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JBL HDI-3600 Review | Sound Clips with Commentary! | New Record Day | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: JBL HDI-3600 Review | Sound Clips with Commentary!
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This content is a review of the JBL HDI 3600 loudspeakers, focusing on their sound characteristics, performance across various music genres, and suitability for different listening environments. The review emphasizes the importance of using headphones for experiencing binaural recordings and highlights the unique features of the JBL speakers, particularly their waveguide technology.
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welcome back to new record day my name
is ron
now would be a good time if you haven't
already put on a pair of headphones
um this
is a newman k-100
binaural dummy head this was uh
this was sent out uh thanks to
adorama they made this all happen and
i am really excited to see what you guys think
think
um when it comes to a binaural recording
what we're trying to do is get the sound
of the room and we're trying to create
real space so inside the ears
of this dummy head
are microphones right and so
what we're hoping to achieve is
a genuine sense of
distance and space and everything that
surrounds the head
and so it's really important
to maximize the effect of this to be
wearing headphones so i would encourage
you to do so
when i am mixing down and editing everything
everything
i use two headphones and i'll have them
linked down below they are affiliate links
links
uh just a heads up um the
meze classic 99 classics
or the grado sr 80es
so if you want to know exactly what i'm
hearing when i
am playing these back and listening to
these sound clips those are the
headphones that i use
and i like them quite a bit the speakers
we're going to be checking out today
are the jbl hdi 3600's
these were sent out by jbl so thank you
for doing that jbl we appreciate it
they are four standing loudspeakers two
and a half way
we'll cover the specs in a minute but
they are four thousand bucks
and as you can see they are using
a waveguide and more on that in a few
the gear that we're going to be checking
out today
is starting with my
source would be the annuous
zenith and then from there i'm running
a usb cable that was sent out by db
audio labs
going into the back of the hegel
h390 if you haven't
watched that podcast that i just
released about
hegel amplifiers i would encourage you
to do that you'll probably learn a
couple of things that are pretty
interesting that make their
amplifiers pretty unique and so this is
a pretty simple little rig we have the
annual zenith
going into the hegel and then from the
hegel i have
um reality cables i have the reality cables
cables
coming in from the wall and they're long
runs like 20 feet
and then i just cut little holes in my
carpet where i
you know fed them through the carpet and
that's that
so with sound clips with commentary um
it's my job to help you understand what i'm
i'm
actually hearing in the room and this is what
what
i feel makes sound clips
sound clips a little more reasonable to
try to tackle
i don't expect you to know based on what
we're going to talk his name is randy
and i'll tell you why in a minute
based on what randy is hearing
i don't expect you to fully understand
everything that you would ever need to
know about how these speakers sound
hogwash no way not not
a chance and so it is my job
to help you understand what i'm hearing
and i've spent enough time
with the hdi's i don't need to be
sitting in the driver's seat to do so
enough blabbering the reason why this is
named randy
not for because of the cheap audio man
even though
cheap audio man is awesome um well it's
a newman
it's a newman microphone so any randy
newman fans out there
i think he's one of the best so all right
right
sound clips are provided by uh epidemic sound
sound
and that is a music service that i
subscribe to so i pay
a monthly fee for the sound clips and
for the ability to use
all this royalty-free music the sound
clips are indeed a little bit cheesy in
my opinion i wish
that i had i wish i had a little bit
i wish i had music that was a bit more
likable but it does the job and i think
that i have a new playlist that will
you know it'll be kind of cool to check
these out
now if you want this exact playlist
and you want the ability to download all
of these songs and even play them back
on your system you can do so
that is a perk for becoming a patron
here at new record day
i know the first comments are going to
be hey man can you just give us a track list
list
no no i mean i can but i'm not going to because
because
i want to give a benefit to my patrons
and that benefit
is you can have all the songs you can
even download them and get their track
names and their artists and you can
explore them if you like them
i'm not going to just tell you what the
track list is and i'm not doing that to
be a jerk
i'm doing it because well i do this
