0:03 so here's the deal
0:06 what i like the most about the jbl
0:10 hdi 3600s
0:14 it's the fact that they don't sound like this
0:17 this
0:19 welcome back to new record day my name
0:22 is ron if you are into two channel
0:24 audio consider yourself an audiophile or
0:26 music enthusiast
0:28 welcome home make sure you hit the
0:29 subscribe button and the bell
0:31 notifications so you know
0:34 when the next video drops so in today's
0:36 video we're going to be taking a look at the
0:36 the
0:40 jbl hdi 3600. these were sent out
0:41 directly from
0:42 harman and so i do want to just take a
0:45 minute and thank harman for sending
0:47 these out i certainly do appreciate it
0:49 all of my thoughts and opinions they are
0:51 my own nobody is paying me to say
0:53 anything here so
0:55 rest assured i'm going to tell you
0:56 exactly what i think about these
0:58 speaker's performance
1:00 now with that being said if you're
1:02 interested in sound clips
1:03 i do what's called sound clips with
1:06 commentary and i feel like i do a pretty
1:07 good job with it
1:10 and the benefit of the commentary
1:12 is i'm gonna tell you what i'm actually
1:13 hearing in the room
1:16 and so those two things combined a
1:18 really good recording
1:21 with my commentary that might be useful
1:22 and it might help
1:25 you understand where i'm going with this review
1:26 review
1:27 something else that i want to mention is
1:29 you can support this channel through
1:31 patreon if you'd like and there's other
1:32 ways to donate if you're not
1:35 into patreon that's totally cool we do
1:37 weekly zoom meetings now which is really
1:39 cool so every single week on sunday we
1:41 get together and we hang out and we chat
1:45 so consider it i appreciate it
1:49 let's move on and tackle the jbl
1:55 i want to start with the wave guide
1:56 because this
1:59 is one of the biggest features about
2:01 this speaker is that we do indeed have this
2:01 this
2:04 you know fancy wave guide this is all about
2:05 about
2:08 what is called controlled directivity
2:11 so we have you know frequencies that are beaming
2:12 beaming
2:14 and controlling those frequencies
2:15 physically with
2:18 a waveguide that's what it's intended to do
2:19 do
2:22 we're able to beam and force
2:25 the direction controlling the direction
2:29 of those frequencies why do we care
2:32 why is that a big deal well
2:36 a lot of us have realistic rooms
2:38 and we don't have a dedicated listening
2:40 room maybe we have
2:43 a weird room an l-shaped room or rooms
2:44 that are just
2:47 not made perfectly for
2:50 listening to loudspeakers and you know what
2:50 what
2:53 that's where controlled directivity is
2:54 going to be a huge
2:57 help because when it comes to setting up
2:58 those loudspeakers
3:02 and getting just a great center image
3:04 a big wide sound stage that sounds
3:06 realistic and sounds natural
3:08 that is exactly what these are going to
3:09 bring to the table
3:11 and it is one of the very first things
3:13 that i noticed is
3:16 you kind of just plop these down and
3:18 you've got a performance in the room
3:22 and i like that a lot about the jbl
3:26 hdi 3600s so i want to talk about
3:29 top end extension and i also want to
3:30 fold in
3:33 upper mid-range and yes even the heart
3:34 of mid-range
3:38 all in these same listening impressions
3:39 segment that we're going to be chatting
3:41 about i normally don't do that but i
3:43 think it's important
3:45 that i do it with these speakers because
3:48 i've noticed something about
3:50 their mid band performance upper
3:51 midrange and
3:53 top and extension that they all have this
3:54 this
3:57 one trait that
4:01 is worth chatting about and the key word
4:02 here folks
4:05 is presence let's unpack this for a
4:08 minute because well we have to define
4:11 what does that mean what does presence
4:14 mean there is a liveliness
4:18 kind of a spark that you get out of
4:19 compression drivers
4:21 out of compression drivers with wave
4:23 guides where
4:26 the presentation of the sound stage is
4:27 going to move forward
4:30 you kind of have this front row type of
4:31 a seat
4:33 to the performance and that is certainly
4:35 something that
4:38 i've experienced with the jbl hdi 3600s
4:41 if you want to hear what a song sounds
4:43 like as if you were in the jazz club
4:46 or you were sitting in the front row of
4:48 the rock concert
4:51 i think these do it but
4:54 they do it with style and what i mean by
4:56 that is when you have
4:58 a forward presentation what we're
5:00 calling this kind of
