CHAPTER 1 – LEGACY: THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE JBL PROJECT LOUDSPEAKERS
Of those few who seek perfection in sound reproduction, only a handful have actually achieved it. The price is always high. It is a rare occur- rence indeed when an individual or group is able to triumph over the constraints of economic and tech- nological reality even once.
At JBL, this has happened eight times. In each case, its engineers were told to build the speaker sys- tem they had always wanted to build. Whatever resources were required would be made available. Thus began an ongoing investiga- tion into new frontiers of sound reproduction, beginning in 1950, and continuing to the present day.
The products that have resulted from this venture are now known as the JBL Project loudspeakers. Each represents the absolute peak of every technological, material and engineering innovation available at that time, combined into a single system. They are Hartsfield, Paragon, Everest, K2 S9500/7500 and K2 S5500. The newest models are the K2 S5800 and K2 S9800.
Although differing in performance details and physical attributes, each of the Project loudspeakers has shared a common objective: to ele- vate sound reproduction to levels defined only by the limitations of existing materials and technology. And despite a spread of nearly 50 years, all Project loudspeakers have shared many common features – testimony to their foundation on the technology and manufacturing techniques upon which JBL was built.
DEFINING THE PROJECT CONCEPT
The Hartsfield began a tradition at JBL that continues today. First, engi- neer a product as close to perfection as possible. When it reaches that level, it is time to make it better.
In 1954, the Hartsfield was signifi- cant in that it represented not new technology, but rather a new level of the
Lansing some 20 years before it. Like its Project series successors, it was a
In this respect, Project K2 S5800 is at once the most advanced and sophisticated loudspeaker in the world today (save for the Project K2 S9800) and a speaker whose technology is deeply rooted in more than 50 years of tradition. JBL’s president in 1954, William Thomas, described the Hartsfield as “... the speaker system we have always wanted to build... the finest compo- nents ever made available to seri- ous listeners.”
He went on to describe the process behind his creation: “Most people who own and appreciate fine sound reproduction equipment look for- ward to the day when they will be able to assemble a system without limitation in just exactly the way they think it should be done.
“Periodically, a manufacturer gets this same feeling....The science of
acoustics has provided us with basic principles – available to all for achieving precision reproduction. It is only a matter of incorporating these methods into a system design, and then taking every bit of trouble necessary to build a system pre- cisely to the design. It isn't easy, but that’s the way it is done.”
The
9 feet long, the Paragon’s enclosure was treated as an extension of its transducers. In essence, the system had its own
For nearly 30 years, the Paragon remained the most acoustically viable sound system for the home. Today, along with the Hartsfield, it is still the most
In 1986, JBL introduced a new Project system that retained the Paragon’s overall sense of musicality while upgrading its character by incorporating three decades’ worth of continuous development in every facet of its design. Its name reflected the pinnacle of achievement it rep- resented: Project Everest.
For the first time, the rest of the sound reproduction chain – and not the loudspeaker or its transducers – would impose limits on overall sys- tem performance. Like the Paragon and Hartsfield, Project Everest was built around compression driver technology and addressed a more refined stereo image than was previously considered technically feasible.
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