for a living and i gotta figure out ways to
to
give a benefit to the patrons that make
sense for them
and reward them for supporting my channel
channel
and that's why i'm doing it i will tell
you that if you are dying to know
the track lists and the names you can
just use shazam on your phone
and it will tell you that information
enough blabbering
jbl hdi 3600s
let's go ahead and run through the specs
as i said earlier they are four thousand dollars
dollars
they are a two and a half way design
they have a one inch
horn loaded high frequency compression
driver with hdi
or high definition imaging waveguide technology
technology
for smooth uniform response across
a wide listening area the woofers being used
used
are three six and a half inch advanced
aluminum matrix woofers with cast frames
for punchy mid-range
and base the cabinet is a curved cabinet
constructed of three-quarter inch thick
mdf and heavily braced to dampen
internal vibrations
it is a base reflex design with dual
rear firing ports
frequency response from jbl is
38 hertz to 30 000 hertz i've already
measured these and i'll talk about this
in the final review which i'm hoping to
have out
maybe even by the end of this week
sensitivity is 90 db
yeah that's about it five-way binding posts
posts
magnetic grills oh furniture grade
walnut uh wood veneers with satin finish
they do look really nice 61 pounds each
those are the jbl hdi 3600 so
fasten your seat belt my friends let's
go ahead
[Music]
don't want to [Music]
tell my skin to forget
every little thing [Music]
[Music] this
this [Music]
[Music]
here's what i think i think
we have a straight shooter on our hands
and what i mean by that is
even though this is a very stripped down
track and even though
i'm saying this because i've heard a lot
of tracks on these so i'm gonna i'm
gonna just declare these right out of
the gate as
these are a pretty behaved sounding loudspeaker
loudspeaker
in terms of their overall
tone characteristics i don't find these
to be
tilted in one way or the other i
think that they actually sound very balanced
balanced
and so this is an easy celebration
one of the things that i
really like about these and i'm going to
let the cat out of the bag
early so we can start talking about it is
is
they do have wave guides right and so
if you're new to my channel
or if you don't know what a wave guide
is it's this guy right here
where the tweeter is we have a a compression
compression
a compression driver and a waveguide
and the purpose of this waveguide
is to control directivity so it is
controlling the direction in which
we are funneling the frequencies i think
i just popped up my speaker cables
one moment all right well that was fun okay
okay
let's not do that again so what i was
going to say is one thing that i like
about these and i noticed it
right away is besides the fact that we
have what i'm calling a straight shooter
on our hands
and you know just a balanced
sound coming out of these loudspeakers
it's not tilted in one direction or the other
other
is sometimes with a waveguide this is
what you hear and it's really
distracting because you're just like
that doesn't sound natural at all that
sounds terrible
and with these
minus a couple of things we're going to
be talking about
i don't find myself listening to
this at all i mean they did a good job with
with
giving us controlled directivity without
the consequence of
hearing a wave guide calling attention
to itself so
um [Music]
[Music]
i think one of the key words that i've been
been
i've been finding myself thinking about
when i've been listening to the 3600s
is presence there's a
there's a sense of presence
that you hear with a really
great horn speaker or a speaker with a
waveguide compression driver
they do they do that and
it's it's great in the sense that what i
feel that jbl has done is they've given
us that
presence but they also have this
they they have this tame enough to where
that presence doesn't overwhelm you
and so when you have some stuff
upper mid-range specifically upper mid-range
mid-range
and beyond it doesn't get to the point
where it's like
i'm done i can't listen to this
loudspeaker anymore it's just
too much detail retrieval too much stuff
going on
too much stuff it sounds too forward
i don't i don't hear that in these and so
so
again going back to my original comments
of this is a very balanced
sounding loudspeaker that also includes
this sense of
presence in the room it's a sound
and i think a lot of audiophiles hi-fi enthusiasts
enthusiasts
are going to really appreciate that
about these loudspeakers they certainly
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] so
so [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Applause] [Music]
[Applause] [Music]
[Applause] [Music]
while certainly not the greatest example
in the history of examples
of all things rock you can rock out with
the jbls
and when i want to rock out that
presence that i was just talking about
it comes in handy and so
yeah by all means if you want to fire up
ac dc or listen to some guns and roses or
