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JBL at PLASA
Speaker company JBL are never short of new products to announce, and this year’s PLASA show sees them exhibiting a new addition to the existing popular VRX900 line array, and also showing a new affordable PA line at a UK exhibition for the first time, the MRX500 series.
The VRX900-series ‘constant curvature’ line array is designed for small to medium-sized venues, and can be used in a fixed installation, or to form a portable PA. The first speakers in the series to be launched, the two-way VRX932LAs, featured the JBL-patented ‘constant curvature’ waveguide which lends its name to the series as a whole. Three compression drivers are mounted on a continuous arc in each speaker, and when further VRX932LAs are added to the system, the speakers fit together in such a way that the arc of drivers continues. In use, the acoustic effect of this is that the drivers work together as though they were a single driver on a continuous waveguide, but with the combined acoustic output of multiple drivers.
The VRX932LA speakers were augmented in 2005 by the arrival of the 18-inch VRX918S subwoofer. Then, at Frankfurt’s Musikmesse in March this year, the two-way VRX915M 15-inch floor monitor or ‘wedge’ was announced, a symmetrical design that may be used as either a left or right monitor.
With a stage height of just 375mm (just under 15 inches), the compact wedge has a 2452H four-inch voice-coil compression driver and aluminium horn to handle high frequencies, and a 15-inch JBL 2265H woofer for the bass, and may be bi-amped or operated passively as a full-range monitor. Made of birch plywood with a ruggedised, scratch-resistant coating and with rubber feet to prevent on-stage slipping, the VRX915M is now shipping.
Also being exhibited in the UK for the first time since its June launch is the affordable MRX500-series, a new lightweight portable passive PA system aimed at gigging musicians and DJs. The range consists of five models, also made of plywood with a ruggedised coating. JBL’s trademarked Differential Drive transducers are used throughout, making a typical MRX-series system 30 to 40 percent lighter than comparable other systems. All five MRX models are shipping now.
The last of the new JBL products on show at the Harman Pro UK stand is the final piece in the successful LSR range of configurable, networkable studio monitors. The LSR 4312SP, which features a 12-inch driver, is the system’s subwoofer, and joins the existing full-range LSR4326P and LSR4328P monitors. Like the rest of the LSR4300 series, the 4312SP can be networked using Harman’s proprietary HiQNet control protocol. Supplied cross-platform computer software (‘LSR4300 Control Centre’) can then configure the entire system, analysing the room in which the speaker system is situated, correcting for inadequacies and standing waves in the room’s acoustics and thereby optimising the monitors for use in that specific location.
21st August 2006
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