JBL Studio 590 Floorstanding Speakers $399 each

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Neapolitan6th

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Update 27NOV19: $439 each (link)
Update 12/14/18: Live at $449 each w/ 2 day shipping (link)
Update 11/23/18: Live for Black Friday at $449 shipped free (link)
Update 9/27/18: Now live again (Link)
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Just saw this pop up. If you are in need of some good (large) floorstanding speakers these are currently a great value at $399 each.

Normally the pair costs $2000 while this deal shaves off $1200. They go on sale for $500 each a few times a year.

They are sold direct (link)

I certainly love mine. Shipping weight is around 220lbs so if you are just looking for the best lbs/$ ratio this might be it. At 220lbs (a pair), it will surprise you that these have free 2 day shipping haha, those poor planes!

As always please don't jump the gun and blow a $1000 on something you'll later regret. Happy hunting!
 
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The specs list 69.5 lb per speaker. That's impressive if they really have 40.5 lb of packing material per speaker.
 
mazeroth said:
The specs list 69.5 lb per speaker. That's impressive if they really have 40.5 lb of packing material per speaker.
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The wooden pallet and 2 Christmas tree boxes they come in certainly add to that total.

Mine when they came in: (ignore my chicken scratch)
Capture+_2018-06-04-13-40-23.png
I tried to dig up the official ship weight, but I know for sure both shipped above 200lbs
0929171241.jpg
For size reference, that's my NCASE down there lol. I'm a very conflicted man.
 

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Pretty sexy..... if I had somewhere to put them, and just the budget to pull the trigger right now, I'd probably get 6.
 
Neapolitan6th said:
The wooden pallet and 2 Christmas tree boxes they come in certainly add to that total.

Mine when they came in: (ignore my chicken scratch)
View attachment 78630
I tried to dig up the official ship weight, but I know for sure both shipped above 200lbs
View attachment 78634
For size reference, that's my NCASE down there lol. I'm a very conflicted man.
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Awesome! How do they sound? What kind of amp / receiver are you using?
 
Not OP but they are an amazing pair of reference speakers. Paired with the 520C (also on sale), they make a killer 3.0 setup. Sometimes I feel like I don't even need a sub.
 
SlipperyPete said:
Awesome! How do they sound? What kind of amp / receiver are you using?
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Ended up getting the Schiit Vidar which works great, but in retrospect I could have gotten a cheaper amp considering I picked up the speakers on sale.

I actually temporarily bought a $100 100 watt stereo Insignia amp from best buy as mine hadn't come in yet. I expected it to be pretty bad, but it did most of the leg work you'd expect. Maybe not the most refined, but it surprisingly got you most of the way there.

I love the way they sound. They are exceptional for movie watching even when only in a 2 channel configuration. (Great for music too). Its true, they do give out a healthy amount of bass. You can get away without a sub with these, but a sub will always be a value add for most speaker systems.
 
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Neapolitan6th said:
Ended up getting the Schiit Vidar which works great, but in retrospect I could have gotten a cheaper amp considering I picled up the speakers on sale.

I actually temporarily bought a $100 100 watt stereo Insignia amp from best buy as mine hadn't come in yet. I expected it to be pretty bad, but it did most of the leg work you'd expect. Maybe not the most refined, but it surprisingly got you most of the way there.

I love the way they sound. They are exceptional for movie watching even when only in a 2 channel configuration. (Great for music too). Its true, they do give out a healthy amount of bass. You can get away without a sub with these, but a sub will always be a value add for most speaker systems.
Click to expand...

Differences between hifi amps are very small. You can spend a fortune for small returns. Speakers are a totally different animal.
 
Neapolitan6th said:
Just saw this pop up. If you are in need of some good floorstandimg speakers these are currently a good value at $500 each.

Normally the pair costs $2000 while this deal shaves off $1000. These guys usually go down this far in price maybe 2 or 3 times a year at most.