or
you know pink floyd or whatever it is
that you want you want to listen to
classic rock on these and you want to
crank up the volume
and just rock out yeah
you can do it and that
that kind of presence that i was talking about
about
earlier i think it does lend itself
to just a more forward
type presentation and this is going to
be one of the key things that i want you
guys to take away with what i've heard
about these
there are some speakers that i'll review
a good example would be the
q acoustics concept 500s and
with those speakers there are there are
some things
in terms of staging where they are
throwing hail mary's
and what i mean by that is there's some
stuff that sounds like it's being played
beyond the walls even in the backyard
i've heard some stuff where it's like
that is way beyond the wall and so it
throws these hail marys
and it can sound crazy deep
and you get this kind of layering type
of an effect
when a speaker does that
i don't think that's what these are all about
about
and i don't think that is something that they
they
necessarily do
extremely well and i don't know how i'm
just going to be blunt i don't think
that's what
anyone that is into that i don't know if
these are going to be the right speakers
for you
instead these are more of this kind of
vibrant in the room
type of a sound so you know you start
thinking along the lines of folks that
you know you're into jazz and you want
to hear
the in the club type of an experience
or you listen to rock and you want kind
of that
front row type of an experience
that is getting you closer to what i'm hearing
hearing
with these and that's not to say that
they're so forward that they sound
congested that's not true
i can get these to disappear in this
room and i do have
great localization from left to right
everybody is in their right place soundstage
soundstage
is certainly wide and i am able to discern
discern
everybody in the mix clearly
so it's not like this wall of sound
where everything is smeared together but
at the same time
these don't throw the hail mary's and
there's not as much
depth with these speakers as
again something like the q acoustics
concept 500's that we reviewed
certainly not like the sapphires or the
annexoticas totally different design so
it's not really fair those are open
baffled um
so keep that in mind if if
you want something that is going to be
like the in the club
going [Music]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music]
i gotta say i i like rock rocking out
with these
i mean they it's fun these can be a lot
of fun to listen to if you just want to
this particular track it's making me
chuckle and if you're
wearing headphones like i really really
hope i hope you are i hope you're
putting on headphones to get the full effect
effect
so this is an instrumental version of
this track so the actual track that is
on epidemic has vocals
and if you listen carefully play this
track back
it took me a couple of times to go what
the heck is going on with this there is
something wrong
and i realize what it is is the vocals
are actually bleeding through
on the instrumental version of this song
so if you listen carefully
you have the vocals just in the distance
and it it's
awful they did they didn't do a great
job with this one but
nevertheless the guitars sound good uh
we're going to start
exploring mid bass and bass in a second
but let's go ahead and move on from here [Music]
so [Music]
[Music] so
so [Music]
[Music] uh
[Music]
yeah a lot of this kind of material i
just i dig on these
i think that this is the kind of music that
that
if i was to get these speakers i would
be spending a lot of time going through
a lot of classic rock records and
just rocking out and having fun with
so on one hand as we start to talk about
on one hand i absolutely believe
jbl is telling us the truth that these
can certainly dig down to
you know 38 hertz if not lower depending
on your room
we use lots which is loudspeaker
optimization techniques for soundstage
so these speakers are
so from the back of the speaker we're
looking at about
six feet do you need to do that in order
to make these speakers
sound good no can you put these speakers
up against the wall yes
you may i don't think you should
especially if you have the real estate
and you have the ability to pull these
out into the room
but a lot of this is just going to be
dependent on
what are you going for what do you want
out of your hi-fi
system what i am searching for
and what i want is i want a believable soundstage
soundstage
i want i do not want to hear speakers
in the room period and i will not
stop until i get a speaker to
let go and ultimately vanish
and this is the resting place for the
jbl hdi 3600's in my room
doesn't mean that you need to pull the
speakers out six feet in your room
you're gonna have to use lots to figure
out where they belong
and this is where they ended up in my
room which is 16 feet wide and
20 feet deep and then beyond
the wall where that camera is connected
there are open rooms right
