Transcript
Best Buys Audio & AV Issue 2-2013
LOUDSPEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES
5.1 SPEAKER PACKAGE
JAMO 360 S35HCS8
D
anish loudspeaker maker Jamo has been producing some very interesting compact home theatre speaker packs in recent years. One element of the new Jamo 360 S35HCS8 system brings the word ‘compact’ to a new, tinier level, while offering a performance we would not have thought possible.
EQUIPMENT
But we’ll get to that shortly, for there is at least one other unusual aspect of this system: the four satellite speakers – front left and right and surround — are omnidirectional. They project their sound not just forwards but outwards on a horizontal plane in nearly all directions. Jamo calls this ‘Omnipolar’. Each of these satellites consists of a spherical enclosure on a pedestal which is itself attached to a round plinth. The spheres are only 127mm in diameter and, with their grilles removed, look as though a wedge has been removed from the upper half. In the bottom flat section of the wedge is a 90mm bass/midrange driver which fires mostly upwards, perhaps 15 degrees off the vertical. In the top flat section is a 25mm tweeter, firing almost vertically downwards. Both the large and small drivers have a dome shape. The bass/midrange dome is made from an aluminium polypropylene blend, while the neodymium tweeter uses an aluminium dome. The larger driver fires upwards at the dome of the smaller driver. Which in turn fires down into the dome of the larger driver. So both domes disperse the sound from the other driver. The shape is such that there is still a bias in the delivery of the sound to the front and nearly as much to the side. Towards the immediate rear the treble would be diminished since there is no outlet for the sound there.
The spheres are surprisingly weighty. We would have guessed their construction as aluminium, but it is actually largely ABS plastic. There are metal grilles in place over the removedwedge section. If your listening room is free of prying juvenile fingers, you can, with a bit of effort, remove those. The satellites are more distinctive in appearance with their drivers naked. As delivered these are set up for placement on a shelf or a stand. But loosen a bolt and rotate the back section and the base is now in the correct position for wall mounting. The centre channel is more conventional, although styled sympathetically (don’t mention Johnny Five!), with two of the 90mm drivers, the tweeter between them, firing forwards. It also can be wall mounted. But when it comes to compact, the subwoofer says it all. It is a 200mm cube, just eight inches on a side. Contained therein is a 165mm forwards firing woofer, two side-mounted 165mm passive radiators, and an amplifier rated at 800W.
PERFORMANCE
Installation of the system was easy except in one respect: be prepared for a fiddly time when it comes to wiring. The satellites require you to snake wire
through some channels to get to the connections, in which the cables are secured by grub screws. A screwdriver of sorts is included, but this was tricky and we fear we did some damage to the screw heads. The slot in the screws is so small we couldn’t get any of our own screwdrivers into it. A couple of spare grub screws are provided so we’d guess such damage (and loss if over-loosened) would not be uncommon. It took us a good half hour to complete the wiring with this system. It was relatively easy for the centre channel because it has more substantial spring-loaded connections under a false panel at the rear. Our main home theatre receiver went for a 200Hz crossover between all five speakers and the subwoofer during auto-calibration. However a slip of paper included with the speaker pack advised using 120 to 150Hz for the S35 units, and 100 to 120Hz for the C35. So we reset our system manually to 120Hz for all of them. Jamo rates that of the satellites at just 83dB (2.83 volts, etc) and the centre channel at 86dB. Both are low figures, so the obvious fear is that you’d need a high powered amplifier. But we were only using them for 120Hz and up, so the two-and-a-bit deepest octaves were provided by the subwoofer. The power demands of real-world
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Best Buys Audio & AV Issue 2-2013
LOUDSPEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES
