JBL ES10 User Manual 2

test reports

Ken C. Pohlmann

JBL

ES Series home theater speaker system

av ing us ed J BL speakers in
recording studios and at home
for many years, ther e’s some -

H

found reassuring. I may or may not have
wa r med to t he voicin g of a part icular
model, but I’ve always respected what I’ve
heard. So when cartons bearing the famil­iar orange JBL logo arrived on my door­step recently, I was eager to check out the
company’s latest efforts.

midd le pr ice ran ge, a hotly c ontes ted
market where prospec tive buyers know
wh a t sound s g ood but don’t want t o
spend stupid amounts of money to get it.
I u npacked two ES80 towers, a n ES25C
center speaker, two ES10 surrounds, and
an ES250P subwoofer. With their sizable
bulk filling my listening room, I expected
significant sonic results.

trapezoidal cabinet, which widens in front
and tapers to the rear, looks very stylish.
(All of the satellites, and the subwoofer,
work the trapezoidal styling a ngle.) The

thi ng about them I’ve always

The ES Ser ie s occ upies JBL’s uppe r-

The ES80 tower stands waist-high. Its

ES80’s five ver tical d rivers are a pair of
6-inch woofers, a 4-inch midrange, and
a module wit h two
covering the normal high-frequency range
and the other covering ultra-high frequen­cies. This sa me module appe ars i n the
other satellites as well. Two pairs of stout
binding posts allow mono- or bi-amping.
There’s also a rear-firing port.

The ES25C center speaker uses an MTM
(midrange/tweeter/midrange) driver con­figuration, with a pair of 5-inch midranges
flank ing the tweeter module. Adjusting
the ported cabinet’s two feet can lower
its vertical angle. The ES10 surrounds are
direct-firing, with one 4-inch driver and
the tweeter module. There are two mount­ing brackets on the back and two ports on
top. Make darn su re the kids don’t drop
pennies in there — or your car keys.

The ES250P subwoofer sports a f ront­firing 12-inch driver, a downwa rd-fi ring
port, and an amplifier rated at 400 watts.
Its control set prov ides adjust ments for
level and crossover frequency (50 to 150
Hz with a 24-dB/octave slope), phase (0°

3

⁄

4

-inch tweeters, one

and 180°), and LFE/stereo line inputs. A
switch toggles between LFE (for the mono
low-frequency-effects channel on Dolby
Digital and DTS tracks) and Norma l (for
a regular stereo input), with the crossover
adjustment bypassed when the former set­ting is selected. All six speakers are faced
with removable black grilles.

SETUP

In stal ling t he JBLs didn’t present any
unusual obstacles. I placed the ES80 tow­ers 10 f ee t apar t, about 1 fo ot out from
the f ront wall, and toed them in to face
the l isten ing position. Th e towers a re
supplied with th readed spiked feet, but
I used the included rubber feet instead.
As with any floorstanders, the proximity
of the d rivers to my tile f loor created a
reflection t hat colored the direct sound
path. To mitigate this, I placed throw rugs
on the floor in front of each cabinet.

The ES25C center speaker went below
my T V. Its vertical a ngle was good, so I
didn’t adjust it s feet. I placed t he ES10
surrounds on speaker stands in the back
of t he r oom. I wi sh they had the same
adjustable feet as the center speaker so I
could have aimed them down a bit.

Subwoofer performance is very depen­dent on room acoustics and on the sub

The Short Form

Snapshot

Classic JBL sound quality from towers
and a massive sub, complemented by
a tonally matched center speaker and
surrounds

Plus



:: Loud, natural sound



:: Clean high-frequency extension



:: Solid low-frequency extension



:: Robust construction

+

Minus



:: Sizable cabinets require a sizable room
:: Sound may be too bright and forward for

some

Price $2,395 (as tested)

–

70 JULY/AUGUST 2008 S OU ND & V IS ION soundandvisionmag.com

Test Bench

15

10

5

0

decibels (dB )

–5

–10

–15

20 100 1K 10K 20K

Full la b res ults at soundandvisionmag.com/jbles

hertz (Hz)

L/R ■■ 46 Hz to 15 kHz ±7.6 dB

Cente r ■■83 Hz to 14.8 kHz ±7.8 dB

Surround ■■85 Hz to 17.8 kHz ±6.2 dB
Subwoofer ■■34 Hz to 103 Hz ±1.9 dB

The ES80 exhibits a 300-Hz floor-bounce notch
that’s typical for tower-style speakers, along with
narrow band irregularities up to 2 kHz and a 5-dB
drop in level above 7 kHz. The ES25C center shows

and listening positions. From experience,
I knew to place the ES250P in my room’s
sub sweet spot, along the front wall and
between the TV and the left tower.

