Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)See 3/19/2010 update below.
I'll start by saying that my 3 rating would be about a 7 on a 1 to 10 scale. Based on the overly strong midrange and the fact that JBL is having this speaker built in China, I can't give this a 4 out of 5.
Fit, finish, and appearance on this speaker is somewhat mixed. The front panel veneer is attractive and rolls to the top panel via the beveled edge at the top front. The front panel is made of MDF and appears to be either 3/4 or 1 inch thick. It sounds very solid when rapped with your knuckle. (This is a simple and quick test I would recommend for any speaker.) In general the front of the speaker looks very good.
The side panels are thinner MDF and have a plain black veneer with a fine texture. I can't tell whether they are 1/2 or 5/8 inch thick. The entire cabinet tapers from front to back, with the back only measuring 7 1/2 inches wide vs. 10 1/4 at the front. This tapered design isn't my first choice, but others may like it. The speakers have outboard feet pre-installed which yield good stability despite their height. If you don't like the looks you can install a set of inboard feet that is included in the box.
The bass port is fairly low on the back side just 5 inches above the bi-amp capable sets of binding posts for the speaker wire. These posts are really too close together for easy loosening and tightening, and the bottom pair is further hampered in this regard by their proximity to the panel that holds the posts. The posts include a set of preinstalled gold jumpers for when you are not bi-amping.
I'm using a Kenwood KR-V8080 receiver in stereo mode to drive these. I'm just listening to music with them and my source is a PC with HD audio sound built in (Analog Devices SoundMAX) and iTunes. Nearly all of my music is from CDs imported to Apple lossless compression, so I should be getting the same quality as using a CD player. I'm open to comments about possible shortcomings of this setup, but keep in mind that Apple lossless is just that, it gets decompressed on playback to the same bitstream as was on the CD. I'm not basing the review on any compressed material.
I've listened to a wide variety of rock, pop, and country music at this point, including some remastered material with excellent sound quality. (I have not listened to any classical or jazz.) I could go into details on particular tracks but it wouldn't change the big picture, which is that this speaker has a pronounced midrange that must be cut to really be musical.
I am using a 10 band Audio Control equalizer to unlock the potential of these speakers. You should be able to do the same with a software equalizer of some sort if the PC is your music source. What I have found to be the best is to cut the mids (500, 1000, and 2000 Hz) from 4 to 6 dB, and boost the treble sliders (4000, 8000, and 16000 Hz) by similar amounts. The bass needs a boost as well but it will vary based on the source CD and the placement of the speakers in the room. My listening room is fairly large as part of a combined living room / dining room that also joins into the foyer in a very open plan. The speakers are about 16 inches from the wall behind them but quite a ways from the side walls, and 7 feet apart.
The net result in a comparison between equalized and non-equalized is dramatic. The non equalized sound is very flat and overly 'warm', with vocals usually sounding like they're inside a muffled can. It's worth noting that I prefer a human ear sensitivity curve output for most sound systems and source material. I don't know if I've needed to apply 12 dB of difference between the highs and the mids though.
The sound with equalization ranges from good to very good. I can't yet say it's excellent. It is very clean and the bass is tight if you're not trying to shake the house too much. My 4 out of 5 rating on sound quality is based on the equalized version.
What I have noted with these JBLs is that the sliders I am cutting all are in the frequency range covered by the 4 inch midrange transducer. Whether JBL intended for these speakers to have such a strong midrange, or they've had some sort of manufacturing process control issue with their crossover network, I doubt that many listeners would disagree that bringing the mids down a good bit yields a much better sound. If out of the box they sounded closer to what they do with equalization I would give them perhaps an 8.5 out of 10, so consider that against the 3 out of 5 overall rating I'm giving here.
If you're going to use these for a high end home theater system you will need a subwoofer to really feel the low stuff, but for many users these will be enough and a sub won't be necessary. A 36 Hz -3 dB point is going to cover most everything but the low bass and earth shaking sound effects.
I have owned 3 other pairs of JBL speakers (including the L60T from the late 80s) and have listened to a few more, and this is a departure for JBL's normal tendencies in my experience. My L60T's are very bright and clean in the high range and the mids are not nearly as strong. The L60T is a 2 way design with a 1 inch titanium dome tweeter that must cover much of the midrange as well, so I was quite surprised that the ES90's 4 way design (with 2 specialized tweeters) also needs at least 3 dB more treble boost to come close to it. I'm still not sure it equals it. I'll update this review if my opinion changes. (In the past I've also auditioned Infinity, Polk, Boston Acoustics, Klipsch, and Bose. The best speakers I ever heard were some Infinity Reference Standard 4.5's back in the 80s. I've never been impressed much with the Klipsch I've heard, Polks I've heard were laid back and mellow, while the old JBL and Infinity speakers were very upfront and in your face with their pronounced and very clear high end.)
(For the argument against using equalization because it's not 'how the music was intended to sound', I would ask in what room? With the speakers positioned where? And which speakers? With which mastering? If you haven't tried using an equalizer or at least a 3 band setup with Bass, Midrange, and Treble controls, give it a try and cut the midrange. In general it will give the sound more depth and make it more listenable at both low and high volume levels. While it seems logical that simply boosting bass and treble would work, in my experience it doesn't work as well without a midrange control. The general shape of the curve I'm applying with the equalizer is consistent with many software equalizer presets for Rock and other music types, including some of the iTunes preset curves. The ear is most sensitive to midrange frequencies, and less so for the high and low ends. This is true for the audible threshold as well as the max you can listen to. Loudness controls offset this sensitivity for low listening levels by boosting bass and treble.)Update 3/19/2010:
I've just sent these speakers back. In comparison to my 20+ year old JBL L60T's, the old speakers are just clearly better. There is no doubt that the 1 inch titanium dome tweeters that JBL used for many years (including in the L60T, L80T, and L100T from the late 1980s) is better than the two tweeters in the ES90 put together. And the single 8 inch woofer in the L60T (with surrounds just recently replaced on both speakers) is not really giving anything up to the dual 8 inch woofers in the ES90. All in all a big letdown for me as a loyal JBL user.
I'll also downgrade my overall 7 out of 10 to perhaps 6.5 out of 10, and downgrade the equalized score to 7.5 out of 10.
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