5:01 presence to the music where everything
5:03 is just kind of
5:05 you know up and hanging out in the room
5:06 with you
5:11 well sometimes when we don't have a
5:13 balanced frequency response when
5:14 something is
5:18 tilted up or we have some stored energy
5:19 that we need to worry about
5:21 and no we don't have any stored energy
5:22 that we need to worry about with these
5:24 not that i could find any
5:27 ways or we have resonances going on
5:28 inside the you know inside the
5:30 loudspeaker where something is being lit up
5:31 up
5:34 and vibrating and making noise or
5:37 we have cone breakup all of those things
5:39 lead to with this presence in this kind
5:40 of forward presentation
5:43 it leads to the dreaded listening fatigue
5:44 fatigue
5:47 we have something that now sounds shouty
5:51 bright too forward in your face
5:54 kind of edgy we don't want to hear that
5:59 no way and when i say these perform
6:01 with that presence with style what i
6:02 mean is
6:04 we're not hearing any of that nasty
6:06 stuff gotta give props to
6:09 jbl with this because whenever i listen
6:10 to these loud speakers
6:13 i have a tendency of wanting to rock out
6:15 and i want to continue
6:18 rocking out and that's a good sign it means
6:19 means
6:20 there's nothing about this loudspeaker
6:22 that is
6:24 ripping my head off and it sounds so
6:25 forward that
6:28 i just can't do it anymore fun is one of
6:30 the key words that i landed on when i
6:32 did the sound clips with commentary with
6:33 these speakers
6:34 and it's for a dang good reason it's
6:36 because they are a
6:40 very fun speaker to rock out with
6:41 now another thing that i want to mention
6:43 when it comes to
6:46 anything that is in the time domain we
6:47 can see on the frequency response of
6:49 these speakers that they
6:52 extend all the way out to 20
6:55 and beyond and at 20
6:58 there's quite a rise in the response and
6:59 i don't know for sure
7:01 what the heck is actually going on with
7:03 these drivers is it anything that you
7:05 should be concerned about
7:08 i don't think so we're talking way out there
7:09 there
7:11 way out there past the point where most
7:12 of us can even
7:16 hear and what i noticed about these
7:19 is they do offer things that we describe
7:21 on our channel as
7:23 in the time domain what the heck does
7:25 that actually mean
7:28 it means that we're hearing the ambience
7:31 and the thing that is in time after the
7:34 fundamental hits so you have that crack
7:34 of the symbol
7:36 and then you have the decay and the
7:38 shimmer that lasts
7:41 after it when does that get cut off and how
7:41 how
7:43 deep into the room can you hear these
7:45 types of
7:48 you know time domain type subtleties
7:51 these do it and this was one of the
7:52 things that
7:55 i quickly started to latch onto as i was
7:56 digging into
7:59 like a lot of acoustic material or stuff
8:01 that is very percussive that has
8:03 a whole lot of cymbal work i was finding
8:06 myself saying
8:08 i'm clearly able to hear stuff bouncing
8:10 off walls
8:12 ambience little subtleties in the music
8:13 little nuggets
8:17 of information that all too often
8:20 a lot of loudspeakers it just drops off
8:21 like a rock
8:23 and you're not hearing deep into the
8:25 recording and with the
8:28 hdis i had no problem of hearing
8:30 all the information that i would ever
8:32 want to hear in the time domain
8:35 and that is a huge
8:41 huge bonus to the hdi 3600s
8:43 upper mid-range i want to talk a little
8:44 bit about
8:47 electric guitars and i want to talk a
8:49 little bit about
8:52 sibilance s's this might be
8:56 the only time where i started noticing
9:00 okay i think i'm hearing a little bit of
9:02 that waveguide it's certainly not this
9:04 make no mistake it's not
9:06 that and i think that in the event where
9:08 i had a bunch of you guys over and you
9:10 were to hear these speakers if i had
9:12 the speaker grills on these i think half
9:13 of you would be
9:15 shocked that there's even a compression
9:18 driver and a waveguide so
9:20 kudos to jbl for making that thing
9:22 vanish with that being
9:25 said i have noticed that on
9:27 specifically with upper mid range the
9:30 top end of female voices
9:33 s's are a little bit more pronounced
9:35 there's gonna be some times where things
9:37 can sound
9:40 just a little bit spitty just a little
9:42 bit more
9:44 forward and a little bit more aggressive than
9:45 than
9:47 some other designs out there you know
9:49 this is just gonna be something that
9:50 you're going to have to decide