MUSIC PERFORMANCE

I sta rted my critical listening with stereo
playbac k, cou rtesy of KT Tunsta ll. Her
debut album, Eye to the Telescope, was a
bona-fide hit and proved t hat not all new
stars need to be Idols. The JBLs reproduced
the muscular ba ss guitar on “Suddenly I
See” with good musicality; the subwoofer
prov ided solid f undamental notes wh ile
the towers’ woofers added the attack of the
plucked strings. Likewise, the kick drum,
pulled back in this mix, sounded steady
and strong. The sat/sub blend was seam-
less — one of the advantages of using tow­ers for t he lef t and right f ront chan nels,
instead of small satellite speakers.

Tunsta ll’s lead vocal on t he song was
clean, as was the touch of reverberat ion
ar ou nd it. Detail s were clea rly audible,
such as nuances in the vocal echoes on the
line “I can see her eyes looking from a page
in a magazine.” That I could hear all of this
detail suggests good midrange clarity.

The snare sound was appropriately crisp
and snappy, albeit a bit brighter than what
I’ve heard on some other systems. The com­bination of t he nor mal t weeter a nd t he

similar irregularities between
800 Hz and 6 kHz, and its
response tails off at 6 dB per
octave above 6 kHz. It also
has a deep (20 dB) notch
centered at 3 kHz that
extends from 1.6 to 6 kHz.
Be assured that off-axis
listeners won’t hear the same
sound as someone sitting
front and center. The ES250P
subwoofer only has upper
bandwidth of 103 Hz using
the LFE input. When using
the internal crossover, its
response ranges from 52 to
81 Hz, even though the
crossover is marked from 50
to 150 Hz. To its credit, the
sub can deliver 105 dB SPL
from 32 Hz upward.

—

Tom Nousaine

ultra-high-frequency driver served up lots
of presence and air. The entire top end siz­zled with energy, and, in fact, it required a
little getting used to. But once I got accli­mated, I was quite happy with that extreme
high-frequency extension.

Expanding my audition to other faves
bot h old and new, I worked t hrough my
evaluation checklist. Imaging was accurate,
with a good phantom-center image on pop
lead vocals, and likewise the panorama of
orchest ral instru ments was continuous
across the stereo arc. The soundstage was
open and natural, undoubtedly aided by
the plentiful high-frequency response.

Turning my attent ion to music in sur­round, I listened to t he 6-channel mix on
the DVD-Audio edition of Led Zeppelin’s
How the West Was Won. On this album,
the center channel is used lightly for lead
vocals, but since the ES25C employs the
same tweeter module as the towers, the
high end sounded well matched. The center
speaker’s 5-inch woofer falls between the
towers’ 4- and 6-inchers, but its tonal qual­ity is similar enough. On other su rround
albums, too, these drivers worked together
to reproduce a realistic soundstage across
the front, with good image definition.

MOvIE PERFORMANCE

JBL got its start in movie sound, so I wasn’t

surprised that its ES system handled with
aplomb t he soundt rac k to Hero, a C hi­nese fantasy spectacle directed by Yimou
Zhang. In one scene, the t itular cha rac­ter swirls around a blue room, cutting ties
holding bu nd les of st ic ks. The swoosh­ing sounds of ou r flying hero, co-mingled
with the ringing of his sword, are panned
th roughout the sur round mix. Here, the
satellite speakers provided great spat ia l
continuity instead of the blobs of localized
sound I sometimes hear on other models.

The subwoofer added to t he swirling
sound w ith low-pitched whooshes — an
effect that was nicely integrated with the
satellites. (A lesser system might have stat­ically localized the low sounds to the sub,
deg radi ng the sense of movement.) And
when the sticks crashed to t he floor in all
six speakers, the sense of immersion was
complete. Meanwhile, dialogue — ha rd-
panned to t he center channel — sounded
absolutely clean. As I expected, the cen­ter speaker’s MTM configuration produced
symmetrical horizontal dispersion.

BOTTOM LINE

In a world of tiny satellites — not to men­tion cute cabinets that a re subwoofers in
name only — it’s comfor ting to listen to
big, traditional speakers from a big, tradi­tional company. JBL has a speaker-design
knowledge base that’s almost unrivaled. If
there’s one thing it k nows how to do, it’s
putting drivers in boxes and making them
sound damn good.

S&V

Key Features

ES80 ($549 each)
:: (2) 6-in woofers; 4-in midrange;

dome tweeter;

3

42

⁄

4

in high; 46

3

⁄

4

-in ultra-high tweeter;

1

⁄

4

lb

ES25C ($349)
:: (2) 5-in woofers;

3

⁄

4

-in ultra-high tweeter; 18

3

16

⁄

4

lb

3

⁄

4

-in dome tweeter;

ES10 ($349/pair)
:: 4-in woofer;

ultra-high tweeter; 12 in wide ; 8

3

⁄

4

-in dome tweeter;

ES250P ( $599)
:: 12-in woofer; 400-watt amplifier; 19

3

⁄

4

x 16

7

⁄

8

in; 43 lb

x 15

:: Finish : black or cherry

JBL.COM :: 516-255-4525

3

⁄

4

in wide;

3

⁄

4

-in

3

⁄

4

-in

3

⁄

4

lb

3

⁄

4

soundandvisionmag.com SO UND & VI SIO N JULY/AUGUST 2008 71