They are sold direct (link)

I certainly love mine. Shipping weight is 220lbs so if you are just looking for the best lbs/$ ratio this might be it. At 220lbs (a pair), it will surprise you that these have free 2 day shipping haha, those poor planes!

As always please don't jump the gun and blow a $1000 on something you'll later regret. Happy hunting!
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jbl's are good for being loud and having decent bass. But their midrange sounds like someone pissed down the driver. Muddied and distorted.

[edit] I forgot to add how shrill (forward) horns are. And their off axis is horrid. But they are great for volume.

If you are going to use these use them for metal. Don't get them for critical listening.
 
B00nie said:
Differences between hifi amps are very small. You can spend a fortune for small returns. Speakers are a totally different animal.
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Tell that to a Bryston owner. There's a reason Bryston amps sit in the majority of recording studios mated to the hardest driving speakers. They just last and can drive the difficult loads.

And there is no substitute for vacuum tube when you want warm.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
Tell that to a Bryston owner. There's a reason Bryston amps sit in the majority of recording studios mated to the hardest driving speakers. They just last and can drive the difficult loads.

And there is no substitute for vacuum tube when you want warm.
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I'll that to anyone and it's still true. There are a plethora of amps that can drive loads up to 0.25 ohms. Tube amps are just adding harmonic distortion and make the sound softer. Not my cup of tea.
 
B00nie said:
I'll that to anyone and it's still true. There are a plethora of amps that can drive loads up to 0.25 ohms. Tube amps are just adding harmonic distortion and make the sound softer. Not my cup of tea.
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If you don't push them, they are all the same. THD is quite low for moderate listening levels, and below human threshold.

When you push them to their design limit with all channels driven on a high amp/low resistance damping factor and dynamic headroom of the supply caps come into play and it makes a significant difference. Last thing you want to do is clip your $10,000 speakers with diamond tweeters or get muddied bass.

Then there are considerations like Class A, AB, D, H, T all which have their strengths and weaknesses.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
If you don't push them, they are all the same. THD is quite low for moderate listening levels, and below human threshold.

When you push them to their design limit with all channels driven on a high amp/low resistance damping factor and dynamic headroom of the supply caps come into play and it makes a significant difference. Last thing you want to do is clip your $10,000 speakers with diamond tweeters or get muddied bass.

Then there are considerations like Class A, AB, D, H, T all which have their strengths and weaknesses.
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They're far from same actually. The distortion spectrum of a tube amp is completely different from a solid state one. A powerful enough tube amp is prohibitively expensive for most people. Also the damping factor of a tube amp is 10-100 times less than a SS amp due to it being a high impedance output device. Most small tube amps I've heard sound anemic and round edged. We actually produce a tube amp, a 400watt mono hybrid tube amp. It's based on Tapio M Köykkä's minimal feedback design and it's one of the rare tube amps I like.

Having said that, amps have very small sonical differences after a certain basic quality level has been surpassed. The most important parts of the listening chain are the recording and mastering stage, then speaker/room combination. Source and amplification are the easy parts to get right. That's why it's fundamentally wrong to sink money into amplifier upgrades unless you've spent double the money to your speakers first.

I've seen people sink small fortunes to their source and continue to be unhappy with a bad end result. Just because they listened to sales people instead of fixing their real problem.

Sometimes fixing the problem with your sound reproduction requires demolishing walls, buying a new appartment/house or completely altering the looks of your room with acoustic treatment.

Yeah, a salesman is not going to sell you that. Have you seen THIS amp as a change of subject?
 
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B00nie said:
They're far from same actually. The distortion spectrum of a tube amp is completely different from a solid state one. A powerful enough tube amp is prohibitively expensive for most people. Also the damping factor of a tube amp is 10-100 times less than a SS amp due to it being a high impedance output device. Most small tube amps I've heard sound anemic and round edged. We actually produce a tube amp, a 400watt mono hybrid tube amp. It's based on Tapio M Köykkä's minimal feedback design and it's one of the rare tube amps I like.