9:52 is that going to bother me or do i
9:55 actually like that particular trait
9:57 is that s poking out every now and then
9:59 is it actually realistic sounding to me
10:02 and i can't decide that for you i really
10:04 can't this is where things get very subjective
10:05 subjective
10:08 i didn't find it distracting i embraced
10:10 it i embraced it with this kind of
10:12 presence and lively presentation that
10:14 we've been talking about that
10:18 that's just a part of the package
10:20 you're gonna have to wrestle with this
10:22 one it didn't bother me
10:24 and that is the honest-to-goodness truth
10:25 is i was like it's fine
10:28 this is no big deal this is just part of
10:31 this sound this kind of lively type presence
10:32 presence
10:34 that we've been chatting about in this
10:36 this review
10:37 now i want to talk a little bit about
10:39 electric guitars because there was
10:41 another thing that i noticed
10:45 as well with the 3600s first of all
10:49 for the most part these love
10:52 and i mean love electric guitars
10:56 they have snap they are exciting
10:59 it is like i said early on it is
11:01 fun to just rock out with these speakers
11:03 at the same time
11:06 i think you do need to know that there
11:09 will be some times where i am convinced
11:11 i'm hearing a little bit of that wave
11:13 guide it might be a particular frequency
11:14 band it
11:16 could definitely be music dependent but
11:19 there's times where i'm like
11:22 that sounds like it's coming from the speaker
11:22 speaker
11:25 and whenever that illusion of the sound
11:26 stage is broken
11:29 you know where that vanishing act of the
11:32 speakers is broken
11:34 it's kind of a deal for me you know i
11:36 mean that's something that i have to
11:36 take note of
11:39 is i don't want to hear speakers in the
11:40 room ever i just want to hear a
11:43 performance and
11:45 while for the most part if we're talking
11:46 about the tone
11:49 of the electric guitars awesome with the 3600s
11:50 3600s
11:54 it's so lively and fun and engaging
11:57 but again depending on where
12:00 those frequencies sit there were times
12:02 where i felt like
12:05 i know where the speakers are and that
12:08 was a little distracting
12:11 every now and then so something worth mentioning
12:12 mentioning
12:13 and something that you should know so
12:16 what about the rest of all of the instruments
12:17 instruments
12:20 that are hanging out in the entire arena
12:23 of upper mid-range
12:25 we haven't even talked about strings we
12:27 haven't talked about
12:31 horns brass the brass section ron
12:32 what the heck does that sound like on
12:34 the jbl's
12:36 it sounds freaking awesome that's how it
12:38 sounds i am certainly not
12:42 a huge jazz buff by any stretch of the
12:46 imagination but whenever i did listen to
12:49 any kind of jazz material on these
12:53 anything with a sax with a trumpet
12:57 anything brass related i gotta say
13:00 it sounds awesome with the 3600s
13:03 and if i was to take a guess if you are
13:05 really big into jazz
13:06 and you've already tried clips and
13:08 you've already tried some jbl's and
13:10 you're big into compression drivers and
13:11 you're just wondering
13:14 hey is this going to bring the party without
13:15 without
13:17 listening fatigue the answer to that
13:18 question is
13:26 all right so as we drop into the heart
13:30 of mid-range male vocals
13:33 female vocals from that let's just say a
13:34 hundred hertz
13:37 up to around 800 hertz 700 hertz
13:40 the heart of mid band everything dancing
13:42 within that region
13:45 what can you expect from these speakers
13:48 as i said at the very beginning of this
13:49 review and we've been talking about it
13:50 since then
13:52 and you probably have listening fatigue
13:54 by now
13:56 you're gonna hear presents when the
13:58 singer steps up to the mic
14:01 female male vocals there's just
14:02 something about
14:05 it just right there it is just johnny on
14:05 the spot
14:09 every single time and it is a very
14:12 exciting type of a presentation and it's
14:13 something that i
14:15 fell in love with and i want to
14:17 celebrate as
14:18 one of the key things that i think a lot
14:20 of folks are going to like about the 3600s
14:21 3600s
14:24 staging capabilities putting you front row
14:25 row
14:28 with the band you're just hanging out
14:29 you've got them in the living room or
14:31 the listening room with you
14:33 that's exactly what you can expect what
14:35 you're not going to hear
14:37 and what you're not going to experience is
