With its Studio series S38 bookshelf loudspeakers (also available in beech), JBL strikes a happy balance between price, performance, and size, offering nearly full-range sound--from crystalline highs to stomach-punching lows--in attractive, mirror-image cabinets. Whether you buy four and put them to work in a home theater with a center-channel and a subwoofer or merely position a pair of S38BEs along a living-room wall for true-blue stereo music, it's hard not to be seduced by the sound from these speakers. At its heart, each S38BE speaker is a three-way system using two magnetically shielded PolyPlas drivers (a 4-inch and an 8-inch) complemented by a 1-inch titanium-dome tweeter. PolyPlas, a polymer-coated cellulose fiber, adds rigidity and damping to the cones without unduly increasing their mass. This cone, together with a durable rubber surround (the part of the cone that attaches to the rest of the speaker), enables the speaker to deliver amazingly high sound levels without audible breakup or distortion.
The pure-titanium tweeter uses JBL's patented EOS waveguide to focus the sonic image and reduce time-delay artifacts. The EOS waveguide also increases the tweeter's dynamic range and its output at lower frequencies, which improves the transition between the high frequencies and the midrange. The LFP (Linear Field Proximity) bezel, which houses both the tweeter and the 4-inch midrange driver, smoothes out that transition even further. By minimizing the distance between these critical sound sources, JBL sidesteps the phase problems that result from sounds meeting your ears with different arrival times.
JBL's custom-designed drivers use simple, Straight-line Signal Path (SSP) crossover networks with quality electrical components. These networks further smooth the speaker's frequency and power response while minimizing processing that could otherwise degrade your audio signal.
On the inside, the drivers' oversized Kapton voice coils and HeatScape motor structures preserve performance accuracy during extended listening, prolong driver life, and reduce power compression through their responsiveness. Finally, JBL's FreeFlow flared bass port releases bass energy from behind the 8-inch woofer through a vent that precisely matches the size and configuration of the driver and speaker cabinet.
Some will want more low end than the S38BEs are capable of delivering, but this is not a shortcoming of the speakers, it's a limitation of the size. JBL has done everything in its power to maximize the S38BEs' low-end response, and it did a better job than we would have thought possible given the company's commitment to maintaining natural timbre (that is, a frequency balance that sounds neither boomy nor equalized). --Michael Mikesell
Pros:
- Great sound
- Dynamic prowess
- Impressive imaging