Having said that, amps have very small sonical differences after a certain basic quality level has been surpassed. The most important parts of the listening chain are the recording and mastering stage, then speaker/room combination. Source and amplification are the easy parts to get right. That's why it's fundamentally wrong to sink money into amplifier upgrades unless you've spent double the money to your speakers first.

I've seen people sink small fortunes to their source and continue to be unhappy with a bad end result. Just because they listened to sales people instead of fixing their real problem.

Sometimes fixing the problem with your sound reproduction requires demolishing walls, buying a new appartment/house or completely altering the looks of your room with acoustic treatment.

Yeah, a salesman is not going to sell you that. Have you seen THIS amp as a change of subject?
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Oh I agree with you on that amps. I was referring to class AB solid state ones which is the majority of the market. You get differences in solid state amps when you push them because their output stages aren't up to snuff for high current. (I used to build amps for fun in college...smoked a few designs too. I once built a amp with 80 one amp output stages for each channel. The general theory was overcome distortion through averaging Push 8 ten amp stages with 1% distortion @ rated power and you will likely hit 1%. Push 80 one amp stages with 1% distortion @ rated power and their errors will average out. It didn't improve things much, but it did lead to a smoother top end. I used the college's uber expensive scopes to examine the output and the 44kHz signals were definitely smoother at the top. I used a series of custom made digital waveforms to which I could compare the signal input to the output. (single freq, intermodulated, 60Hz, etc)

And I agree on room improvements. There aren't that many [H] audio people here who go through damping and proper room sizing.
 
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DigitalGriffin said:
There aren't that many [H] audio people here who go through damping and proper room sizing.
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I mean, I'd like to, but apartment... and income... and well, just how presentable can all of this be made such that the room would have uses other than music listening?

Etc. ;)
 
IdiotInCharge said:
I mean, I'd like to, but apartment... and income... and well, just how presentable can all of this be made such that the room would have uses other than music listening?

Etc. ;)
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In difficult rooms, speakers with controlled directivity (and high directivity) will help a lot. For example the large wave guide on those JBLs will help to mitigate a lot of room reflections.
 
B00nie said:
In difficult rooms, speakers with controlled directivity (and high directivity) will help a lot. For example the large wave guide on those JBLs will help to mitigate a lot of room reflections.
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Sweet spot will be smaller. You'll get a lot of off axis fall off. And I never liked horns. They are too shrill. Feels like someone is putting an ice pick in your eardrum after a while at reference levels.

But it's a personal preference based on your needs. One speaker doesn't fit all.
 
B00nie said:
In difficult rooms, speakers with controlled directivity (and high directivity) will help a lot. For example the large wave guide on those JBLs will help to mitigate a lot of room reflections.
Click to expand...

I'll get there. Will pop up a thread when I'm ready- someday :D.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
Sweet spot will be smaller. You'll get a lot of off axis fall off. And I never liked horns. They are too shrill. Feels like someone is putting an ice pick in your eardrum after a while at reference levels.

But it's a personal preference based on your needs. One speaker doesn't fit all.
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How many horn speakers have you heard? Or are you just going by one or two bad experiences? Horns can be excellent. Dynamic, revealing... and expensive. The best horns I've heard are not stressing sounding at all, quite the opposite of that.

The wave guide on those JBLs does not 'fall off' off axis really much it's a constant directivity horn. It actually means that the sound stage is more stable than with a regular speaker within the coverage area of the horn. After that it drops off rapidly as it should.

Here's some comparisons between speakers. The reviewers commented the 590's as smooth, not ear needles. https://www.avnirvana.com/threads/a...ent-tower-speakers-1200-or-less-results.1640/
 
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B00nie said:
How many horn speakers have you heard? Or are you just going by one or two bad experiences? Horns can be excellent. Dynamic, revealing... and expensive. The best horns I've heard are not stressing sounding at all, quite the opposite of that.

The wave guide on those JBLs does not 'fall off' off axis really much it's a constant directivity horn. It actually means that the sound stage is more stable than with a regular speaker within the coverage area of the horn. After that it drops off rapidly as it should.