14:38 is
14:41 a crappy cabinet you're not going to hear
14:42 hear
14:46 additional bloom in the male vocals
14:47 you're not going to hear that i can
14:48 promise you that you're not going to hear
14:49 hear
14:53 the cabinet walls coloring the sound
14:56 of any kind of male vocals
14:59 i'll tell you this much mark knopfler is
15:00 not going to sound like barry white
15:04 when you listen to these it is truly a
15:05 straight line performance when it comes
15:06 to male vocals
15:09 and that is exactly what i experienced
15:10 whether i was
15:13 indeed listening to barry white barry
15:14 white sounded the way that he should
15:16 if i was listening to mark noffler mark
15:18 noffler sounds the way that he should if
15:19 i was listening to eddie vedder
15:21 eddie better sounds the way that he
15:24 should and their voices are clear
15:27 they're concise and i was happy
15:30 with how these speakers were voiced in
15:32 the heart of mid-band when it came to
15:36 another thing that i really liked about
15:40 the hdi 3600s and i talked about this
15:42 in the sound clips with commentary is
15:45 anything acoustic
15:48 yes yes is the answer to
15:51 any question that you have about well
15:53 ron what about acoustics yes
15:56 is the answer dude
16:00 you guys play anything with acoustics
16:03 ben howard eric clapton it doesn't matter
16:03 matter
16:06 you dive into gregory allen isakov any
16:07 fans out there
16:10 holy smokes when you play acoustics on
16:11 these speakers
16:13 that presence that kind of lively type
16:15 presentation that
16:19 these speakers bring to the table it is
16:22 so much fun and intoxicating and i
16:23 couldn't help but just
16:26 getting lost in acoustic track after
16:28 acoustic track
16:30 and you know what the same thing can be
16:31 said about
16:33 anything percussive anything with a
16:35 really interesting rhythm section
16:38 you're in for a treat with these no
16:40 doubt about it
16:44 let's go ahead and combine mid bass
16:47 and bass this is going to be the hardest part
16:48 part
16:51 in this review and
16:55 i want to make sure i get this right so
16:58 bear with me i'm going to speak i'm
17:01 going to speak from the heart here
17:05 on one hand i love the bass performance
17:08 that i'm able to get out of the jbl hdi
17:15 there is a confidence in the bass that i
17:16 can appreciate
17:18 and you will probably end up with more
17:20 bass than what you need
17:23 do you need a subwoofer with these i
17:24 don't think so
17:26 i never found myself saying what i
17:27 really need
17:29 is deeper bass i didn't feel that way
17:32 jbl has you spec down to
17:35 i think 38 hertz and i believe
17:37 jbl when it comes to their base
17:39 performance i was
17:42 really pleased with clearly being able
17:44 to hear
17:46 every single note so if we're listening
17:48 to an upright and typically that's what
17:49 i go to is
17:53 can i hear every single note
17:56 and more than that are any of those
17:59 notes waking up this cabinet
18:03 in a way that is a distraction are we hearing
18:04 hearing
18:07 the cabinet resonating kind of like
18:09 blowing into a coke bottle if you will
18:10 that's probably a bad example but it
18:12 gives you an idea but
18:15 is this cabinet waking up in a way that
18:17 we don't want to happen
18:22 the answer to that question is no so
18:25 on one hand jbl has done
18:28 a great job with giving
18:31 you know what i would say is an accurate picture
18:32 picture
18:35 of all of the notes everything is in order
18:36 order
18:39 and nothing is jacked up to the point where
18:40 where
18:42 we need to have a different kind of
18:43 conversation in the review
18:47 nope not at all nothing wrong with the base
18:47 base
18:50 the overall base performance out of the 3600s
18:53 3600s
18:56 why do we need to have a to heart and why
18:56 why
18:58 am i saying this is this is going to be
19:05 i believe and i am convinced
19:11 at this point that
19:14 the cone material of a loudspeaker
19:18 matters a lot and i don't want to paint
19:20 the picture of
19:22 aluminum drivers is a bad decision i
19:24 don't feel that way at all
19:27 and i think that getting what we're
19:28 about to talk about
19:31 out of a loudspeaker it has been my
19:33 experience that it is
19:36 easier to do with a different material than
19:37 than
19:39 aluminum and what we're going to be
19:41 discussing is what is called
19:45 texture and tone in bass
19:48 so there is indeed
19:52 resolution and clarity in
19:55 base and when you hear it
19:59 you can't unhear it you know it's there