so i have quite a bit of room and real
estate to work
with and so i use lots
i pull the speakers out into the room
and i get them to vanish
on one hand i like
i like the fact that i am able to hear
all of the notes clean and so
what i mean by that is at no point do i
hear these
cabinets falling apart
and i'm hearing additional bloom or resonance
resonance
from the cabinet at no point am i
hearing anything
that is like man that is lighting up
that cabinet and it's
distracting me it's it's bothering me
no way so everything is very clean
and it is very defined in terms of the notes
notes
so i can hear them all very very easily
at the same time i gotta say i
wish i had a little bit more clarity
with the mid bass in the bass
it's good but let's get real here guys
four thousand dollars i'm not gonna pull
any punches
i'm gonna just say it like it is i
really do think that
i wish that these just had a little bit more
more
texture and tone and i hear often when
i'm listening to like a well-recorded upright
upright
where yeah we have the pluck of the
string which actually is not base that's
quite a bit higher but
then we have the resonance from inside
the upright
and being able to clearly hear
that being crafted
there's quite a bit of detail there and
when you don't hear it
you hear the note being played but
you're not hearing
that all of the tonal characteristics
of the upright now this is heavily
dependent on the recording so
i digress to a certain extent if you
have a good recording of an upright bass
you want to hear exactly what that
upright sounds like
and i gotta say there are times when
i've gone back to back i'll play these
and then i'll play a speaker that excels
at this which would be like the sapphires
sapphires
where it's it's night and day it really is
is
a night and day difference when we start
talking about
texture and tone in bass [Music]
[Music]
i'll get the vibe that you're distant [Music]
cause
tell me [Music]
that nothing is wrong just leave it be [Music]
lots of little details that pop off on this
this
you know i don't know exactly what it is but
but
little details that kind of light up the room
room
in terms of the time domain so we're
talking about
you know the the decay of the room
uh the reverb that was used in post when
they're mixing everything down but there's
there's
little things that are happening on this
track that are pretty darn impressive in
terms of
top end extension and i do think that
this is a loudspeaker that
you are able to unravel some of the
ambience and some of the reverb and some
of the stuff that is
you know it can be lost on some
loudspeakers when we see a nosedive on
top where it just
drops off like a rock with these not at all
all
i don't feel that way one bit and we are
i want to make this a point we are
talking way past the point of
does that mean that the speaker is
bright no
no no no no no bright speakers
can be as low as a thousand hertz up to
five thousand i mean we're much lower
than what you would
ever expect i can promise you that
i'm talking 10k
15k 20k
these are doing some things it just kind
of it's like little
fireflies just light up the room for a
moment it's like wow
that is that is really fun to listen to
and it kind of creates this sort of
ambience and it makes it makes the
performance believable
is what it does is it sounds a bit more real
real
[Music] [Applause]
[Music] so
[Music]
i can listen to this kind of stuff all
day with the jbl's they just
they they know how to rock they really
do i cannot
i cannot commend jbl enough for the fact that
that
they ended up with a very balanced
sounding loudspeaker and yet it celebrates
celebrates
this lively snap
this man it just
specifically with electric guitars
that's what it is is
they have just this they've got balls i
don't know how else to say it is
man that just boogies you know and
there's a vibrancy to it it has
life and it just it gets up and it goes
and i really really really like it a lot
i gave major props to the fact that
these wave guides
don't call attention to themselves in
this kind of way where it's like hey
look at me i'm always just going to be
adding this really nasty sound they
don't do that
but there are times depending on the recording
recording
depending on the frequency band that
we're talking about i've noticed it with
upper mid-range and some female vocals
where like the the s's
s's in female vocals so sibilance and
some electric guitars that are a bit
honky sounding
kind of just like there's times where
okay all right i'm starting to hear
the sound of a waveguide and it's
it's good enough that i'm not going to
beat up jbl
for it but it is obvious
enough that you guys need to know what
to expect
there will be some times where
the illusion of the sound stage is
broken and you're like
i'm hearing it's almost like you're
hearing the throat of it
like you're hearing some kind of an
effect of the wave guide
you're hearing it and so something to
just be aware of
[Music] do
do [Music]
i really like that track a lot because
look whether they did it in post and