music diminish as you go up in frequency at somewhere between 3dB and 6dB per octave. Get rid of the bottom two octaves and you get rid of something like three quarters of the power requirements. All that is just a bit of theory. In practice using a fairly modest home theatre receiver the system gave plenty of volume. Plenty of volume, indeed, while remaining clean, tonally balanced and precise. We suspected that such a small subwoofer would struggle — it’s not unreasonable to wonder how much bass could possibly be produced by a subwoofer that is in volume only 90% of the size of a shoe box. There are two dimensions to that: level and extension. First, as to extension, we measured the unit’s output. In our room it gave a good account of itself from 39Hz up to 155Hz. The reduction in output level below 39Hz was sharp — the output at 20Hz had disappeared below the background noise level, but based on the slope of the fall, would have been around 50dB down. That is really quite amazing. And a very useful output, since 40Hz covers almost everything that’s musically important (aside from pipe organ pedal
and the almost inaudible fundamentals of the bottom few notes on a grand piano). But how about power? Level? We put this system to the test with a bit of Tchaikovsky — to wit, Telarc’s 1998 re-recording of the 1812 Overture, with cannon, choir and surround sound, presented on SACD. The first thing to notice on the bass front with this was that the mighty bass drum so characteristic of Telarc’s orchestral recordings was right there in full — undiminished, tight, yet with the proper reverberations. We could see one of the passive radiators from where we were sitting, and it bounced in and out with vigour. When we got to the cannon towards the end the results were also very impressive, but not as much as the drums. The level was there, though not the full available power of the performance (to be fair, we normally use a 15 inch subwoofer that is 15 times the physical volume). The reason was the omission of the sub-40Hz content, and that’s fair enough. Equally importantly, no damage was done; Jamo seems to have built in filtering to make sure the unit isn’t called upon to disperse power from some of the 8Hz content in this recording. The other thing to notice with this recording was the beautifully clean and airy opening with the choir. Even with the air, there was excellent precision in the imaging all the way around. During the set-up we had noticed a distinct tonal difference between the centre channel and the satellites which we thought might have had something to do with the omnidirectional character of the latter compared to the direct action of the former. But when it came to real world surround sound the image presentation was first-class, including across the front soundstage. With this quality of performance on surround music, movie sound delivery was a snap. The dialogue was clear from the centre channel, and again surround tracking was top-notch. Only in the rare movie soundtrack with significant levels of really deep LFE was there a clear lack of anything. On stereo music the system demonstrated a remarkable ability to present a soundstage with both height and depth. We found ourselves occasionally glancing at the settings of the home theatre receiver to double check that we had not inadvertently left some Dolby Pro Logic mode in operation. But, no, it was always in stereo. The stage depth was not receding back from the plane of the front speakers, but starting at them
and stretching forward towards us, sometimes fully encompassing our place and stretching back behind us. That’s omnidirectionality for you.
CONCLUSION
The Jamo 360 S35HCS8 home cinema speaker system manages the rare feat of providing big music and movie sound from a tiny package that is also lovely to look at. The only real performance limitation is in the deepest of bass, but saying even that is getting extremely picky. Your friends will not believe that this little subwoofer is producing what they’re hearing. We hardly believe it ourselves.
Jamo 360 S35HCS8 5.1 speaker package • Lovely airy sound • Amazing compact subwoofer • Great styling • No bass below 40 hertz Price: $2399 S35 SATELLITE SPEAKERS Drivers: 1 x 25mm dome tweeter and 90mm bass/midrange Frequency response: 100-25,000Hz Impedance: 8-ohms Sensitivity: 83dB (2.83V/1m) Power handling: 40-125 watts continuous Cabinet: Sealed Dimensions (hwd): 172 x 127 x 127mm Weight (each): 1.1kg Warranty: Six years (Three years on subwoofer) C35 CENTRE 2010i SPEAKERS Drivers: 1 x 25mm dome tweeter, 2 x 90mm bass/midrange Frequency response: 80-25,000Hz Impedance: 8 ohms Sensitivity: 86dB (2.83V/1m) Power handling: 55-125 watts continuous Cabinet: Sealed Dimensions (hwd): 150 x 325 x 178mm Weight (each): 2.4kg SUB 800 SUBWOOFER Driver: 1 x 165mm (forwards firing) Frequency response: 42-200Hz Power output: 800 watts Cabinet: Passive radiator (2 x 165mm, side mounted) Dimensions (hwd): 200 x 200 x 200mm Weight: 4.6kg Contact: Qualifi 1800 242 426 www.qualifi.com.au
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