Customer Reviews

JBL ES80BK 3-Way, Dual 6 1/2" Floorstanding Speaker - Black

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Just about two years since I bought these from Amazon.

Matched them with a Harman Kardon AVR 145 and wow. This was a team. I have heard many tower speakers from different family and friends, and of course from Best Buy and the like. These speakers can handle a lot of sound and keep clean without distortion. I have certainly given them a workout to test their limits.

I have throughout the life of these speakers changed receivers. The first, AVR145, made any music and any show have the loud booming bass you might expect from a subwoofer and more. It was great. I loved it. Any song from Classical to the "rare once liked but now am trying for the sake of the speakers" rap song played well. Then came the switch to a new AVR 3600. I lost the bass in the same music I was playing just the day before the receivers changed. I know these speakers could do so much more, what was the deal? I eventually even bought a sub to get back my lost bass. I wasn't happy. This receiver wasn't bass boosting like the first clearly must have been...

Then, it happened.

I watched Harry Potter on Blu-ray, mind you my sub was in the repair shop(go figure), and that is when it happened. The speakers blew my mind even further than they had ever before. I was honestly afraid that the china on the shelf just a few feet away was going to rattle off. I clearly remember the stone walls separating in the movie and that my house felt it was about to separate as well. This is with the equalizer set to a flat response as all high quality recordings and playbacks should be set. That showmanship of the power these speakers can dish out made me realize that they were a better purchase than when I had feel in love with them after the first week of owning them.

Just make sure your source and song quality is good, and these speakers will put a smile on your face you cant wipe off. Except when the disturbance calls are made from across the street.

I would like to finish with the point also that I own two of them for left and right fronts, they are quite heavy, match well with Sony Bravia 40", and the sound quality is very clear. It is not easy to buy on the internet, but paired well and these speakers are well worth the price.

I have a pair of ES80 speakers connected to a 7.2 AV-Receiver with a nominal output of 120 Watts per channel. The system has been running in my 450 sq. ft (45 m2) living room for about a year now and plays back from a variety of sources such as CDs, TV, radio, computer, DVD and even portable tape recorders on the auxiliary port.

The two ES80s have worked very well even though they are the only speakers connected. I have been planning to add full home system functionality (subwoofer, front center and surround speakers) from the very beginning, but the audio result is already satisfactory with just the two speakers and with plenty of room left for fine tuning.

There is virtually no humming, high and medium-low frequencies are handled cleanly and even enhanced bass (when present) can produce a good woofer effect. Even at high volume the speakers stay relatively "unimpressed".

One of the reasons for the delivered audio quality (and one of my favorite features in speakers generally) is the model's "Bi-Amping" connectivity, which offers the option to connect each speaker to two separate channels instead of one: This allows the two speakers to effectively behave as four by independently handling two separate inputs. When playing home theatre, for example, "half of each speaker" works as a front surround, while the "other half" operates as a normal main speaker.

The perception of sound is subjective and very much dependent on location/space and other variables; therefore I will not pretend to offer general technical comments on sound quality for all uses. Since, however, I have chosen this model after some research, I believe this speaker is versatile enough to suit a wide range of configurations.

In conclusion, a pair of JBL-ES80s will satisfy most medium-to-high-end requirements because of its quality and adaptability. It may even conceivably be suitable for professional use in appropriate combination with other speaker types.