20:02 and then you crave it you're like i want
20:04 to hear
20:06 when that snap happens on that upright
20:08 base which is typically up higher the snap
20:08 snap
20:11 of the string right but then the vibration
20:13 vibration
20:16 and then the body the cavity of the body
20:18 of that upright starts to wake up and
20:19 starts to craft
20:22 the note that we're hearing i want all
20:23 of it
20:26 i want to hear clearly the tone
20:30 of that upright bass it is the one
20:33 thing about these speakers that i was just
20:34 just
20:37 wanting a little bit more of i was just
20:41 feeling like you're giving me the note
20:43 and the note is there and it is there
20:45 with confidence but i'm not
20:50 getting as much clarity or definition
20:52 in that initial attack no resonance that
20:53 i can hear
20:55 we have a cabinet that was engineered
20:58 well it's properly braced
21:01 and we can hear every single note
21:05 no problem and they can drop bombs
21:08 no problem i just wish
21:11 that you had a little bit more
21:15 definition and clarity mid bass
21:18 and bass so i want to talk a little bit
21:19 about soundstage
21:22 we've already talked about this
21:23 throughout the review that yes we have
21:25 this kind of front row type of an experience
21:26 experience
21:28 there's some presence in the music
21:31 everything has this liveliness to it
21:34 that is all totally true at the same time
21:34 time
21:38 i do want you to know that you can
21:40 for the most part make these speakers
21:41 totally vanish
21:44 so even though you're gonna have
21:46 everybody hanging out in the room with you
21:47 you
21:50 it's not a situation where everything is
21:53 being played from the speakers
21:55 no you're actually gonna have everybody
21:57 in their correct spot
22:01 and when it comes to the capabilities
22:04 of width how wide these things can
22:06 spread their wings
22:08 they do a fantastic job with that you're
22:10 not going to get the same
22:12 depth that you can get with some other
22:14 designs so
22:16 again think of it as just kind of this arc
22:17 arc
22:18 in front of you this semi-circle of
22:20 musicians that are hanging out
22:23 of course this is dependent on
22:26 the recording you guys know that but if
22:27 it is mixed well
22:30 you're gonna get that illusion only
22:32 every now and then
22:35 the s's and female vocals some electric guitars
22:36 guitars
22:38 might break that illusion that
22:40 soundstage magic
22:43 that we all crave might break it for a moment
22:44 moment
22:48 it was never distracting enough that i thought
22:49 thought
22:51 we really need to talk about this for 20
22:53 minutes and so
22:54 we aren't going to do it what i am going
22:56 to tell you is
22:59 these absolutely can stage
23:02 they can disappear you can do it i would
23:04 encourage you to use lots
23:06 and i would also encourage you to consider
23:07 consider
23:09 crossing the streams i have done an
23:11 entire video that walks you through how
23:12 to do this
23:14 anytime you have a speaker with a
23:16 waveguide or a horn
23:18 i think you should consider doing it and
23:19 that video is
23:23 down below so in the end what do we have
23:25 well we have a speaker that i can recommend
23:26 recommend
23:29 just as long as you understand what it is
23:30 is
23:32 you're gonna get with these guys and
23:34 what you're gonna get and what you can expect
23:35 expect
23:38 is some presence some liveliness
23:41 some fun in the music where you're in
23:42 the jazz club
23:44 you are in the front row of the rock
23:47 concert and on top of that
23:49 you're not going to be listening to this nor
23:50 nor
23:52 are you going to be entering listening
23:53 fatigue because
23:55 jbl doesn't know what the heck they're
23:56 doing and they're trying to lift up the
23:58 top end and
24:00 do a whole bunch of other wonky stuff
24:02 like play around with resonance
24:06 no this is a company that absolutely
24:08 knows how to engineer a loudspeaker
24:10 they're doing it right
24:13 and this is an easy recommendation if
24:14 that presence and that
24:17 liveliness in the music is something
24:18 that you crave
24:22 harmon jbl thank you for sending out
24:25 the 3600s it was a pleasure to review
24:26 these speakers
24:29 and send me something else let's keep
24:31 dancing let's have some more fun and folks
24:32 folks
24:33 thank you so much for hanging out with
24:36 me i certainly do appreciate it
24:37 make sure you remember to like and
24:39 subscribe if you haven't yet
24:46 video [Music]
