I might get a trial of a pair of JBL Array 1400 speaker (yes... the one with the funny horn placed in the vertical axis).. I have read some reviews but not enough for me to build my scrapbook. Anyone familiar with this line kind enough to share a comment?
It might look funny but there is a good reason for it.
Below some fairly high frequency, governed by the horn wall angles and dimensions, horns with a highly asymmetric dispersion pattern like this generally have “pattern flip”.
Below the pattern flip frequency, that up/down mounting provides wide horizontal and narrow vertical dispersion even though the horn looks otherwise. The old EV T-35 was a similar, best mounted vertically because pattern flip happened about 15KHz.
I was next door to these in one audio show. Their dealer here are good friends of ours so we've been neighbors a few years running upon our mutual request. I was surprised to see them paired with big SS amps (Primare). I asked why when the guys are dealers of Mastersound and DeHavilland. I was assuming by the looks of them that they could easily be driven by 845s. They said the 1400s liked muscle. How did they sound? Pretty darned good and it's not because our friendship has me biased. Very dynamic and lively, you don't need to play them loud to get detail in spades. I still wanted to hear them with tubes though but never got the chance. They were sold shortly after.
I was next door to these in one audio show. Their dealer here are good friends of ours so we've been neighbors a few years running upon our mutual request. I was surprised to see them paired with big SS amps (Primare). I asked why when the guys are dealers of Mastersound and DeHavilland. I was assuming by the looks of them that they could easily be driven by 845s. They said the 1400s liked muscle. How did they sound? Pretty darned good and it's not because our friendship has me biased. Very dynamic and lively, you don't need to play them loud to get detail in spades. I still wanted to hear them with tubes though but never got the chance. They were sold shortly after.
FWIW, I was part of a quickie blind test of JBL 1400 speakers against Martin Logan and B&W 802 (don't have the model but told it retailed for 2X the JBL). I rated them slightly worse than B&W in one test but better in the other two and far ahead of ML. This was an ad-hoc test in that it was just a few clips and we didn't have control of what played next. I will write up more later.
For now, the preference I had for the JBL was that it was the most natural and even responding speaker of the bunch. I did a quick poll of the audience which was in the same group and while most didn't say much, one said that he also preferred the JBL 1400.
