tweeters do an excellent job, and contribute to these qualities as a result.
The midrange drivers help provide a full and realistic “presence” to the sound, without being unduly prominent. I should acknowledge (for the reader’s benefit) that, in general, I’m partial to 3-way speaker systems (in comparison to 2-way designs), particularly where full-range speakers (using mainstream drivers) are concerned. There are plenty of 2-way full range speakers on the market – some selling for pretty high prices! However, if they use woofers large enough to do a decent job at the low end, then they tend to sound thin in the midrange. When such 2-way speakers try to reproduce the mid-band, I suspect there are occasions, particularly during percussive transients, when the tweeter can’t move enough air, and the woofer can’t move the air quickly enough. I don’t rule out that the use of exotic drivers in a 2-way system might be another way to solve this problem. However, for designs using conventional drivers, I usually prefer the sound of the 3-way systems.
The woofers provide a solid bass response that goes fairly deep. As a hobbyist who has built a massive homebrew transmission line subwoofer, I can vouch for the fact that one would need to add a subwoofer to authoritatively handle the lowest octave (20 – 40 Hz)! However, aside from the occasional pipe organ performance, I think these speakers will reproduce most of the deep bass content that’s actually present in most recordings.
Overall, I think the speakers sound great, and they manage to avoid any obvious flaws. This, of course, is essential if they are going to work well in their intended use as studio monitors. Monitors should reveal flaws in the recording, not in themselves! And these speakers do reproduce the recordings quite accurately.
Now, no speakers are perfect, and no review would be complete without making an attempt to identify weak links in the speaker’s performance. This isn’t an easy job with these speakers, but here goes… On one or two occasions, when listening to male vocals, I thought I heard a bit of roughness in the lower midrange area; i.e. a range of frequencies that’s high enough to be on the lower end of midrange, but low enough that the woofer’s output is still strong. Perhaps when the woofer operates near the upper end of its range, it starts to suffer from some cone break-up and not sound as smooth as the speaker generally sounds. (Note that this kind of a problem would only be worse in a 2-way design, because the woofer would have to reach even higher.) Nevertheless, one should keep this in perspective. The ear can be quite sensitive to flaws in this frequency range, so this is likely to be perceived as a weak spot in any design that uses conventional woofers (i.e. one might need to shop for some rather exotic speakers to really get past weaknesses in this area).
One other comparison that I can offer is to compare the sound of the JBL 4410A’s with the best other pair of speakers I own, which are the Rogers LS3-5/A compact monitors. The Rogers are an amazingly well executed compact 2-way design, in which the woofers are just over 4” in diameter. They aren’t designed to produce thunderous bass output, however, over the rest of the spectrum they do amazingly well (and do pump out more bass than you might expect from such a small speaker).
When it comes to lifelike clarity and realism (with excellent reproduction of the all-important midrange frequencies), the edge definitely goes to the Rogers. Vocals are more realistic, and background vocals are more distinct. The response seems a bit fuller (in a good way) in the lower treble on the Rogers than on the JBLs. I suspect that what this comparison is focusing on is the crossover between the tweeter and the midrange (which doubles as the woofer on the Rogers). The Rogers is known for using quite a complex crossover to manage the transition between its drivers, and listening proves that it was well done. This shows that the JBLs aren’t perfect, however, the flaw sounds more like one of omission than of commission – i.e. that lower treble range may be a bit weaker than it should be, but these kinds of flaws tend to be less objectionable than flaws where the speaker’s output is excessive or too pronounced. Also, the comparison is a little unfair since the Rogers are a more expensive speaker, and designed to focus on less of the spectrum. The flaws that I’m describing here are subtle enough that they don’t jump out at you when listening to the JBLs on their own – rather, they are differences that can be noticed in a side-by-side comparison.
Overall, I’m very pleased with these speakers. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy these speakers again if I were shopping for high quality full range speakers costing less than a thousand dollars per pair.