Here's some comparisons between speakers. The reviewers commented the 590's as smooth, not ear needles. https://www.avnirvana.com/threads/a...ent-tower-speakers-1200-or-less-results.1640/
Click to expand...

I just want an unlimited budget and have B00nie and DigitalGriffin come and help me with my home theater setup :D
 
They are live again at $500 each for anyone interested sold direct. There are worse ways to spend $1000.

Cheaper than a 2080ti for perspective and over 200lbs heavier lol.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
Sweet spot will be smaller. You'll get a lot of off axis fall off. And I never liked horns. They are too shrill. Feels like someone is putting an ice pick in your eardrum after a while at reference levels.

But it's a personal preference based on your needs. One speaker doesn't fit all.
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Well that might not be true of these speakers. JBL developed a new horn tech for their M2 speakers and the point of it is actually to give extremely linear response (horns that are shrill or the like don't have that) and great off-axis characteristics. They've then adapted the technology to their lower end pro speakers. Not sure if this is the same deal, but if it is, the results are likely to be pretty pleasing. Unlike a lot of traditional horns where they are doing it for output level and sound quality isn't as much of a concern, the JBL horn is to work as a waveguide and help get the dispersion characteristics they want. On their M2s are 7 series, it works amazing and they are exceedingly good sounding speakers.
 
How are these compared to klipsch reference premiere series? I have listened to the Klipsch and the tweeters are rather harsh to my ears. Are these JBL teeters the same
 
celwin said:
How are these compared to klipsch reference premiere series? I have listened to the Klipsch and the tweeters are rather harsh to my ears. Are these JBL teeters the same
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I've never heard the Klipsch, but I know I've never had an issue with the treble being too harsh on the 590s.

I use HD800 headphones so I understand what harsh treble sounds like!

They have an enjoyable presentation and are pretty easy listeners in my opinion. That said, your treble tolerance may be less than mine.

If you are in the market, JBL is offering extended free returns through the holidays.

If it is not to your liking you could send them back. They will pay for return shipping. I would hang on to the pallet it ships on just in case they need that.
 
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celwin said:
How are these compared to klipsch reference premiere series? I have listened to the Klipsch and the tweeters are rather harsh to my ears. Are these JBL teeters the same
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In the reviews on the JBL site, several people mention how nice the horns are on them. I can't even think of getting these since I have no place for them and after reading the reviews I want them. :ROFLMAO:
 
SamirD said:
In the reviews on the JBL site, several people mention how nice the horns are on them. I can't even think of getting these since I have no place for them and after reading the reviews I want them. :ROFLMAO:
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They make great desktop monitors, I tried that for a few months lol.

Ok maybe they weren't the best on the desk since the tweeters were 3 feet above my head!
 
Neapolitan6th said:
They make great desktop monitors, I tried that for a few months lol.

Ok maybe they weren't the best on the desk since the tweeters were 3 feet above my head!
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Great desktop monitors...if you're Paul Bunyon and are using a stand-up desk. :D

I bet gaming on them had to be awesome though!
 
SamirD said:
In the reviews on the JBL site, several people mention how nice the horns are on them. I can't even think of getting these since I have no place for them and after reading the reviews I want them. :ROFLMAO:
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They make smaller versions. While the bookshelf speakers directly from that line, the Studio 530, have been discontinued you can still find them around. However those aside you can go to the pro side. The JBL LSR308s (or smaller 306s and 305s) are amazing powered speakers and many people have been super happy with them for computer audio. All this stuff is decedents of the JBL M2 where they developed their new horn/waveguide tech. The pro ones are also nice for computer since they are powered meaning no external amp needed.
 
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Just snagged two of these 590's and a 520c for the new apartment!

Any opinions on pairing these with the 550P amp/sub? Thinking about picking up 2x 550P's to go along with them.
 
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^ I wanted to pull the trigger on the same so bad but the wife talked me out of it. To many expenses these last couple of months.

Maybe the next go around.
 
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