it's all studio trickery i don't i don't
give a rip but
the sound of that room is believable and
there's some cool
effects and some layering that's going
on and
this lends itself to being able to hear
some of the subtleties in music
and if your system is up to the task and
you have
speakers that are able to kind of
unravel the mysteries that are waiting
for you
uh we start talking about things that are
are
kind of hidden you know behind that main
acoustic like what's beyond that
can we hear beyond that can we hear into
the music
this is the kind of track where you can
you know pick up some of those little nuggets
nuggets
and so post in the comments down below
what did you all hear in that track
because i want to know what if
if this if randy randy you have one job
to do
today which is not make me look like a fool
fool
well okay
that's a lot to ask for and you're
probably gonna fail at that but
i hope this is a good recording can you
at least do that
let me know what you hear in that track
because i hear some cool stuff
just off in the distance and it's it's
fun to hear that kind of stuff
and the jbl's they're able to
they're able to deliver the goods which
[Music]
you guys hearing that mid-bass punch
randy i hope you're picking that up i
know that if i had the earthworks up you
guys would
be like wow holy smokes
these things they got some punch man
and it's it's fun i wish there was a
little more clarity
just just that last bit of let
just give me all of the detail in the
mid bass and the bass
and then i'm so happy i'm so happy it's
a complete celebration but
at least it has punch it's not going to
i could listen to this track all the way
through because i'm digging it
um man
what else can i say here folks jbl hgi
3600s if you're into blues
if you're into jazz if you're into rock
if you're into rock
this this is an interesting loudspeaker
for everything that i just said all
those genres of music even pop i would say
say
definitely um man you're gonna have a
lot of fun with these
they are a fun loudspeaker and what i
like so much about them is
you can rock out with them literally all
day randy
all day all day long and
when you're done you're you don't end up
with a headache
and you're not sick and tired of
listening to these if anything
you want to just keep exploring more
albums and and that's a
that is a darn good thing and that
speaks to the fact that
they did a great job with voicing these
i think they did a
very good job with voicing these [Music]
[Music]
you make me all bloud your [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause]
you cover us in shame i
[Music]
can anyone stand this nonsense [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music] obey
obey [Music]
[Music]
yeah you can rock out with these
that is what we learned here folks with the
the
jbl hdi 3600s
these are a fine sounding speaker i
don't think that they are for let's
if depth in soundstage
the hail mary's those crazy hail marys
is something that you have to have
i'm going to say no i'm going to say nope
nope
they're just not they're not going to
give you that
in my honest opinion
on the other hand if you want
presence in the music you want it to be
lively but you do not want it to be
shouty you do not want it to be so forward
forward
that you enter listening fatigue within
five minutes
you want a well-engineered loudspeaker
that is voiced it is voiced
very well it is a balanced sound
throughout the entire spectrum that
they're able to play
and you want a loud speaker
and why would you want that why would
you want
a loudspeaker with controlled
directivity well i'll tell you why because
because
we don't all have rooms like this that
are perfectly symmetric
symmetrical we don't all have rooms that
you know you can set them wherever the
heck you want
this this is your friend
and it will help you in challenging
environments challenging rooms
and one thing that i would say is and i
made a video about this
you might want to explore crossing the streams
streams
with a waveguide and so this would be an
aggressive towing
where this would be pointing
right here basically to this seat and
you can move it
you know change how aggressive you want to
to
mess around with the angle and the same
thing with this guy so this
guy would be pointing over here so it's
crossing right in front of our friend mr
newman here
good job randy i i think you did a good
job today i hope you did
so you might want to explore that i have
and i actually
i didn't i didn't hear a ton of benefits
with these guys having crossing the streams
streams
and don't take that as a negative
towards a speaker
that is my environment my room where i position
position
these these things all freaking matter
and they matter a lot and so you're
gonna have to
experiment and you're going to have to
try it for yourself and see what works
but yeah binaural recording
compliments to mr randy mr randy newman
thank you so much i had a blast doing
this i
hope that you enjoyed the show and
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