Now, from JBL, something you've probably never-heard before: the other half of the music.
(JBL has perfected an entirely new sound system. The most astonishing part is a new high frequency transducer that can fill a room with the high half of sound. It works--well, it works like a nozzle.)
We're going to talk about acoustics and harmonics and all sorts of heavy stuff for the next minute or two. We'll try to do it with merciful brevity. But at the end we're going to unveil a new $426 loudspeaker called Jubal.
For that kind of money, you're entitled to know what you're getting into.
First, music.
Half the music you hear is in the low and midrange of sound.
"Fundamental tones," they're called: the human voice, a piano, a guitar, a violin, a trumpet, whatever. That's where you hear the basic shape and form of sound.
But the character of music, the music of music--overtones, onset tones, all the harmonic shading and texture and subtlety are hidden in the highs. (Without them you couldn't tell a flute from a trumpet from a piano.) Next, the hard stuff.
Any good sound system is designed to disperse sound throughout the room. What you hear and feel is direct and reflected sound. Together they create ambient sound, the sense of being in the middle of something.
Now, as long as the music is in the low and midrange, the traditional tweeter will spread it around. But as the tones go higher, the tweeter narrows its range.
There's a pea-shooter effect. You have to stand directly in front of the speaker to hear the high highs. They never get to the rest of the room.
Enough words. Go hear the music. Take a favorite tape or record--something you know by heart--and ask your JBL dealer to hook it up to Jubal.
If you think Jubal sounds like something special, friend, you don't know the half of it.
The Nozzle.
It's formal name is the JBL 077 Ultra High Frequency Transducer.
It was developed because the world of recording and listening is still very square. Sound studios, auditoriums and living rooms are box-like.
But sound is conical, circular, radial--the pebble in the pond.
The Nozzle accepts enormous amounts of high frequency power and disperses it into a near-perfect horizontal pattern.
The result? Pure, bright, transparent, distortion-free high frequency tones throughout the room.
Nice.
The Jubal is the smallest floor system we make. 24” x18” x 13": It has a handsome smoked glass top and a unique three-dimensional grille in Midnight Blue, Rust Red or Earth Brown.
James B. Lansing Sound, Inc./ 3249 Casitas Avenue. Los Angeles 90039/High fidelity loudspeakers from $99 to $3210.
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(High Fidelity, 1976)
Also see:
HOW SPEAKERS WORK--All speakers make sound, but some make it differently than others.